@actuallyautistic Having major depressive disorder with generalized anxiety disorder as a co-morbidity of #autism is challenging. I tend to be more depressed in the mornings and feel almost depression free at night. The condition is puzzling and frustrating. For anybody else experiencing depression, do you have specific times of the day where the depression is or seems worse?
But during night, everything is (more) quiet, and people tend to not go on ones nerves. So maybe there is a connection between general overload and depression in your case.
@housepanther@actuallyautistic mine is tricky. For what it’s worth, I’ll share some interesting observations I’ve made recently.
I used to have anxiety as I wake up in the morning, and at night before going to sleep because I would anticipate the next morning’s anxiety.
I’m a morning person though and my brain works best and fastest in the morning. As soon as I got out of bed and started making coffee, my anxiety would subside. Until it was time to worry about the day’s duties that is. Then depending on how overwhelmed I felt, I would have varying levels of anxiety until the afternoon, which was always when I was most relaxed.
Recently though, since I’m more aware of my sound sensitivity and “spoons,” I realized that my anxiety inversely correlates with how high my IQ is at any given moment. The more rested and full of energy my brain is, the faster and more reliably it works, and the faster it works, the less my anxiety is.
One interesting thing is, stimulants such as caffeine will slightly perk me up, and DECREASE my anxiety whereas alcohol will depress me slightly, thus decrease my brain processing speed, which in turn will INCREASE my anxiety.
Nowadays, I use disposable memory foam ear plugs (not environmentally friendly, I know but my ears are prone to infection from reusable plugs) to increase my rest quality, which helps a lot with my brain function, and makes my anxiety pretty much non existent. When it comes back, I know I’m fatigued even if I don’t really feel like it. I put my ear plugs in and it helps with taking some load off my brain, which helps with the anxiety until I can get some sleep and recover better.
I don’t know if this is useful information for anyone but who knows, maybe it will give some ideas for experimenting.
@housepanther@actuallyautistic during an episode it's a lot worse in the daytime. it doesn't go away at night but during the day i can't get out of bed except to use the toilet and maybe get a glass of water or food. i've spent weeks staring at the ceiling until my sleep schedule shifted to where i was up at night. the apathy was still there but not as overwhelming so i'm able to do things like shower and leave the house and kind of take care of my basic needs.
@housepanther@actuallyautistic I follow the same diurnal pattern. I try to explain it away by observing that towards the end of the day I am safer from horrible surprises, phone calls etc and that safest time of all is when everyone else is asleep. But really, that may be applying a rationale to something biological. I just don't know. I find myself staying awake very late to enjoy the relative sanity
I think that actually makes a lot of sense. I got "office hour" now, so basically, I got an email address for official stuff and I don't get notifications for it anywhere. Same with my phone, the number I use for official stuff goes directly to my answering machine without ringing and I don't get notifications for text messages. Then every weekday morning I check those and if there's something, take care of it.
I had to do it this way, because otherwise I would be anxious all day and every message ping would trigger a major panic attack. I noticed that I relaxed a bit after 4pm, when I knew most offices are closed (except one particular agency which, for some reason, loves to send their bad news on Friday night, around 8pm, must be a batch run or something...), and my anxiety and depression are always extremely bad in the mornings anyways, so adding this routine to it didn't make them much worse. This has reduced my stress and anxiety levels a lot. Now, if I could only do something about my mail, hearing that clank...
@housepanther@actuallyautistic Not necessary depression but I do tend to be more anxious at night than I do during mornings. I can't figure out the reason why I'm like that.
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