Well, given that four horses were obviously not enough to deal with in my last post, I’ve now been approached by a very anxious horse too. My anxiety has flared up pretty terribly, and it’s riding alongside its friend – the rider of the perimenopause hormone horse. Right now, I’m all horses and definitely no stable. And there was no greater indicator of that than what happened last night and today.
The Comfortable Bed Turned Into Cortisol Hell
Last night I was so tired – but wired. I spent hours lying on the sofa, writing away on some longer blog posts, wrapped in a blanket with my oversized hoodie hood up – I was doing my best impression of what the BBC think hackers look like. Eventually, exhaustion won and I decided to go to bed early (well, early for me – 2 a.m.).
I took my meds, ate my nightly frozen quark with raspberry dessert, and curled up in bed watching “Driving in Tokyo in the Rain” videos. The sedation from the Quetiapine started to wash over me – that still, cold, comfortable quietness – and I began drifting off.
Then my brain decided to interrupt.
“Hey, um, didn’t your psychiatrist say she’d make you an appointment in two months? Hasn’t it been two months? WHAT IF THEY SENT A LETTER AND YOU DIDN’T GET IT AND MISSED IT AGAIN?”
And just like that, sleepy cold comfortability: ABORTED. RED ALERT. INITIATE FAST HEART RATE. DEPLOY IMMEDIATE SENSE OF DREAD.
Not even Quetiapine could stop it. I was anxious while sedated – which is always a deeply destabilising experience. But what could I possibly do about it at 3 a.m.?
I tried to logic my way out of it:
“Let’s just get some sleep, we can panic tomorrow.”
“I won’t be able to do anything if I’m too tired.”
“Let’s watch different videos to distract ourselves.”
None of it worked.
They always say if you can’t sleep, get up and walk around – but Quetiapine has other plans. My legs don’t work properly, my balance vanishes, and it feels like walking on a boat. I end up hugging the walls for dear life, doing my best impression of a dog walking on laminate flooring.
For three long hours, it was just me, my favourite YouTubers, my ceiling, and the ridiculous number of Jellycats in my bed – until my brain finally started to surrender to exhaustion.
Except… I still didn’t sleep.
Just as I was finally starting to nod off again around 5:30 a.m., another visitor arrived – not a new horse, but one of the old ones from the apocalypse: The Rider of the Horse With Cluster Headaches. Out of nowhere, that familiar, blinding pain tore through behind my eye, the kind that makes you want to claw your own skull open.
At that point, sleep wasn’t just impossible – it was laughable. My body had officially decided that rest was not on the itinerary. At one point, I heard my son moving around, getting ready to start his day, but my brain briefly wondered if someone had broken in – or if he was a ghost – because my Quetiapine-addled mind couldn’t process the fact that a whole new day had started. After all, I was still living in the night before.
When I eventually realised – after a really embarrassing amount of time – that it was my son and not a ghost, I considered getting up to see him. Naturally, that was the exact moment I finally fell asleep.
The Internal Alarm Clock That Won’t SHUT UP
You’re probably expecting that I woke up exhausted. NO. I WISH. Instead, I was woken by my internal alarm clock – the one that NEVER SHUTS UP. I woke up in the exact same state of mind I’d been in during my late-night anxiety attack. Heart racing. YOU’VE ARRIVED AT PANIC STATION. WOAH**.
It was 11 a.m. I was exhausted, but too anxious to even feel exhausted. I got up and made coffee – which, ironically, helps my anxiety instead of increasing it. The first cup didn’t work, so I made another. That didn’t work either. So I drank my electrolyte drink with taurine and decided: I’m going to phone them. Today is going to be hell otherwise. I need to know why I haven’t heard from them.
Then the anxiety turned hateful – reminding me what a rubbish human being I am for not thinking about this until last night, when it’s one of the only things I need to do. It told me I’m useless for missing the last appointment. Typical self-hating crap that only drives the anxiety higher.
This anxiety I’ve had since perimenopause… it’s different. I haven’t been able to logic my way out of it. I often wake up with it, and it doesn’t respond to any coping mechanisms. While drinking coffee, I tried deep breathing. I hugged my Jellycats. I doodled mindlessly in my notebook. I told myself I was safe.
But telling myself I’m safe never works – because I never believe it. I completely believe I’m in danger, so I can’t sell that lie to my body. My brain catastrophises everything. Something as small as missing an appointment (because none was sent!) snowballs in my mind into losing everything. It doesn’t even make sense. But I believe it.
With my OCD and regular anxiety, at least there are triggers I can usually see coming. If going outside feels overwhelming, I can say “not today” and try again tomorrow. Wearing a mask, even five years after COVID, still helps me get out the door. Even with my food anxiety – the one that has nothing to do with my ED – there’s some level of choice and avoidance.
