Fighting Back Against Insomnia & Irritability


Writer Bruce Clark shares his experiences with irregular sleeping patterns and irritability

By Bruce Clark

Claiming that I can’t do housework because—like our Jack Russell terrier, Douglas—I’m afraid of the vacuum cleaner would elicit robust laughter from my wife.

If I were to substitute the ridiculous notion that I’m frightened by an electric cleaning device with the very real feeling that I’ve been rendered inert by depression, my wife would be empathetic and understanding about my avoiding the chores.

It would be easy to attribute all my psychological foibles to my depression, but it wouldn’t be honest to claim depression is the culprit every time I lose my cool or get crabby.

When I do have an episode of depression, it usually manifests in a dark outlook. I don’t care about accomplishing anything, and things that I’m quite passionate about seem pointless. I can also get moody, irritable, and tend to isolate myself.

So if I lose my temper or I’m upset at something or somebody, is it my depression talking or can it be attributed to (gasp!) my own psyche and personality? That’s one of the big challenges of having depression: determining if my mood or my attitude is really a manifestation of the disease, or if I’m just in a sour frame of mind and being a jerk.

In the months before I was diagnosed with depression, I felt exhausted for no good reason. I couldn’t get any work done and I felt that my life was in a state of torpor.

Since I knew very little about depression and had never thought of myself as a depressive type, I naturally attributed my condition to circular cause and consequence. I’d nap during the day, then have trouble sleeping at night. Lack of proper sleep made me very, let’s say, “prickly.”

I never addressed the issue of why I  was tired in the first place. Being unproductive, crusty, and in a continual state of ennui became my “normal.”

My wife recognized that something was amiss and urged me to get help. After seeing a psychiatrist who prescribed an antidepressant, my sleep patterns improved and my world began to return to my previous “normal.”

“So if I lose my temper or I’m upset … is it my depression talking or can it be attributed to (gasp!) my own psyche and personality?”

Things got better, but it’s not like I’ve never been angry about something or felt that what I was doing was pointless since then. There’s a difference between depression-related emotions and just being in a lousy mood, though, and it’s important for me to be able to distinguish between the two.

If it is only a lousy mood, then I should be able to pinpoint the problem and correct it. For me, this is an analytical process. When I’m feeling a little “off,” I’ll ask myself what it is that’s bothering me in order to determine if there’s a rational origin for my mood.

During our recent home renovation, for example, we ran into a technical issue with the construction permits. Because I have a tendency to turn molehills into mountains, this trivial issue became an insurmountable problem in my mind.

I began beating myself up for making what turned out to be a minor mistake with the engineer. I didn’t want to deal with city officials who had actually been more than accommodating. In my skewed perception, they became the enemy. I felt like Douglas looking at the vacuum when I thought about dealing with them; I wanted to bark and run away.

I was irritable and anxious, but I didn’t feel like crawling under the covers in the middle of the afternoon. That ruled out depression, so I sat down to analyze the situation. It turned out,  as it often does, that the solution to what was upsetting me was a very simple fix. I made the necessary changes to the plans and my mental state quickly went from agitation to equanimity.

The corollary to this is that if I can’t attribute my “abnormal” mental state to something concrete, then I know it’s time to talk to my doctor.

Monitoring my state of mind is an ongoing project that’s paramount in managing my depression.

If I could only get Douglas to realize his fear of the vacuum is irrational, maybe I could get him to do some house cleaning.


Printed as “Viewpoint: Getting wise to the why’s”, Spring 2012

About the author
Bruce Clark, a writer and comic from Winnipeg, Manitoba, now lives in Palm Springs, California.

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