Self harm, shame and recovery

Out of all of the things I do when I am mentally ill, self-harm is the one thing that I feel most ashamed of. I have bipolar disorder and this leads me to do strange things sometimes, like rambling incoherent nonsense, pacing around in circles and curling up in a ball rocking back and forth. However, it is self-harm that I feel completely unable to talk about. It is self-harm that makes me feel like a monster. It is self-harm that I try to hide from the world.

I don’t know exactly why I self-harm. I think there are a number of reasons but I still find it hard to make sense of. When I feel mentally well, self-harm doesn’t even enter my mind. It feels like a completely strange thing to do and I barely remember what the urge feels like. I understand then why people who have never experienced a mental health problem would find the desire to self-harm utterly baffling. I often do too. So here is my attempt to describe why I self-harm.

The main time I self-harm is when I feel depressed. This can be either a typical depression or an agitated depression. I feel so negative about everything that it feels unbearable. I feel morose, hopeless, desperate and completely alone. I can’t bring myself to do anything and I can’t see anything positive in the world and my future. My mind becomes crowded with horrible thoughts and I feel like my brain is racing away from me. I call this kind of overwhelming feeling a ‘brain scratch’. I feel like someone had taken a sharp pin and has started to scratch and prod my brain with it.

It is this horrible buzzing sensation combined with feelings of anguish and depression which then leads to my urge to self-harm. On some level I may be wanting to punish myself for feeling this way. Self-harm could be seen as a way to tell yourself to ‘snap out of it’ and to ‘stop being so pathetic’. More importantly though, I think that self-harm is a way of feeling distracted from your mental pain. You try and ignore your mental turmoil by inflicting physical pain on your body. It is like if you have a chest infection and then you break your leg, you stop noticing the infection as you become focused on this other pain. Self-harm may then feel like a way to control your mental pain.

When I self-harm I suddenly become focused. I have a purpose and a mission and my mind becomes fixated on something other than mental distress. I get some sort of adrenaline rush as I cause the pain and I feel momentarily relieved. I know it is very strange and disturbing, but I look at my scars right afterwards and feel some kind of sense of satisfaction. I feel like I can see my pain in physical rather than mental form and so it becomes more tangible. I get some weird pleasure from the scars until they stop hurting. Then I feel a huge sense of disgust, guilt and shame about what I have done. The scars become horrific to me and I am stuck with them. I then live in fear that someone will see them.

It is a myth that people who self-harm are attention seekers. I try to only self-harm in places that no one will see. Of course this can be tricky when you are self-harming on impulse. I go to great efforts to hide my scars and have been absolutely horrified when someone sees them and asks me what has happened. I always lie but it is hard to know whether they believe me or not. I feel so anxious when it is brought up that I find it hard to think on the spot. I would rather lie through my teeth than have one of my friends know that I self-harmed.

Another myth surrounding self-harm is that people who do it are suicidal. I become very methodical about self-harm and try to cause some pain but in a manageable way. I have absolutely no intention of killing myself when I self-harm and therefore try and be as safe as possible. Most people who self-harm are doing it as a coping mechanism rather than contemplating suicide. Although in some cases people are suicidal, the main aim of self-harm is to inflict controlled injury to manage mental pain.

In reality, self-harm is never a good solution to your problems. One problem is that however safe you try to be when you self-harm, there is no truly safe way to do it. You are purposely causing pain and so are damaging your body in some way. Another problem with self-harm is that you may feel like you need to inflict more pain another time to feel the same relief. You become addicted to the short-term benefits and so need to up the stakes. The main problem with self-harm is that it only provides a short-term fix to feelings of despair. As soon as the physical pain goes, you are left with your feelings of depression again. Not only this but also you are left with physical scars and the shame and guilt surrounding what you have done. This only further feeds in to the depression and may lead to the desire to repeat this damaging behaviour.

There needs to be more awareness around self-harm and the surrounding issues. At the end of the day self-harm is just a symptom of an underlying mental health problem. The more we can understand why people self-harm, the more we can do to help them break the damaging cycle of abuse and focus on their underlying issues.

Intrusive thoughts

How do you explain to someone the intrusive thoughts you have without scaring them? This is a problem I have experienced and I have even been reluctant to tell my psychiatrist about them because they sound scary and dangerous. 

