Hi everybody,

I am trying to change my sleep patterns and so far am failing. I don't have insomnia; I just want to keep more normal hours. As it stands, I've been staying up all night and going to bed about 6am and getting up around 2 or 3 in the afternoon.

Hoping to begin to change this, I never went to bed Friday morning in the hopes that it would make me sleepy enough to go to bed Friday night around 2am. But it didn't work. I didn't get to bed until 5am.

(I'm supposed to be at my sister's right now, and I'm not there. I have gotten distracted here at PC.)

I have moved beyond the anxious state I was in most all of yesterday. It lasted all day, but gradually got better. I went to the Anxiety chat group last night, which helped. We talked a lot about managing panic attacks. I've only had one, real panic attack and it was decades years ago.

But I've experienced severe panic, long term. Not long ago, I was in a state of severe panic continually for about a year and a half when I was living in a residential community for people with MI. The conditions I felt during that time exactly match those of a panic attack, except for the short duration. It was awful. I slept little the entire time I was there because the panic kept me awake. I don't know why I was in that state that whole time; I have never been able to figure it out. It only stopped after I moved out of the community and in with my family.

That doesn't mean that living with my folks is a good thing. Here, I'm not in a state of continual panic. But I am waaaaaaaaay more depressed.

Thanks for listening,

--Ceara1010