January is over

I feel like January lasted one million years but also can’t believe it’s the end of the January. Regardless, thank goodness it’s over – it really kicked my butt!

My blog writing didn’t quite get off to a good start. I went fully into my shell under a blanket of extreme tiredness and endless episodes of Greys Anatomy. To be honest, I wasn’t sure if I was low key depressed or it was Greys Anatomy or it was the moon cycles or my god damn hormones but jeez it was a rough old month.

I’m sure many of you feel the exact same. It’s all very well having the intentions of going to the gym or meditating every morning and eating healthily but DOING IT whilst feeling like utter shit is the real challenge. There are times when getting out of bed for me is the biggest challenge I face (due to many time aforementioned Narcolepsy) so to be honest sitting meditating isn’t gonna make me calmer…it’s gonna make me late for work haha.

Ah but I have been so positive in my other blog posts, all of this has the potential to change your life! Of course it does…but you have to actually DO IT. Execute. Complete it.Begin and end. Start and finish.

However, if you don’t have control over your sleep attacks and getting out of bed is hard to manage, then really the eat healthy and exercise mantras aren’t really gonna cut it. To be fair I wasn’t too bad at eating healthily….until someone put chocolate near my location…like on the top shelf at the back of the cupboard. Like a sniffer dog I would seek it out and before anyone or myself could stop me I had it wolved down. That’s another thing….the extreme tiredness makes you crave EVERYTHING.

But what’s the lesson here? No matter how I feel I have to stick to what helps me. This is mighty hard when that dreaded time comes around. The rational person that I usually am is caged and this irrational, angry but also gloomy beast comes out. It eats everything in its path and makes me feel like I am back at square one, helpless and unable to find a path forward. Yikes.

It’s scary how your mind can just flip and test you in ways that you thought were no longer possible but that is the power of sleep deprivation. As well as feeling physically drained, it has such a huge impact on your mental health and you just feel like you are trying to move through treacle every day. Yet mental health is still treated by some like it’s not a real thing. Even in this era of awareness and breaking the stigma there is still so much ignorance. A study came out recently concerning the mental health of people in the workplace. The headline was:

Poor mental health in the workplace is costing UK employers more”

It honestly made me laugh the way it was written. The issue was not that an alarming amount of workers had reported that they had mental health concerns…it was that this was costing them money!! Oh gosh now they will have to try and play lip service to mental health because it might affect their bottom line! What’s the point in releasing this publicity stunt if you actually don’t have a clue how to treat people and what actually drives or inflames their mental health? It just makes me cringe. Not jabbing at the company in particular but just in general, people can be so critical but have ZERO insight into what it is actually like. Sorry does your mind try and suffocate you with anxious thoughts whilst you try and stay awake? Oh and when you are asleep are you are tormented by these insane nightmares that mildly traumatise you? No?? Then frankly Susan I’m not sure you are equipped to tell me whether I am coping well or not.

In terms of judgement, I am very lucky that I have a lovely circle of people around me. Thankfully I don’t have a Susan to be this directly ignorant to me, I already have that Susan in my mind beating me up and telling me that maybe I’m just lazy and my narcolepsy isn’t really that bad.

The main thing is that Christine knows that she is doing her absolute best and I am proud of how resilient she is. I’m not sure why I am talking about myself in the 3rd person here…lets just roll with it ok haha

There are so many different external factors that can cause my narcolepsy to spin out of control.. a cold, a change in the fecking wind, eating the wrong thing, not having my nap, hormones…the list is endless. I have accepted that I can no longer blame myself for it getting worse. It is an incurable autoimmune disease that I didn’t ask for.

You may have noticed that I shared a lot of positive mantras to my Instagram in January, honestly, they were as much for myself as anyone else. I was desperately trying to gain control of my Narcolepsy by any means possible.

Hey what about the historical story??? Hmm well…I am still trying to figure out ways to make it funny… for the moment I wanted to just chat about this before I am so sunny and happy again that I don’t remember what these low points feel like. I can only think about how I can improve the situation for next time and so it’s a good time to note down my thoughts. I know that I will never be able to completely eliminate these down periods but at least I know that I will eventually find my way out of the dark. Everything is temporary and if you need to stick that to your desk or your dresser please do so. It can feel like it will never get better but it will.

So what did I learn from this down period?

  1. That the wee monster before CBT is still there and really enjoys bullying me when I am my most vunerable
  2. I can consume an insane amount of chocolate
  3. Greys Anatomy is a fabulous show but it can also have me in buckets of tears about some fictional character’s son dying. I love McDreamy & McSteamy though…sometimes just McSteamy, sometimes just McDreamy.
  4. That even though I thought that I have accepted my Narcolepsy diagnosis, I really haven’t. It still upsets me that I can’t do certain things. My mind still loves to tell me that I shouldn’t be sleeping and that I need to be completing a constant To Do list.
  5. I learned just how quickly that you can become unravelled if you let it take hold of you. I am extremely self aware and I still almost sank and that really really scared me.
  6. Plans are key, plans for normal Christine and crazy Christine are two different things completely.

Jeez was there ANYTHING you liked about January?

Well….

  1. Halsey released an album ‘Manic’ which is so SO good. Also Demi Levato’s song ‘Anyone’ is so emosh and captures the alone feeling you have when you are in the pits. Hayley Williams is also back with new music but I’m still on the fence on that one.
  2. I read some books

-Cheer Up Love – Sue Calman – she is a Scottish comedian who chats about her battle with depression in the most hilarious manner. It was really the book I needed.

– Good morning, Good Life – Amy Landino – I love her Youtube channel and I am obsessed with her little tricks to stay organised and productive. I loved this book and I listened to it on Audible.

– Atomic Habits – James Clear – I am still listening to this one but loving it so far as habits and lists and organisation are key to my management of Narcolepsy.

  1. Exercise – my thing now is just get out of the house 3 times a week and do some exercise. I have tried to combine it with socialising with friends too so I don’t get to crazy working from home alone.

 

That’s it for January, bring on February! 

P.s Soz no pictures in this blog which only really enhances the bleakness of January haha.

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