An intrusive thought is an unpleasant thought that goes round and round in your head and you can’t get rid of it. They are involuntary thoughts which become persistant and won’t leave you alone. You end up obsessing over these thoughts and become desperate to rid your mind of them. 

One example of an intrusive thought I had involved suicide. The words ‘I want to kill myself’ were repeating in my mind over and over again. Whatever I did I just couldn’t get rid of this thought. I was depressed at the time but not suicidal so these thoughts were very scary to me. I was worried I may suddenly act upon them.

Another example of one of my intrusive thoughts sounds far more worrisome. For a while when I was in a mixed state, whenever I saw a knife, images of me picking it up and stabbing whoever was close by came in to my mind. These thoughts involved vivid images of these scenarios. I found this incredibly distressing. I had no desire whatsoever to hurt anyone and I worried that the fact that these thoughts were popping in to my mind meant that I may become dangerous.

The truth is, having thoughts like these is fairly common. Everyone has strange and violent thoughts pop in to their mind for a moment. You may imagine for a second pushing someone in front of a train or hitting someone who has been annoying you. Most people are able to ignore these types of worrying thoughts because of how fleeting they are. 

The difference is that when these thoughts become intrusive thoughts, they echo in your mind over and over again and therefore become more distressing. You become unable to dismiss them just as a passing thought like most people do.

You have to remember that just because you have had a thought doesn’t mean that you have any intention of acting on them. Your mind has just become overly focused on these thoughts because it is anxious or distressed in some way. In the case of intrusive thoughts the minds obsession on them leads the sufferer to think that they carry a lot more weight and they may act upon them. However, this is not the case. They are just passing thoughts, which although distressing, do not indicate any violent intention. A truly violent individual would feel positive about their violent thoughts. They would not feel scared and ashamed of them like I do and like many others do.

Anxiety, panic and breathing

So last night was awful. I was just getting off to sleep when I suddenly woke up gasping for air. I went back to sleep again and just as I was dozing off the same thing happened again. I was then wide awake and terrified. I couldn’t get the air in quickly enough and I started to panic. Every time I breathed in it didn’t feel like enough and I felt like I was drowning. My lungs felt empty and I couldn’t stop focusing on my breathing. The more I focused on it, the more laboured it became. 

I tried to go back to sleep but I couldn’t get my breathing back to normal and I was terrified that I was going to die in my sleep from lack of oxygen. I rushed up from bed to go straight to the beloved internet (foundation of all knowledge!) to look up my symptoms. I wanted to see if I was suffering from some kind of illness where you get woken up without being able to breathe. There were lots of possibilities I found which worried me even more. Then I started to shake and my body shuddered away. 

I thought, well this is it. This is how I die. Sat shivering by my computer screen in my pyjamas, desperate for help. I even considered phoning an ambulance. However, this provoked even more anxious feelings. Will they think I am hysterical? Will they think that I am wasting their time? Even more concerning to me was that they would see me in my pyjamas. My priorities were obviously completely wrong… but hey this is how it was! 

My partner told me that it was probably just anxiety and I needed to calm down. I took some diazepam and crushed it up so it would get absorbed faster. Within about ten minutes of lying in bed worrying, the meds kicked in and I fell asleep for (13!) hours. I woke up this morning and my breathing seemed fine.

I am still not sure why I woke up gasping for breath whilst I was asleep both times. There may have been a physical reason which I should probably get checked out. However, I am now pretty sure that my response after this was one of anxiety and panic. It was the worry about not being able to breathe that then meant that I started to have a panic attack and so my breathing got worse. I realise that the shaking must have been all part and parcel of a panic attack too. 

It is strange how something psychological such as anxiety can cause such strong physical symptoms. So real and physical that you think you might die from lack of oxygen. But this is the way that mental illness seems to work. It doesn't just affect your feelings and thoughts. It affects your physical body as well. It affects your energy, your appetite, your sleep patterns, your digestive system and even your breathing.

I would love to know: do other people have panic attacks like this? Please feel free to comment or get in touch at lababup@gmail.com.

Social anxiety and the dreaded awkward silence

Another weekend, another hotbed of social anxiety. For many people, socialising is the best part of their week. For me it leads to all sorts of worries. Who will I end up talking to? What will they say? How will I respond? Will they like me? Will I say something boring or stupid? Aghh I have nothing to say, what will I talk about?!

