Okay, first things first: apologies for rambling, I'm currently functioning on about 4 hours' sleep.

Anyhow, this can be a tough time of year for introverts. I love people, I genuinely do, but being around them drains my batteries and I tend to need a lot of recharge time. It's Christmas, though, so lately this hasn't been an option.

In addition to the standard 9-5 thing, I've had two separate parties to attend this week, and for once I was brave and attended them both. I'm so proud of myself for pushing my boundaries - last night I even did an escape room in a basement bunker, which was miles out of my comfort zone and turned out to be fantastic fun.

Only one problem: I've been paying the price for a couple of weeks now with a return of my stress behaviours. I'm back to skin picking, and I have a bunch of small raw, bloody patches on my hands and neck. So far, so annoying. However, my sleep's also been suffering. I went to bed at midnight last night and now I've been wide awake for the past hour while my subconscious helpfully tells me how much of a fool I've made of myself at the social events, how everybody hates me and how I should probably just make the world a better place by killing myself. I have absolutely no plans to do this, but it's still a pretty rough background soundtrack to have in my head when I really need to still be asleep.

How do I get my sanity back again?