Does Anyone Else Feel Particularly Bad At Night?

[sugarlips]

I have ptsd undiagnosed and lately I've been emotionally crashing around 7 or 8 and the mood swing stays low until i go to sleep and wake up in the morning. sometimes i have more mood swings then this but this is what happens every single day.
I talked to my "psychologist" about if I happen to be experiencing bipolar symptoms and she said that I would need to see an episode of mania which is a mood swing lasting a week. (like happy one week sad next etc)

 

[sun seeker]

So when you crash, do you mean you feel depressed?

For me, it's anxiety that gets significantly worse at night. It happens when the sun gets to a certain angle. This seems to be a common theme for a lot of us. I can see how it could happen with depression too, though I haven't heard about this as a daily night-time occurrence specifically.

 

[Queen Boudica]

I get more depressed at night and end up crying @sugarlips. Don't think that is bipolar, it is just feeling alone, exhausted after a long day, knowing you have to do it all alone, and for me being in a house that I was abused in and not being able to move on. Don't think that is bipolar, getting down at that time consistently. Have you thought of trying to find something different to do at that time? Something nice for yourself. Although, tends not to work for me then, I just end up crying again.

 

[Seasounds]

More ideas:

Daily Interactions:
And another take from my experience, is that I would crash after a certain number of, or a certain intensity of, interactions in the day. Without knowing it, I was always taking blame for situations, felt powerless, had tons of underlying sadness.

Denial:
In my undiagnosed days of PTSD, I was intellectually in denial of how emotionally sensitive, and how frequently I was triggerred (I was frozen in fear); so sometimes, I had no clue why I was crashing, and other times I did.

Diet:
I investigated how diet effected my moods. Eliminating one food item, one week at a time, I was able to see how caffeine, wheat, dairy, corn, sugars, and soy, effected my moods and energy.

REM sleep deprivation:
And it is common to need to crash if you aren't getting 4-7 hours of sleep, at once. You may even seem to be sleeping for 5 hours at a time, but it is not deep sleep. A sleep study, or medical or naturopathic doctor may have some good suggestions to you.

Nutrition:
My energy improved with a low therapeutic level multivitamin (e.g. B vitamins 10-50 mg, zinc 10-50mg, etc.)

Meditation:
Mindfulness/Vipassana meditation helped me find rest/restoration without having to sleep. It was, and still is, a helpful thing to do in the morning to be in my body, and a it is a helpful thing to do, to wind down in the evening; even if you start with 2 minutes and gradually build up to 20-30 minutes.

Anxiety:
My un-recognized anxiety, was also an energy drain.

I hope you feel better.:)

 

[Wastinglight]

I don't have PTSD, I have Generalised Anxiety Disorder, and it's not uncommon for my anxiety to amp up at night during times when I'm struggling or if I'm particularly worried about something. I also seem to suffer from more distorted thinking are night - irrational thoughts that make me believe that the worst case scenario is actually happening - it makes me really panicky sometimes. When I wake up the next morning, I can look at the situation more clearly and realise the problem isn't half as bad as I had perceived, the night before.

 

[Disgruntledgrunt1577]

Night time is always the worst time.
I always prefer to have my space and solitude.
But there's no denying that when the sun slips down out of the sky, you're taking a gamble.
Is tonight gonna be one of the nights I pull out the pictures?
Revisiting all the old wounds?
Or will I try to sleep, tossing and turning, waking up in sweat, thinking I'm still over there.
So in short, yeah, I do feel worse at night.

 

[Gadgie]

The night time is the worst for me as well, that's when I feel lonely, after I've shut the curtains and put the the lights on, that's when it hits me.

 

[Friday]

I generally feel better at night... If I got up in the daytime. It often takes 10-15 hours to convince myself to shoulder on, it ain't that bad. That's one variant. There are others, when I'm vibrant early & exhausted later, is an example. In general I look for patterns & attempt to use them in my favor, or to alter them in different ways.

 

[Justmehere]

Did any trauma happen around that time for you? My trauma therapist said that sometimes people can have more symptoms at a particular time of day because that's when trauma happened, and the body learned to associate the two.

This is a little different, but kind of the same: I find Fridays to be really hard. It's partly because that the week maxed me out, and my stress cup is full, and partly because the worst trauma used to happen on Fridays.

It could be that by that time of the day, your stress cup is full and there's nothing left so you crash.

Difficulty at night may also be linked to the lack of sunlight, and maybe the same things that would help people with Seasonal Affective Disorder might help.

 

[Ocean5]

PTSD & generalized anxiety disorder - I start crashing about 5. By 7-9 I don’t want to be around anyone. I self-medicate with alcohol for years (not something I recommend.)

Psychiatrist put me on anxiety medicine just for afternoon/night (also something I don’t recommend daily – unless you really need it. Realize the withdrawals & what it will do to you brain.)

Although one medicine did help me to break the cycle of panic attacks/emotional flashbacks (But it wasn’t for daily use. Just to stop panic attack/emotional flashback as it started. )

I think we put so much energy during the day to stay stable – energy run out as day processes. Harder to deal....

 

[Ocean5]

Did any trauma happen around that time for you? My trauma therapist said that sometimes people can have more symptoms at a particular time of day because that's when trauma happened, and the body learned to associate the two.

My old therapist asked same thing when she realized how bad, and regular, my panic attacks or emotional flashbacks got certain times of day, and year.

 

[:-)]

No, that doesn't sound like bipolar. I have almost always had my worst episodes in the evening. Rarely it switches to morning anxiety, but that's by far the exception. Bipolar is not a diagnosis you want unless you actually are bipolar and have clear bipolar symptoms that fit squarely within the DSM. Too many people are misdiagnosed as bipolar when they aren't. Typical bipolar episodes have mania or hypo-mania episodes that last weeks or months on end. There is something called rapid-cycling bipolar disorder with more frequent ups and downs, but IMHO its over-diagnosed when there's really something else going on.