I asked somewhat jokingly on twitter: ‘Shame that my social anxiety won’t leave me alone. What is the worst that could happen?’. Of course, as someone also pointed out, the worst that could happen is EVERYTHING.  There are just too many possibilities to consider. I could fall over or accidentally injure someone. I could say something ridiculous and be laughed at. Someone might say something I strongly disagree with and we end up arguing. I could be exposed for the fraud that I am. People could judge how I am acting and reject me, or worse, see the real me and not want to ever see me again. 

Too much imagination together with excessive rumination really is disabling. I think that this is the root of all anxiety. If you can think of every single thing that could happen you are bound to come up with the worst possible scenario and then worry about it materialising. Once you have that worst case scenario in your head it is hard to get rid of it and pretend it is not a very real possibility. 

I think that social scenarios are one of the most anxiety provoking situations just because they are so complex and so there are many bad possibilities that could happen. You just never know how the conversation is going to flow and how someone will react to what you are saying. Combine this unpredictability with an almost pathological desire to be accepted and you end up with a social anxiety disorder. You spend your whole time trying to imagine what someone will do and say just to make sure that they will accept and like you. In the end you can’t enjoy socialising anymore because you are too paralysed by fear.

I think that one of the worst things that can happen in a social situation is the dreaded awkward silence. I know this sounds daft, because silence can’t exactly kill you. However, the level of discomfort that I feel with this is intense. It may be because I take it as a sign that I am boring and they don’t want to talk to me anymore. Or that maybe they don’t feel like they have anything in common with me.  I used to try and fill the silence with incessant chatter but with hindsight this probably annoyed people more. However, the last couple of years, since I became really ill and withdrew from social contact for a while, I lost the ability to fill the silence with gibberish. I ran out of stuff to say and lost all my confidence. Unfortunately this means that the dreaded awkward silence has become more dreaded than ever. I take it as confirmation that I have nothing interesting to say.

In addition if you suffer from some sort of breakdown like I did, your whole world becomes focused on your mental illness and so you end up not really thinking about much else. When you socialise you talk to people about what you have been up to. As all I have been up to usually revolves around my mental health and mental health is a taboo subject, this further paralyses my ability to talk and fill up those silences. 

I know that awkward silences shouldn’t be that big of a deal but I am filled with fear when I think of them. This fear prevents me going out and being like a ‘normal’ person. As socialising is something we are expected to do for prolonged periods every day, having a social anxiety disorder is really disabling. It means that the simplest tasks which most people find easy become impossible. And it doesn’t help is someone asks: what is the worst thing that can happen? After all, I can think of EVERYTHING.

The Daily Mail, Benefits Street and the ignorance surrounding mental illness

The Daily Mail has a habit of upsetting me on all sorts of topics. What they have recently written however affects me personally. They have written an article with the following headline: ‘‘The only person who should be depressed is the taxpayer’: How can Benefits Street’s White Dee appear repeatedly on TV but is allegedly TOO ILL to work?’’ (their emphasis not mine).

For anyone who doesn’t know, White Dee appeared on the channel 4 programme ‘Benefits Street’ which documents the life of people living on benefits on James Turner Street. White Dee says that she is unable to work due to suffering from depression and possibly bipolar. Since appearing on the show she has made several TV appearances to talk about the issues raised by the programme. The other day, a Telegraph journalist suggested on the discussion show that White Dee appears ‘too happy’ to be depressed. Now this Daily Mail article implies that White Dee cannot possibly be depressed as she has appeared on TV.

I guess the first point to make is how inflammatory the heading is. It sets ‘the taxpayer’ apart from and against those with disabilities. It implies that ‘the taxpayer’ should feel outraged by someone who says they are depressed claiming benefits. It implies that it is quite reasonable to suppose that someone who says they are depressed is actually lying just to claim benefits.

Now I wrote a blog post the other day talking about the guilt and shame that I experience surrounding my mental illness and my inability to work. From my experience, almost everyone I have come across with mental health problems wants to work but can’t. They are not trying to get something for nothing. They have a debilitating illness which they often feel that they should have control over. However mental illness is not like that. It can affect anyone and from out of nowhere. It is a medical condition and deserves to be recognised as such.

The number of people claiming benefits fraudulently is estimated to be less than 1%. So yes, there will be the occasional case where someone is lying to get benefits but this is overwhelmingly not the case. Most people claiming sickness benefits are not making a lifestyle choice but are struggling with a medical condition which prevents them working.

