Dissertation Committee Meetings: How not to go crazy?

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I don't know if any of you have had a similar experience, but if you have and you know what to do about it, I'd love some advice. (Heck, even if you've had this happen and have no clue what to do about it, tell me so I know I'm not the only person who goes through this idiotic stuff.)

I start going crazy about a week before the meeting, lose most of my capacity for sleep and rational thought/behaviour, can barely remember my name during the meeting, and then take a few days to recover. I've got to stop doing this, because I don't prepare well for the meeting when I'm being crazy and irrational - I mostly avoid preparing because just looking at my PowerPoint freaks me out. That doesn't help my state of mind going into the meeting. Then I forget what I want to say, forget words, forget facts that I know perfectly well, have a hard time focusing on questions and understanding what they're getting at and generally act incoherent, which gives a bad impression and makes the meeting go on twice as long, during which time I have to remember not to twirl my hair, which drives me crazy. (Whether this is just a habit or some kind of special tic, I don't know, but I've done it since I was a toddler and I'll be doing it when I'm 90 if I live that long. It costs mental energy to avoid doing it, in any case.) By the end of the last meeting I was in tears and literally biting my tongue to avoid saying stupid, melodramatic and totally inappropriate things.

Then when meetings go badly, it makes my committee members decide I need to have these meetings more often because I'm not on track. My advisor says with the progress I've made, they'd have been quite satisfied if I had presented it well. We went from every 6 months to every 3 months to now every 2 months. If I spend a week and a half freaking out about meetings every 2 months, that's almost 1/5 of my life spent freaking out about dissertation committee meetings. It's too much.

Student health prescribed me Lunesta, and I always take one the night before the meeting so I can at least get a little bit of sleep, but then the next night I can't sleep at all, or only an hour or 2. I only use it for meetings, because I really don't want to take a chance on becoming dependant on them. I'm also taking Wellbutrin, but without it I'm depressed (all the time, not just 1/5 of the time) and still freak out about meetings (though granted, not quite this badly.)

It might be a good idea to speak with a doctor about anxiety disorder.

Wellbutrin has some effects with anxiety, but given the acute nature of your reactions and the strong causal link, there may be a better choice for you, while still dealing with your depression.

From my perspective, there is a real medical issue here, and it is incumbent upon the university to help you find a mechanism to deal with it, while retaining the academic integrity of your reasearch and their review of it.

Thanks, Visagrunt. If I understand what you're saying, you think there's a better way to deal with it than to discontinue the Wellbutrin? (Sorry, I'm reading this 2 different ways and not sure which you mean.)

I do have an appointment next week with psychologist who works with the ever-changing rotation of psychiatry interns who prescribe medication to students at the university, and I'm trying to figure out how to make the most of my hour. I usually get more out of it if I suggest ideas. He's good for helping me sort things out if I bring ideas to the table, but if I just ramble about problems I haven't the faintest idea how to begin to solve, it's never terribly helpful.