Escapism

[safetyinnumbers]

When I was a child, I was depressed and suicidal. I escaped from reality by going to bed and sleeping during the day. I slept for hours. I was exhausted all the time.
Now, as an adult, I still do this without consciously deciding to escape. Today I received some bad financial news and I suddenly felt depressed and exhausted. I wanted to curl up in bed and sleep but I had to go to work. I drove to work in a zoned out state like the car was taking me and I was just turning the steering wheel.

[Deep Blue]

Hey safety
I've felt like that many many times.  I used to escape by sleeping, hurting myself, and I learned to consciously depersonalize.  I learned to push my mind out of my body when bad things were happening to me.  Now I do it without meaning to.  It's a process, but progress can be made in this area.  Much love to you safety

[ah]

I think I spent years either half asleep or fast asleep. 
I guess part of it is physiological. You're overwhelmed by painful experiences you can't get away from, your body reacts by feeling very stressed and then when it can't sustain the high stress anymore it gets very tired, which makes you slow down. Psychologically too, I guess it's an effective way to get some distance from your experiences. Since you can't run away or fight, you withdraw. You shut it all out and get away inside.

I may be wrong but I don't think you were escaping. The circumstances that enabled you to learn this sort of sleep-all-you-can survival mechanism must have been very abnormal, painful and dangerous. You were trying to protect yourself as best as you could.

I'm sorry you've had to develop this mechanism, I know it really well. That moment of depression and exhaustion when bad news comes. I'm sorry for the financial bad news too, unrelated to the tiredness.

[Blueberry]

I sleep a lot too, safetyinnumbers, I've done that since childhood. I think ah explained it really well.