So back to the case of White Dee. She is just one individual with depression who I have never met before so I cannot say with absolute certainty that she is telling the truth. What I can say is that, like most people who say they are depressed, she is unlikely to be making it up. No one wants to get tarnished with the mental illness brush. There is still a huge stigma surrounding mental illness.

What I can also say is that people with depression may be perfectly capable of acting normally on certain days. They may be perfectly capable of appearing on a TV show on days that they are well. People with mental health problems are used to having to put on a front to the outside world to be accepted. They may therefore appear ‘normal’ on TV despite having mental health difficulties.

The important point to make is that White Dee may be capable of making the odd appearance on a TV show without being capable of holding down a job. She may be able to cope with this kind of pressure but not the pressure of employment. Remember that full time employment requires one to be able to focus on a task 37 odd hours a week. It requires good social skills, high concentration and most importantly consistency. You have to be able to work set times. A job does not allow for you to have large numbers of days off sick. And that is what having a mental health condition often entails. You may have some good days but also many bad days where you can’t function. You would simply would lose your job if you kept having to take sick days.

It is sad that some people think that people with mental health conditions cannot possibly be ill because of how they appear to act on the outside. Many people with mental health conditions struggle internally but are able to put on a brave face. It is an unfortunate fact that people too readily judge people for not being able to work without fully knowing their circumstances and the obstacles which they face. 

Is bipolar integral to my personality?

One of the hardest questions about bipolar is the following: Is bipolar an integral part of who I am? Would I be the same person as I am today if I hadn’t had bipolar? If I took away the bipolar would I suddenly change? I am sure lots of people have strong opinions on these kinds of questions. So let me look at what I think are some of the arguments surrounding the idea that bipolar is an integral part of personality.

I guess one of the main reasons that people think bipolar is an integral part of who they are is that they can’t imagine who they would be if they didn’t have bipolar. Bipolar has hugely affected their lives. If your experiences are constantly seen through the bipolar lens of extreme mood, it is hard to imagine what your experiences would have been like without bipolar. So for example, because I have seen myself go through extreme highs and lows, I view myself as a very changeable, emotional, colourful and vulnerable person. If someone asked me to describe myself, these are some of the traits I would assign myself. And they are bipolar traits. If my personality has bipolar traits, then how can I say what I would be like without them? If I no longer had bipolar, would these traits suddenly disappear and make me in to a different person?

In addition, bipolar doesn’t just affect mood. It affects your ability to work, your ability to socialise and your relationships. It is because bipolar affects your ability to function in these ways that it can be hard to imagine how things could have been different. For example, it is hard for me to imagine my relationship with my parents without me having bipolar. If I didn’t have bipolar I wouldn’t be so dependent upon them and perhaps we would have a very different kind of bond. They would view me in a different way and perhaps they would view my personality differently.

As bipolar is a mental illness, it is more difficult to see it as a physical illness akin to a broken leg, a failing liver or a weak heart. The brain is a physical thing but it is a different kind of organ to these others: it is responsible for your emotions, moods and personality. Therefore, if you have an illness that affects your brain it becomes harder to separate out the illness from your personality. Especially when bipolar, in particular, affects the way you personally respond in everyday situations.

These are some of the arguments made to support the idea that bipolar forms an integral part of your personality. I think that it is quite easy to defend the view that having bipolar can change, to some degree, who you are. I have become much more anxious, sensitive, stressed and moody (obviously!) since having bipolar. I am also more empathetic to other people and what they are going through, as I know what extreme distress feels like. When I am manic I also become highly focused and driven and so am able to achieve a lot more in short bursts. I definitely think that having bipolar has affected who I am today.

However, this does not mean that I think that I would suddenly change dramatically if I was ‘cured’ of my bipolar. I recognise that I have a basic personality which is drastically different to other people with bipolar. We may share the same traits of non-reactive moodiness, anxiety, vulnerability and (arguably) creativity but there are many other traits which we may not share. I have basic personality traits such as being disorganised, shy, open, competitive, introverted, trusting, non-confrontational, gullible and dippy. These traits are separate from my bipolar. They are there when I am both sick and well and would still be there if I was ‘cured’ of bipolar. I didn’t always have bipolar. It manifested in my late teen years and so I remember what it was like not to be sick. I remember having a personality pre-bipolar, not so unlike the one I have today.

