When you have a form of mental illness it often seems like you are spilt into a lot of pieces. This becomes more obvious as you go through the journey of becoming better at working with your illogical brain.
There are the pieces of you that are fearful of what is happening, what could happen, what has happened and how different people think about what has, can and is happening. There are the pieces of you that want to try and enjoy (again this is once you are becoming stronger and realize that not everything your illogical brain says is true). There are the pieces of you that are waiting for the bad thing to happen. There are the pieces of you that are analyzing every single thing you are doing to see if it is ok, and also the pieces of you that are thinking about how what you are doing in regards to everyone else. Then there are the pieces of your brain that have gone off on some tangent or six. And then you have the pieces that are fighting to stay present in the moment. These are not all of the pieces, these are just some examples that are happening as I type this. People who have not had the joy of a mental illness struggle to understand the toll it can take on someone. And in turn the toll it can take on people around them. A huge amount of patience is required both on the part of the person fighting the battle and on the part of the people propping them up when it gets too much. The reason why people with mental fights need a lot of sleep is because of how hard they fight when they are awake. Yes it may seem boring or lazy, but when you are trying to bring all of these pieces together so you can function as some form of a human being and work with your illogical brain so it doesn't stay in control all the time it is exhausting. Of course the flip side of this is that often people who have these struggles find it very difficult to sleep. I struggle like crazy and often resort to physically exhausting myself to the point where that is the only thing I can think about. Obviously the more I do this the harder it gets but at least I think I'm gaining some muscle out of it. For a while I used to have a few beers and a sleeping tablet because it helped me to fall asleep. This isn't something that I would recommend but it made me able to function. This then becomes a vicious cycle as you fight the illogical brain, becoming more tired but not having sleep to restore your brain power until (in my case) you spiral into a breakdown. They aren't much fun and have resulted in me being hugged by strangers as I've been unable to make it home to hide away before it has hit, I ended up speaking to my doctor about it because , as much as I didn't want to take anything for it, it was becoming a lot more obvious to people around me that I was struggling. While there is no perfect way to sleep every night all night, there are ways to get slightly more than an hour or two a night. Currently I get4-5 hours sleep, mainly in the early hours of the morning. I take medication to help me sleep but its non addictive so there won't be any problems if I come off it. The other thing with this is that the medication doesn't make me just pass out. Literally all it does is widen the window I have to fall asleep in. Before I would have a 5 minute window where I was tired and could fall asleep but then after that window my illogical brain would kick in and that would be that, night done. Now I have a nice 15 minutes or so, which means that I can actually fall asleep and not just lie there waiting to face another day and feeling even more exhausted than I did for the last. Sleep is important, the bags under my eyes will tell you. So when someone changes plans with you it could be because they are just too tired for fighting all day and they don't want to bring all the pieces of themselves together because they just can't. I don't know if you ever get the pieces to fit. I honestly have no idea, I hope that at some point they will because it would be nice to just have them all be friends and for my head to work like it should. For now I have a slightly better grip on them and that's massive progress. It's taken 2 years to get to this point and is encouraging enough to want to keep going. If I can do it, so can you. You are enough. You are not alone. You are ok.
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