I can sleep normally
For a long time I could only fall asleep at night by hours of conscious effort. By which I mean I would lie awake in bed in the dark for hours desperately trying to sleep but being unable to. Then I would sleep in until mid afternoon. This obviously wasn't good, as I'd often sleep through lectures, and living in the frozen north of Scotland I'd often sleep through most of the sunlight in the winter, which really didn't help. I also was able to get p and turn off multiple alarms entirely without engaging my higher brain functions.
The problem with bad sleep patterns is they're self perpetuating. If you wake up at 3pm you aren't going to be able to go to sleep at a decent time however hard you try (and my occasional attempts to 'reset' by staying up all night didn't help).
These days I can fall asleep fairly easily within 15 minutes of going to bed, and I seem to get sleepy naturally at the appropriate times without much effort. I still sleep in more than I'd like to, but if I have a specific reason to wake up and do something I can. The problem is more when I have nothing scheduled goign back to bed to 'use my laptop' then falling asleep again.
Less anxiety
I still have fairly bad anxiety, my left leg is twitching compulsively as I write this, and I get a tension in my chest when I try to do something stressful, but its nowhere near as bad as it used to be. There have been times when the mere thought of leaving my room would paralyse me, the little choices of whether to shower, or what to wear, suddenly become terrifying. Its hard to explain to someone who doesn't have it, but imagine the fight/flight response you get at really really scary situations (being attacked by a tiger say) at moments that really don't deserve it. Its still an issue, and it tends to vary day to day, but I can normally consciously work myself through the stress and do the things I need to do.
No suicidal thoughts
This is not a very cheerful one. Psychologists make a distinction between "active" and "passive" suicidal thoughts. An active thought is when you consciously plan or daydream about a way to kill yourself, luckily I've never done that. But I have had "passive" suicidal thoughts. That's when you don't really care if you live or die, and you think that if you just died in your sleep, or a bus hit you, you wouldn't really care. I have had those times, where being alive and suffering seems a bit pointless. [Here's a good podcast on the subject.]
But these days I really really don't want to die, which is definitely an improvement.
Generally less deep depression.
Still have occasional days of complete apathy and lack of energy, but I don't hate myself when I'm in those states and spiral deeper. I think this is linked to training myself out of compulsive negative thinking, when you're depressed you automatically generate negative thoughts (Oh I did this terrible thing...) and think circularly on that. I've learned some good CBT techniques for stopping myself when I realise I'm doing that, and stop it.
How?
The problem is I don't really know why and how these things improved, I never had any big moments of revelation but I've done a bunch of things which seem to have slowly accumulated:
- I'm on medication which has definitely helped, though more at removing the deep dark bits and cutting background anxiety and increasing energy than making me feel actively happy. (For the record I'm taking 75mg of Venlafaxine, an SNRI, twice a day);
- I've also had therapy of different types, general counselling and also Cognitive Behavioral Therapy focused on learning helpful ways of thinking and unlearning bad ones;
- A nice thing about CBT is you can do some of it on your own from books (I recommend Introducing Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT): A Practical Guide and Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy);
- Lifestyle is also a factor, I exercise far more regularly now, it doesn't make me immediately happy afterwards, though some people say they get an endorphin rush, but it seems to impact my general mood and lower anxiety, and I definitely notice when I haven't done it for a while I get stir crazy (I'm doing a mix of weightlifting and low level cardio);
- Other lifestyle factors might include getting out of some of the negative things of student life, e.g. variable hours and big deadlines that stressed me out, but I've also been depressed when I've been working normal 9-5 days so its hard to tell.
