Thanks to all of you for responding. I think I am doing better than when I posted this thread. I've done my light therapy a couple of times, and I do try to get outside. I've just been swamped with school, work, etc., as usual. I'm still scared about practicum, and now taking a class on supervision, which makes it hard to set my fears aside for later.

The chickens are caught, all but one of them, and one won't go too far without the flock. We'll get a chicken coop built, but for now they are locked up on the chicken house. Soon they would be too big to go through the fence anyway. Come on over and play with them! They are still cute, although now they just look like miniature chickens, not so much like baby chicks anymore. I guess you could say they are teenager chickens. I carried one of them home on my bicycle, and that was fun. The chicken wasn't sure she wanted a bicycle ride, but she handled it well.

I'm afraid of winter because my mood tends to go down the tube when the days get shorter. I shouldn't blame it on the weather, but I don't even notice the weather until I realize I've been off all day, and then notice that it's dark and cloudy outside. Actually, that can happen year-round, but it gets worse and is more frequent in Fall and Winter. My worst depressive episodes were in the Winter. One of them involved six weeks of continuous heavy fog that didn't break at all, and I felt like I was suffocating, and I thought about nothing else but wanting to die. I'm also afraid of being cold. I hate being cold.

I saw T yesterday (Saturday), and even though I was 20 minutes late thanks to my car and not checking the oil until the last minute (T is 2 1/2 hour away), it was a good session. I know that I am extremely hard on myself, and I beat myself up over little things. I'm starting to be able to see that it's me doing that. I tend to think that I'm supposed to be hard enough, and I'm expected to punish myself for not being good enough, and never accept any credit for anything good that I might happen to do. I have thought that T wanted me to push myself harder and that she thought nothing I did was good enough. But I think it's not coming from her at all, but from me all along. It feels dangerous to make this realization though. It doesn't feel okay to slack off or be nice to myself.