Anxiety/Depression/Mental Illness Support

[Faith No More]

Speaking of which, I stayed up all night this last night with no desire to sleep. Is this a bounce from the irritable and frustrated depression? Only the gods might know, and they ain't talking.

When I was severely depressed, my brain developed a sort of self-defense mechanism where if I had a day where I felt particularly well, it would not relax to allow me to go to sleep. Waking up from sleep tended to be a crap shoot which ended more often than not with me feeling really depressed, so to prevent that, my brain refused to shut down when I was well. It allowed me to maximize my time of feeling well, but also drained me of energy. At that point, however, as long as I felt well mentally, I could handle any problems such as lack of sleep.

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I've been recently reading a new book I picked up called 'Rethinking Depression' by Eric Maisel Ph.D. It's mostly an existential approach to dealing with your emotions, but he spends the fiirst fifty pages making a case for depression not being a mental illness but a human condition. It was interesting, but not quite convincing. I suggest people see if they can find a free verson on the internet and read the first 50 pages. He makes a good case, and I'd like to hear what others think of this.