Depression at Night - A Troubled Sleep
By Colette Dowling
Four out of five people who become depressed approach bedtime with varying degrees of dread. They toss and turn, restlessly occupied with negative thoughts. Obsess about something dumb they did, or think they did, at the party that night. Money, taxes, their teeth falling out of their gums, you name it they worry about it. When I became depressed after a long bout of anemia (many chronic illnesses produce depression), I found myself worrying about my studio tumbling into the stream that lay next to it. I knew it wasn’t rational but I felt helpless to control what my mind was doing.
Anyone who’s been depressed knows how it goes. A relentlessly disturbing train of thought can begin with just the tiniest kernel of reality. The bank along the stream next to my studio was etched away in places, damaged by heavy spring rains. As my brain cells altered with the depression, the erosion escalated in my mind–first to the loss of my studio; ultimately to the loss of my home, on the same piece of land. Perhaps I should sell before my entire nest egg was swept away by the ravages of nature; on the other hand, th real estate market was so bad, maybe there would be no nest egg, and so on. Obessionl thoughts like these go hand in hand with depression and lying in bed awaiting sleep provides prime time. Lucky were the mornings when sanity returned, and I was able to have the calming thought, “This house has been sitting here since 1775; I don’t think it’s going anywhere soon.”
