TO WRITE: Your Sleep Life
Sleep is a crucial, and often disturbed, part of life for those of us coping with depression. Whether problems are due to medications or the condition itself is not always clear. And the symptoms we experience can vary from slightly disturbing to exasperating to just plain weird.

I'm blessed in some ways, I suppose, because I rarely have insomnia. No, my sleep life leans quite the opposite way, leaving me wanting -- sometimes absolutely needing -- to sleep two to four to even six hours more than what most people consider a good night's sleep.

I've had many bizarre and unsettling sleep experiences when depressed, or even months after my mood has recovered. On one first-generation antidepressant, for example, I regularly sat up and opened my eyes during the night to watch amazing and often funny scenes play out in front of me. When I enthusiastically urged my husband to look at these hallucinations, he would have to talk to me or shake me a bit to wake me from my strange state.

Play with this. . .
Write continuously for 20 minutes about your sleep life. Do you have lots of wonderful dreams? An occasional frightening one? Do you need extra medicines to help you get a few hours of rest, or do you feel nearly narcoleptic when you're depressed? Do you find you have unusual thoughts just as you fall asleep or wake up? How does your sleep, or lack thereof, effect your mood? And how do you feel about all this -- angry, frustrated, bemused, relieved? Don't think too much, just let it rip and see where this topic takes you.