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I have to say I had some I’ve the same issues you guys were having but once I put myself on a strict bedtime it started calming down. I now get 8-10 hour sleep everyday and my brain is so much happier for it.

So I’m sure everyone has suggested melatonin to you. But I discovered Purple drAnk you can sometimes find them at ghetto gas stations in the energy drink section all the way up at the top. I never couple get through a whole one without passing out. It looks like they have made a mini “5hourenergy”-like version as well might be worth checking out. I always bought these three at a time at the start of the work week.

Remember the only way out is through and sleep well

Narcissists never wonder if they're narcissists, for one thing. They don't even have the capacity for honest self reflection, which you clearly do based on this post. There's a little voice in my head of The Critic, which it sounds like you have also. A book called The Anxiety and Phobia Workbook helped me to a very large degree in coping with this Critic in me, among many other things which you also touched on. I first got it at my library, then loved it so much I bought a copy. Please give yourself a break and take a look in this workbook and do some of the things the book suggests. You can change, you are changing. Change causes stress, and fear but you can do this no matter what your head tells you. Breathe deeply and be gentle with yourself.

Haven't opened it yet but I have this one sitting on my desk: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1572245131/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_t1_hPpVBbMP063YH

I recently saw Leonard Cohen published a book called The Flame. It seems to be a compilation of poetry, lyrics, and drawings. I just bought a copy for my library, but it hasn't come in yet. If you don't know, Leonard Cohen is a singer/songwriter.

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https://smile.amazon.com/Flame-Poems-Notebooks-Lyrics-Drawings-ebook/dp/B0796WTGPP/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1539185077&sr=1-1&keywords=leonard+cohen+the+flame

Where did you find it? Is it an actual thing one can purchase?

edit: I found one here

The Anxiety and Phobia Workbook by Dr Edmund Bourne is my favorite. It’s gotten me through many hard times.

https://www.amazon.com/Anxiety-Phobia-Workbook-Edmund-Bourne/dp/1572248912

> I don't know how to think or do differently.

May I suggest starting at these two places to get on the road out?

CoDA meetings and CoDA's "big blue book"

ACA meetings and ACA's "big red book"

And looking into possibly having been conditioned, in-doctrine-ated, instructed, socialized, habituated, and normalized to a whole bunch of shoulds, oughts, must, have-to's, rules, regulations and requirements about how you and life is supposed to be? (See these Books on Cognitive Restructuring.)

Likewise, Stan & Carolyn Block have a really effective psychotherapy for all this one can do in inexpensive workbooks, btw. I pretty much just read my way out this kind of depression.

I used luminette 2 sun lamp glasses in autumn and winter

https://www.amazon.com/Luminette-Bright-Therapy-Glasses-energy/dp/B01553VBD6

They definitely help as I do notice a lower sluggish slightly depressed mood without. They also prevent daytime tiredness.

I have bipolar disorder so there are a number of things which I know that impact my mood and seasonal light changes is 1 of them. Systemic inflammation also plays a role as does vitamin D if you sort out all 3 then your winter depression should disappear.

Mental health services are supposed to help. But sometimes psychiatric professionals cause damage by denting the credibility of individuals, a legacy which can last a lifetime. This is a particular problem for women who have experienced trauma, and get placed into what many see as the dustbin diagnosis of 'Borderline Personality Disorder'. The relatively new notion of 'Epistemic Injustice' may help us understand why.

Epistemic Injustice, a concept developed by philosopher Miranda Fricker, is when wrong is done to someone in their capacity as a knower. A subtype - Testimonial Injustice - refers to how the levels of credibility we give one another can be inflated or deflated owing to prejudices about groups which swirl in the social atmosphere. These prejudices can be overt and pre-emptive, for example excluding patients from meetings where their care is being discussed, thus cementing the skewed power dynamic between professional and patient. Or they may be more subtle. For example, if a patient discloses a piece of their personal history as potentially significant, a clinician may appear empathic but offer no follow-up question, or send out cues like picking up notes to block further conversation. Some of these responses are to do with the ever increasing lack of time in the NHS for meaningful connection. But most are to do with unconscious negative prejudices about particular groups.

No group in mental health is subject to as much prejudice as those given a diagnosis of 'Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder' or 'Borderline Personality Disorder' (BPD). 'BPD' is storied as a syndrome characterised by experiences such as fear of abandonment, extreme mood lability, an unstable sense of self, and self-harm. Women - for it is 75% women - with this diagnosis are labelled as 'manipulative' and 'attention seeking'. This kind of language use, which would be seen as pejorative elsewhere, situates professionals as knowing something about the complicated nature of personality disturbance attributed to such women; it boosts membership of the in-group 'professional'. But these hermeneutical claims just do not fit the evidence. 'BPD' is so dubious a category scientifically that it was almost dumped from the latest version of the biggest international diagnostic bible. It clusters women who dissent, who disobey, who resist together, as if these reactions were signs of pathology rather than spirit against the odds.

Yet 'BPD' as a category remains, serving as a kind of shorthand between professionals that there is something difficult about someone, that this particular patient might produce strong feelings like rage or desire in the clinician, that a distance needs to be kept. Staff who like women with this diagnosis are seen as procuring 'splitting' between team members, and are forced themselves to toe the line of being equally distant to show professional competence. A&E staff, reading this label in notes, take suicide attempts less seriously. GP receptionists act with hostility, the prejudice against women with 'BPD' being that they are time-wasting yet again for attention, undeserving somehow. These reactions imply connecting with women with this diagnosis is what Fricker calls an 'ethically bad affective investment'. These deny women the kind of relationships that could help heal. This discursive disenfranchisement kills.

Testimonial Injustice works subtly but powerfully here. Abuse histories are acknowledged on the surface, but the pathologisation of understandable emotional sequelae, and a treatment focus on controlling emotions in the present, rather than foregrounding the testimony of survivors, reinforces the abuser's attacks on survivors' epistemic subjectivity ('noone will believe you', 'it's your fault for seducing me'). Category inclusion undermines the fundamental right to speak and be heard.

These credibility slurs are experienced viscerally by survivors. Many people report, for example, a sudden shift to kindness, understanding and empathy after a change of diagnosis from 'BPD' to 'Bipolar Affective Disorders'. Self-harm and suicide attempts are suddenly reacted to with compassion and care. By contrast, those who cannot get their diagnosis changed feel branded for life.

We must campaign to get rid of the diagnosis of 'BPD'. But we must not simply create a new label - Chronic PTSD - for the same prejudices will slide on to it. To really change the negative stereotypes, we need a new language, a new social understanding of why and how people end up in deep distress, and how contact with psychiatric services can damage.

Fricker offers a pertinent example. In the 1960s, society did not recognise sexual harassment, so the behaviour of harassers was typically tolerated or even excused. As a result, women were victimised because the wider social context did not label such behaviours as sexual harassment. Indeed such women were seen as troublemakers until they had a chance to meet together, to forge a new language that would come to give a discursive platform for other women to speak from.

We need a similar consciousness-raising, language-generating process in mental health. One where professionals step back from imposing understanding, imposing labelling, and wait to be led by frameworks that develop from survivors.

We need, in doing this, to acknowledge the historical wrongs done to survivors in the mental health system, wrongs that continue today. We need to do this in acknowledgment that professionals have often squashed survivor initiatives into a shape services recognise, and further pathologised those who object. We need to do this, urgently, ethically, to redress the silencing of survivors, a testimonial injustice the psychiatric professions have inadvertantly colluded with.

If you would like to share your experiences or opinion, please tweet using the hashtag #TraumaNotPD