In Questions and Answers I try (as a true ExpEx, Expert-by-Experience) to answer some of your questions, as brief as possible.
Question that was asked this morning:
“Will afternoon naps worsen depression?”
Answer: No, not necessarily. Exhaustion caused by a horrible, nightmarish, sleepless night can have a far worse effect on depression. So in that case, getting over your tiredness by taking a brief daytime nap can be a good strategy.
But afternoon naps can worsen your depression if you disregard two important, fairly self-evident conditions:
(1) Don’t let them disrupt your day in a way that makes you feel you lost control. In other words, after a bad night, strategically planning in an afternoon nap is much better than allowing yourself to just drift away into sleep on your TV couch. Use your bed, so the nap will be a well-defined and well-demarcated “activity” within your day scheme.
(2) Don’t sleep for too long. Set an alarm! For nearly all people, somewhere between 30-50 minutes works best for a refreshing daytime nap. Sleep much longer and you may (a) be less alert and less active for the rest of the afternoon, and (b) have more trouble to get some good sleep the following night: meaning the problem will keep repeating itself.
We’re all different of course, but stick to these two basic rules and sometimes an afternoon nap can work well – at least for myself and for most other depressed people that I happen to know.
Many of us will recognize the Count from his many guest appearances in the funny and educational Sesame Street children’s TV series, where he helps our little ones to master the fine art of counting. Despite his Dracula looks, the Count comes across as a well-meaning and helpful character. Young children love him. He looks just scary enough to be fascinating.
The latest therapeutic trend here is Mindfulness training. This will teach you how to switch off that depressing autopilot. Using techniques borrowed from Buddhist meditation practice (applied here in a non-religious way) it can make us more aware of our own body and mind again. It can help to regain the direct intensity of basic bodily sensations, and to clear away the mess in your head.
But eventually, you will make it all the way from a full mug to the bottom: counting. And this forces you to better concentrate on your coffee-drinking activity. In fact because you have to count them, you’ll now better (more intensely) taste each gulp of coffee. You’re now back to drinking your coffee in a conscious way. Instead of your autopilot, you are now the master of this activity again. I admit the woman in this picture is overdoing it, but you got my point.
Instead of getting up, try counting your breaths, each time you inhale. Think of a goal (making 200 or so) and start counting. Of course you don’t need to count aloud. I can predict right now that the nasty depression beast in your brain will not like this. The beast will tell you to give up this ridiculous nonsense, will try to interfere and distract, will try to force its own negative thoughts onto you. But do go on. Keep stubbornly counting, every single intake of air. 63… 64… 65… Yes, the beast will protest this is boring and dull. Still, keep going.
You know walking is good for you, so you’re taking a lone walk. On a street, a country road, a forest trail, a beach. But while walking, you may happen to gradually lose your focus on yourself and your environment. You may start brooding. Negative thoughts and feelings begin to encroach on you, depression taking over while you keep walking on in an ever more mechanical way. This autopilot thing, you know… Feeling more and more depressed, you may even start asking yourself: why am I doing this? Why am I still walking here? What’s the point of all this? Meanwhile, you forget where you are.
Diagnostic handbooks (think of the DSM-IV) acknowledge that individual depression patients may actually sleep either much more, or much less than the healthy adults’ average 7-8 daily hours. This divergence indicates that the actual number of hours we sleep is not the main issue here. The real question is whether we get a normal night of sound sleep, and if we don’t get it, whether we should compensate for this.
However, some reasonable structuring of one’s moments of sleep might make sense. This implies marking some kind of boundary, a noticeable demarcation line between being awake and being asleep. During my own deep depression in the past weeks, I sometimes failed to draw such a clear line. As a result, I would for example slowly slip away into an unintended doze while sitting on the couch watching TV – waking up again in front of the same TV two hours later.
When I was a little child, in cold winters my mother knew that a hot-water-bottle at my feet would help when she tucked me in for the night (back then we had only coal stoves, no heating upstairs). Any sleep problems will be worsened if you need to step from a comfortable warm living room into a stone-cold bed. Buy yourself a cheap electric blanket. Turn it on half an hour before you go to sleep (and make sure you turn it off again once you’re in bed). Falling asleep in a pre-warmed bed is much easier.
June 18, 1924 –
