Back in the mists of time, as I slowly medicated my way out of Post Natal Depression, I continued to weep on my GP's shoulder from time to time, and she continued to be sympathetic and understanding. Until she moved to another part of the country. I don't think it was anything to do with me. But, one of the things she did do was refer me onto a course of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy.
And along I went, feeling something of a fraud, because I was better by then. I was cured! I was normal! And then we started talking, and all my twisted ways of seeing myself, and seeing the world, came pouring out, incoherent and punctuated by tears. And I realised that though I was functional, and capable, and more-or-less getting on with life, I was not quite as healthy or stable as I could be. And over the weeks, we gradually unpicked some of my unhelpful and unhealthy thought processes. We gave name to them, shone the bright lights of understanding upon them, found detours around them, found new thoughts, new patterns and new habits.
And it's kind of worked. I'm mostly in a better mental state than I used to be. Mostly. Avid readers here will have noticed I have an entire category of labelling for my posts of "anxiety". I'm a work in progress. I like to tell myself we all are, it's just some people haven't realised there's no such thing as finished.
And this past week has been particularly challenging for maintaining my equilibrium. It started last weekend, with a tediously long drive in the rain and the dark and across rural Lincolnshire to avoid a closed motorway. It was nobody's fault that we had such a long drive, but it sowed the seeds of exhaustion in me, and possibly in the small boy who'd been tucked into "bed" in his car seat and was sleeping all the way.
And then we had a family evening out with the Bear Family in The North, taking LittleBear out for his first properly late evening meal. He managed surprisingly well for a small boy who is not accustomed to being out late, or to having much variation to his routine, but didn't stumble into bed until close to 10pm. And he was both amazed and horrified by the time. Perhaps that should have been a warning to me?
And then the normal week rolled round again, and I wrestled with Broken Things, and Idiot Customers, and Minion Who Lacks Gumption, and Bureaucracy From Hell. And I didn't go to bed early enough. Not once.
And three times in the last week, LittleBear has failed to get to sleep in what he considers an acceptable length of time. And he has started to become fixated on not falling asleep. He is getting worried and anxious and panic-stricken about being awake. He's not afraid of the dark. He's not scared, or lonely, or (as far as we can tell) in any other kind of discomfort or distress. But he is so worried about the idea of being awake late, that he's lying awake worrying about it. Last night only required two extra visits upstairs, and he was "only" awake until about 9pm. Which was an improvement on Thursday, when he sobbed hysterically for twenty minutes, and required some serious levels of parental intervention, cuddling and calming before sleep came.
And how have I handled this? Have I been calm and relaxed about it? Have I assumed that it's just a phase and that it will pass? Have I been appropriately soothing and yet cheerful with my son about the fact that it's really not a problem? What do you think?
The good news is that, thanks to my CBT, I can label the way I'm feeling as catastrophising. And I can know that it's an unhealthy and unproductive way to think. Go me!
Unfortunately, this hasn't entirely stopped me from my utter conviction that I will never be able to go out in the evening ever again. Or that LittleBear will never return to going to bed and us not hearing a peep out of him until morning. It hasn't stopped me from berating myself for not having a babysitter more often, while I had the chance, while LittleBear was good at going to bed. In my mind, this is the end of everything. The end of relaxing evenings. The end of having a well-rested child. The end of any hope BigBear and I had of going anywhere together. Which we didn't do anyway, and now I wish we had, because we'll never... (you get the idea).
But at least I know this isn't a sensible way to think. That's a start.
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