This new anxiety isn’t like that. There’s no “not today” option. It’s there when I wake up and stays until my body gives up and crashes. It doesn’t care what I do, what I avoid, or how many coping tools I throw at it. It’s not about triggers anymore – it’s just there.
Anyway…. after my electrolytes, I built up the courage to call my psychiatrist. Maybe, I thought, I could convince my brain I was safe with actual facts.
Collecting Psychiatrists Like Pokémon
I phoned the mental health clinic with my Jellycat bear Biscoff for comfort and company – my son was at uni – and nervously asked if the secretary could check whether there was an appointment booked for me.
“No,” she said. “It’s because your psychiatrist left. We’re waiting for a new one.”
I was so relieved that the anxiety about the missing appointment letter was over that I responded, “Oh, that’s fine – that’s great. I was really worried about it.” She seemed confused by my happy reaction to the news that yet another psychiatrist had left. Honestly, it didn’t even register until I hung up the phone.
The new psychiatrist will be the third I’ve had this year. I’ve been collecting psychiatrists like Pokémon. Even in the year I’ve had my blog, I’ve written multiple posts about different psychiatrists leaving. I’ve had probably more than five in just a few years. The lack of stability and continuity of care is astounding. Every time there’s a new one, I have to explain the entire 41 years of my life all over again. Eventually, I get so fed up I just give the Cliff Notes version – I can’t keep doing this every few months.
My last psychiatrist was a Fire-type Pokémon, and now I’m yearning for a Grass-type. Shame they’re region-locked – I can’t go somewhere else because care is postcode-based, and unfortunately, I don’t live in the Kanto region where I could catch a Jigglypuff psychiatrist.
Next time I go, since I gotta catch ’em all, I’m bringing an EMF monitor with me – just to check the building isn’t sitting on an ancient burial ground causing the disappearance of several psychiatrists. It would probably only pick up a high reading from the ghost of Freud, though, since they all quoted him so much I half expected him to appear like Beetlejuice. The medicine is about as modern as the décor in that building.
Still, it’s mostly a relief. I’ve solved the anxiety of the missing appointment. For now. Until my brain finds something else – or crashes.
The Lush Bath of Relief
I struggle with Lush and baths when I have cluster headaches – the strong smells and the lava-hot temperature can be too much. But when I went to Cardiff with my son, I bought some Christmas bath bombs – Shoot for the Stars and Yog Nog – and they’re nowhere near as strong as the regular ones I usually buy. So I decided to risk it. I desperately needed to chill out.
Shoot for the Stars used to look like a Van Gogh Starry Night painting in the bath, but it seems they’ve changed it – now it just fizzed around. A little disappointing, but it smelled lovely and wasn’t too strong, so I sank into it, wishing I could sink into space and drift away from the anxious planet of abandoning psychiatrists. I brought my MacBook into the bathroom, put on YouTube autoplay, and just lay there for a long while.
When I got out of the bath, I crashed. I suddenly felt completely exhausted – too drained even to dry my hair. I’ve been curled up on the sofa ever since, after surviving the entire drama that was started by my own brain.
My Son Comes Home
Still sprawled out on the sofa, I heard the lovely tune of my son’s key in the lock – he was home from uni. While I was trying to tell him about my psychiatrist, I was distracted by his voice, which has deepened seemingly overnight. He’s on T, and his voice is changing. It reminds me of my dad with its new, commanding tone.
It flips between his new voice and his old one, and I thought about how it’s the perfect, beautiful metaphor for the way he’s in between selves – the old him and the new him. And since I’ve been going through recovery at the same time, it feels like we’re going through our changes together – growing alongside each other, both becoming more ourselves as we go.
It’s one change I haven’t felt threatened by. Instead, I feel privileged to witness it. I wish I could feel the same way about all change, but no – it seems I’m allergic.
When I told him about my psychiatrist, he laughed. “You must be doing something to them,” he said. “How come they leave right after they see you? That’s sus.” I told him all my jokes about EMF detectors and Pokémon, and we laughed about it together. I mean, you have to, don’t you? What else is there – cry about systemic failure? Not today.
We had dinner and watched EastEnders together, and later I decided to write this post with a cup of Teapigs “Happy” tea. I’ll try anything. But what I really need is some sleep. I hope tonight my brain lets me – because I desperately need spoons… and a new psychiatrist.
**For the song, it had to be Panic Station by Muse. I’ve been thinking of it ever since I said that panic station line near the start of my post.
“Ooh, one, two, three, four, fire’s in your eyes
And this chaos, it defies imagination
Ooh, five, six, seven, eight, minus nine lives
You’ve arrived at Panic Station”
Absurd Universe 