I think that bipolar does change who I am to a degree but I do not think that it completely defines my personality. It affects my thoughts every day, the way I feel about the world and myself. It affects my relationships and my energy levels. It affects my confidence and the way I relate to others. However, I am more than just someone with bipolar. I have a whole host of attributes (and probably an equal number of vices!). It may have changed who I am but I’m still basically me. I am more than just a diagnosis.

Even though bipolar has affected who I am today, I hope it doesn’t continue to affect me in the future. I still hope to be ‘cured’ of bipolar if that is possible.I am aware that not everyone with bipolar feels the same. Bipolar affects people differently and people will have different perceptions of how bipolar affects their personality and their quality of life.

Depression and Benefits Street

I watched the first ten minutes of Channel 4's Benefit Street debate before I turned off in disgust. In hindsight I probably should have just boycotted the whole thing. After all, by watching it I am only adding to the viewing figures for channel 4. Oh well, lesson learnt.

Anyway, I heard one of the panellists (I think she was a writer for The Telegraph) say that White Dee (a well known personality on the programme Benefits Street who suffers from depression) didn't look like she was depressed. Apparently because she was seen to joke and smile sometimes on the documentary she couldn't possibly suffer from depression. Because depressed people must at all times look miserable. They can't possibly have a moment in the day where they smile. They can't possibly put on a mask in front of people, a brave face to the outside world.

It made me really angry because I too am capable of smiling and joking with friends even when inside I am in turmoil. Yes there are times when I can't bring myself to smile when something happens which should make me happy. But I am certainly capable at times of faking it. It take a huge amount of effort for sure but it is worth it so I can socialise as normal and not be judged.

There is still a huge stigma around mental health and people think that you must be making it up if you appear 'normal'. However, people are excellent actors and you should never take them completely at face value. People hide how they feel all the time for a number of reasons. In this case, probably because they want to avoid these kinds of cruel assumptions about the illness.

Mental health, unemployment and guilt

So I am sitting around on a Monday afternoon at my parent’s house. Lucky me, I am not having to work like everyone else. Instead I am reading, watching tv and blogging. Sounds good to most people I am sure.

The problem is that this isn’t what I want to do at all. More than anything else I want to be able to say that I have a job or am studying or something else that sounds as worthwhile. I know I shouldn’t be so focused on this. It is just that I feel so worthless and pathetic. I feel like other people will view me in this way too when they find out I am not in work.

Technically I am a PhD student. I am enrolled at my university but I have been off sick since April. This was when I had my second severe manic/mixed episode and I had no option but to go off sick. It took about 4 months for me to start coming down from this episode but them there was the inevitable crash down to depression. Then about a month ago I had a manic episode that lasted about two weeks and then I crashed back in to the depression I am now in. So basically I am rapid cycling from one to the other.

I am unable to study or work when I am depressed or manic. When I am manic, I am pacing around in circles, speaking gibberish, laughing wildly and become paranoid and strange. There is no way I could return to university or work whilst I am like this. When I am depressed, I have no motivation, no energy, I can’t focus or concentrate and I feel like life is a massive burden. If I had to go to work or study I think I would probably just cry and collapse in a corner somewhere, rocking back and forth. I wouldn’t last a day.

Although I have just described in brief why I cannot work when my mental health is like this, I still feel very strong feelings of guilt and shame surrounding this. Everyone else is able to work. Why can’t I just get myself together? Why can’t I just be like everyone else? Am I lazy? In addition, I feel like I have no purpose in life and am a drain on society. This feeds back in to feelings of guilt and worthlessness. I know logically that you don’t have to have a job to have a meaningful life or to be a valued person. However I can’t help but feel this way.

My feelings of guilt are compounded by the weight of society’s expectations. One of the first things people ask you when they meet you is ‘what do you do for a living?’ or if they know you, ‘how is work?’. You feel awful when you have to say that you don’t work. What will they be thinking of you? What will we talk about now? Are they judging me?

Money obviously becomes an issue too. I have received a scholarship to study my PhD but whilst I am off sick, I don’t receive anything. I am also too scared to apply for any kind of sickness benefits because I don’t want to go to an assessment with someone from the DWP who knows nothing about me or mental illness in general. It is too much pressure and I feel like I won’t be able to talk to this stranger about something so personal. I am lucky enough to have some financial support from my family, but things are still tight.

