Is this a meltdown?

[Pinkie B]

I just wanted to thank everyone who replied to this thread with their opinions and experience and also to post an update.

Wednesday, when I was dealing with this, I spent almost 10 hours being miserable and useless and then miraculously eating a bite of unflavored, unsalted boiled chicken broke the funk! It was the wierdest most wonderful feeling because it was like the curtain lifted and suddenly I felt ok. I have never had chicken cure me of a funk before, so new experiences!

Since then I've been holding up pretty well. My mood has been good and I've been able to get my brain to cooperate and let me accomplish the things that I need it to. Today I came home from work and took a nap where I had stress dreams of not being able to wake up in time for my last class of the day. That was when I realized that my mystery funk did indeed have a bit of a relation to lack of sleep. I forgot that I am still less than one week after a trans-Pacific flight and so my biological clock is confused as fudge. That's probably why I woke up at a normal time and thought that I had had enough rest, but actually my body was just not able to tell me that I was wrong. Lately I have difficulty knowing if I am sleepy or hungry and have to rely on routine to make sure I'm not running on fumes.

So thank you again for your support. It was nice just being able to hear from all of you.

 

[Progster]

Wednesday, when I was dealing with this, I spent almost 10 hours being miserable and useless and then miraculously eating a bite of unflavored, unsalted boiled chicken broke the funk! It was the wierdest most wonderful feeling because it was like the curtain lifted and suddenly I felt ok. I have never had chicken cure me of a funk before, so new experiences!

I also often find that eating will break me out of a brain fog or low energy phase, perhaps because I was hungry and didn't realise it, or low in blood sugars. Having the rignt amount of sleep certainly helps.

 

[tree]

Sometimes i will suddenly feel overwhemingly sleepy and if I analyze it I can usually link it to something I need to do that I'm putting off.
Then of course there are the days after a stressful event that makes me listless and tired. ie: different kind of tired than the overwhelming sleepiness.

"Have you ever been so stressed-out, so worked up and anxious and afraid, that you … fell asleep?"
When Stress Makes You Fall Asleep
TLDR:
"The brain requires immense amounts of energy, and is thus...a big consumer of glucose. Taking a nap restores that depleted glucose in most cases (with the possible exception of those involving long, sustained periods of stress). And with that restored energy, we are more likely to be able to put our various challenges and stressors into perspective. This is also true of consuming something sweet, like lemonade, or a piece of candy.... So if you...are someone who responds to stress by eating sweets, don’t go thinking you’re so much better than fear nappers — we are one and the same. Fear naps are simply less common."


Why Some People Respond to Stress by Falling Asleep
TLDR:
'“You can be driven to sleep simply by having a lot of emotional memories to process,”... It takes sleep to provide the space needed to sift through the days’ experiences, and make permanent those that matter.'

 

[Pinkie B]

"Have you ever been so stressed-out, so worked up and anxious and afraid, that you … fell asleep?"
When Stress Makes You Fall Asleep
TLDR:
"The brain requires immense amounts of energy, and is thus...a big consumer of glucose. Taking a nap restores that depleted glucose in most cases (with the possible exception of those involving long, sustained periods of stress). And with that restored energy, we are more likely to be able to put our various challenges and stressors into perspective. This is also true of consuming something sweet, like lemonade, or a piece of candy.... So if you...are someone who responds to stress by eating sweets, don’t go thinking you’re so much better than fear nappers — we are one and the same. Fear naps are simply less common."


Why Some People Respond to Stress by Falling Asleep
TLDR:
'“You can be driven to sleep simply by having a lot of emotional memories to process,”... It takes sleep to provide the space needed to sift through the days’ experiences, and make permanent those that matter.'

OMG Thank you for sharing those articles! I have done this since I was a child. My mom even commented on it once that she thought I would take naps in my room to avoid the commotion in the rest of the house (It's weird to write this as it sounds so VERY autistic and I just said I don't feel autistic enough...). Years later I told her she was probably right.

When I started working full time as an adult living on my own and doing all of my own life things I quickly realized that I needed a mid-day nap almost every day just to be able to survive until evening when I could go home. I bought a lightweight camping cot and pillow so that I could unfold it and take naps in my office. I've been stress-napping a lot lately, too. Sometimes it's not even that I feel like I haven't had enough sleep because it'll happen on a day when I wake up feeling pretty fresh, but I have definitely noticed a correlation between using my brain a lot (whether it's for making phone calls, proofreading, or other Hard Things) and needing an afternoon nap.

::Sigh:: wish my brain wasn't so high maintenance. It revs high and then burns out. I wish it could be more normal.