Far too many mornings, I wake up feeling anxious and have to stage an in-depth mood intervention before I can face the day. 

I KNOW I’m going to have a bad day if I wake up feeling Fizzy. 

‘Fizzy’ is my catch-all term for the anxious, sometimes mildly suicidal, feelings that I often begin the day with, but that can crop up at any time, given the right/wrong stimuli. 

Feeling Fizzy usually announces itself as a combination of a very slightly raised heart rate and marginally faster breathing – leading to a low-level, fidgety type of trembling within me and a nasty premonition that something is going to go wrong. 

It can also present itself as unpleasantly intense brain activity very soon after waking –  usually as an argument between two parts of my brain, over something quite irrelevant to my life.

​But whatever the subject, one brain part generally flings an accusation that is unfair or unpleasant at me even before I am properly awake, and that sense of danger and defensiveness sets the tone for the day ahead. 

Continue reading “At My Sparkling Worst” →