anxiety and trance-like states

Wow, my internet connection is actually up at the moment, hope it stays up long enough for me to type in this entry and get it posted.

I've noticed my anxiety slowly increasing in intesity over the past two weeks or so. My guess is that I'm again growing tolerant of the Xanax. But, no panic attacks yet.

Over the past couple days, and especially yesterday and today, the conversations that I have in my head have been increasing in length, but also in terms of how much they take over the focus of my thoughts. Today it's occured to me to describe it as a trance-like state. I've snapped out of it enough at least for a while to be able to look back and think about it.

Take yesterday, for example. I got home from my visit with my therapist a little after 4pm. I immediately began to have a hypothetical conversation in my head describing in detail my entire life's story. Pretty much next thing I knew it was about 6:30 am and I fell asleep even though I wasn't tired. I was basically unaware of the passage of time, of the sun going down, getting dark, and the sun coming back up. I was only vaguely aware of the fact that I was moving from room to room in the house. Basically only vaguely aware that I was in a different room sitting in a different chair, not aware of actually moving between the rooms. Thankfully the cat knew when I'm supposed to take my medications, he would meow and distract me enough to know to take my meds and give him his food and his antibiotics.

My guess is that the Provigil may be causing these conversations to expand in length. I've had complex conversations constantly going on my head pretty much all the time, but I usually don't go into a trance like state, I have, but not all that often, usually just the hour after I get out of bed, and these states, in the past as far as I can recall, have never laster longer than an hour or two.

I also feel compelled, when I do snap out of it, to return to that state to finish the conversation, because in that state I can focus on it. Whereas when I'm not in this state, and going about my day, I'm dealing with various intrusive memories and still having conversations with hypothetical people, it's just that it's usually more in the background, and the intrusive memories are pretty much all negative, like a crowded noisy bar where everyone is criticizing me or calling me names or something.

Anyway, it's always been difficult for me to describe just what it's like, but I've made another attempt here, wanting to note the dramatic change, it seems, that has started to occur.