It's Night Time Again,

I'm slightly worried that this might start to sound like a story. It isn't a story. 

It's night time again and this is the hardest part of the day for me. I have anxiety and it has been playing up for the last few weeks, possibly a bit longer. Most times I cope pretty well with it, but right now is not most times. Unfortunately I always struggle more at night time than any other time. 

Now, there are a few reasons why it sucks that I'm worse at night. For one thing, it is really hard to get to sleep and not sleeping actually makes things worse. Another is that most of my friends, my support network, are asleep and they need their sleep. Finally, night time makes it impossible to be productive. During the day you can get in touch with your GP to try and out appointments or you can do other things that are going to help to either give you a bit of respite in the moment, or they are going to be contributing to the overall end goal of making you as resillient and well as you can be again. At night, most of that is not possible. 

Personally, I feel like anxiety eats away at my personality. Without it, or when it's back in the tiny box under the stairs in the corner of my mind, I am a happy, extroverted, extraverted, spontaneous and very silly person. I laugh a lot, at everything, sometimes at nothing. I launch myself headlong into things and enjoy the few moments of being unsure. With anxiety, I become introverted, I become self-conscious, I second guess myself and chastise myself for everything silly that I have said, every moment that I think I could have embarrassed myself. I overthink everything, and can't just relax. 

It's something I have learnt to live with, it's something that I manage most of the time, but occasionally I struggle. It's really difficult, partly because it makes me feel so introverted and so silly, to try and talk about it, but I do because I know that there is no other pathway around it. Sometimes you just need to talk about it.