Hi everyone, I'm just checking in with another status update for WOYWW because I said I would blog once a month and #670 seems as good an excuse as any. So here goes.
Not much has changed since my last update, actually. I'm still struggling with anxiety induced insomnia and I'm pretty much left to my own devices to deal with it. The NHS is about as useful these days as a chocolate teapot. I resorted to referring myself to mental health services but I haven't heard anything back for several weeks and now I don't even expect to. I took matters into my own hands. Having done some research myself, at least I know what's going on. It's not sorcery, it's just how our minds work. I think my mother's sudden death set off a chain reaction in me, where my whole belief system turned upside down and resulted in me developing a severe case of health anxiety - not just for myself, but everybody else around me. This put me in a constant fight or flight mode, always expecting something bad to happen and I'm on edge all the time with my nerves highly sensitised. This is what stops me from sleeping. I'm telling my brain that I'm in danger so it doesn't allow me to relax my body and sleep - as soon as I drop off, my brain jolts me back to an alert state. If I get 4/5 hours sleep out of sheer exhaustion, I call that a good night - sometimes I only get 2/3 hours and there were nights I couldn't sleep at all. It's a wonder I can still hold down my job and family responsibilities. I feel like I'm really drawing on my last reserves. But you know what, if I did this to myself, I can undo it. So I'm working on that at the moment, basically giving myself CBT with the help of YouTube! Silver lining, I've lost a ton of weight, so yay me!
So that's my health update, now onto my work desk. Not a whole lot going on in the past few weeks by my usual standards. I still managed to keep up with my 100-day project adding a layer a day to make 10 pages in 100 days, hence my hashtag 10X10layers. Admittedly, sometimes I do all 10 layers in one go, but no one cares. I know it's a bit of an under-commitment, but I didn't want to be a slave to this project and this gives me an opportunity to do other things as well.
So here are the finished pages 2-5 in my 100-day journal:
I've also completed some new pages in my altered book (the last photo should qualify as a snap shot of my desk as well!):
So there you have it - a quick update!
Hope you can all sleep better than I do!
I'll be around soon! xx