I think that, rightly or wrongly, a large part of your identity becomes tied in to the job you do. It is where you achieve things, make friends and conduct a lot of your social life. If you don’t work due to mental illness, you lose all of this together with a lot of feelings of confidence which you gain from work or study. In addition you don’t have any kind of routine to keep you steady and you feel like you don’t have a purpose.

I desperately want to be accepted by society and feel valued. I worry that the only way to do this is work. However, when I think about it more I know that it is the illness, not a lack of will, which prevents me from work. I just hope that other people understand this and try to be sympathetic. If I could I would. The reality of not working is not as great as people think. It is an isolating and lonely existence.

How are things going with your mental health?

Yesterday I saw some friends, which I was really nervous about because of my social anxiety. It all went well in the end in a lot of ways (I managed to talk to people, I didn’t cry, I was relatively calm, I seemed relatively ‘normal’). However, I also spent quite a lot of time after they left crying because I thought it hadn’t gone well enough and people hadn’t enjoyed my company. This is fairly typical. Oh well, I digress.

Anyway, what was most notable about the evening was that one of my friends asked me after my mental health. They didn’t try and pretend that nothing was wrong with me and just talk about other things. They didn’t just ask me ‘how are you?’ which is too easy to fob off with a ‘I’m fine thanks’. They asked me directly ‘how are things going with your mental health?’.

It was a bit of a shock actually. No one outside of close family has ever really asked me directly about my illness in this way. They have tended to be too embarrassed or unsure of what to say without offending me. I actually found it really refreshing for someone to be frank with me like this. I felt cared for and like my illness was being thought of as a real thing; something akin to a physical illness. If you break a leg, get diagnosed with cancer or have a heart condition, people wouldn’t hesitate asking you about it. With a mental health condition things are unfortunately different.

The problem I have is that my mental illness affects my life all day every day. It affects my mood, my energy, my sleep, my appetite and my sense of self. Not being able to talk about it is like not being able to talk about a chronic physical illness which has been highly disruptive to your life. In fact in some ways it can be worse with a mental illness because of how your whole identity becomes tied up to your illness. You feel like it has become part of who you are.

Not being able to talk about your mental illness when it is on your mind constantly is very alienating. You feel like a fraud sitting there and catching up with someone without acknowledging this huge part of your life. Even if they know about it, it is awkward to bring it up. You don’t want to bring someone’s mood down when you are supposed to be having fun.

I am really grateful to this person asking me how things were going with my mental health. I just hope that by talking about these things, the stigma around the illness will be eroded and it will no longer seem abnormal to ask someone: how is your mental health?

Coping at the weekends

So today I am looking at used cars to buy. This seems like a perfectly normal thing to be doing in your spare time on the weekend. However, when you have a mental health problem, small tasks like these seem insurmountable.

First off, concentrating and focusing on any task is pretty hard when your brain is malfunctioning. If you are depressed you can’t be bothered to get on with organising and achieving things. It is especially difficult when you are on medication which makes you really sedated and tired. 

The next problem is related to anxiety rather than depression. There are a whole host of things to worry about. What if I make the wrong decision and regret the car I buy? What if I can’t get a good price? How will I bargain with the salesperson? Will they judge me? How will I cope with talking to someone when I feel so scared? Will I have a panic attack? The list is endless. So while other people are enjoying their weekends I am lost in panic and despair over the most mundane and basic of tasks. 

The main big hurdle to overcome on the weekend is seeing friends. I don’t see anyone in the week except my family as I am ill off university. This means that I am rapidly becoming desocialised. I often don’t see my friends as I am too ill but this has only made me more and more fearful of social situations. I saw two friends last night and got a bit drunk in an attempt to relax a bit. I am taking the big step of having a few people round tonight and I am really nervous. Will I have anything to say? Will people enjoy themselves? Will I say something stupid?

I also think weekends can be difficult for people with mental health problems due to the change in routine. I don't know about anyone else, but I panic when my routine changes. Especially when my sleep goes out of sync. On the weekends I go to bed later and wake up later so everything gets a bit messed up and I end up feeling really grumpy.
 

The weekend should be a time for people to relax and do fun things but when you have problems with anxiety and depression, the weekend can be just as difficult to cope with as the week. My main advice for coping would be to try and plan the weekend before hand, don't set yourself too many big tasks to do and if you socialise, try to keep the gatherings small and in a relaxed setting.