I cannot do a damn thing. Be it easy, be it hard, be it rewarding, be it just pure pleasure. I cannot enjoy a thing thinking it is just waste of time. I cannot carry myself to do a hard task thinking about the high effort it requires. Even if I break it into small parts, I would only do the bare minimum for a day or two and stop it.
My entire life is being passed away coming back tired, hungry and yearning for sleep, from a job I dislike to the core.
I am not moving towards my goals. I cannot quit this job. Time is passing. I’m stuck. Weekends cometh, I use them all trying to catch up on sleep.
Every week I’m doing just the bare minimum to survive thinking I might do something on the weekend and I don’t. How do I break out this cycle? There’s a lot more I could unwind upon but this post is already long enough.
Argh
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Seconding the first comment here: I have ADHD and your description sounds very familiar to me. I am able to use alarms to motivate myself to get up and do some things, but it is definitely not 100% and many alarms are skipped. Another thing that helped me was learning to tell myself it’s ok; it’s to take a break, even a long break, even many long breaks - and it’s ok to not do things that were planned. Being nice to me really helped reshape my understanding of achievement. It never gets easier, but learning how to deal with it definitely changed it from daily dread to enjoying life.
Thirding this; sounds a lot like ADHD (executive dysfunction). ADHD is commonly comorbid with depression and anxiety.
Very easy to be mad at yourself for not doing something, then mad at yourself when you do do something and it takes less time/energy than you psyched yourself up for, and just staying angry at yourself.
The hard truth is that if you want change you have to change and there’s nothing else to it
You have to try new things even if you think you’re going to hate them
There’s no getting around it
I took my own advice. I’m not saying it’s easy, it’s work
I am diagnosed with ADHD and your experience sounds similar to mine, ie executive function disorder. Not getting anything done until the last possible moment, and then only the bare minimum because it was all I had time for.
Of the various strategies I’ve employed, having an accountability partner has been the most useful.
I Tell someone what I’m going to do, and when I’m going to do it by, and commit to talking to them about it reasonably soon after the time frame I set.
For example, I never had any success exercising until I started going to the gym with my father. It has been really good for both of us. We both want both of us to be healthier and we’re helping each other do it. Sometimes one of us can’t go and that’s okay, we acknowledge it, move on, and keep each other on track. This has been so successful that I even went to the gym on my birthday.
I would really like it if you’d spend 5 or more minutes brainstorming and listing some different people in your life you could sustainably use as accountability partners, before this post is 24 hours old.
Please either comment or DM me ASAP about whether or not you’re going to do this, and wait at least an hour before actually doing the brainstorming.
I don’t want to see the list but I’d love it if you could message me with the number of people on the list, and what areas of your life they intersect with.
I’m going to check this comment and my inbox sometime between 24 and 32 hours from now.
Hi, first of all you all have been very nice to me putting up huge comments to help me out. Thank you so much. I’m kinda moved lol.
Coming to accountability partners, I think I am very shy person and I don’t like sharing self improvement things with anyone irl not because they are bad (I have a sweet family) but I just don’t like to share my goals and then get asked questions about it whether it is good or bad.
I have an online friend with whom I share a lot of things which I don’t with people irl, and maybe I can convince them to be my accountability partner.
I have few questions about the goals though. Do they have to huge like the one you shared? Do I have to report back everyday to my partner? How do I go about it.
Once again thank you for looking out for an random internet stranger <3 I was gonna reply later to you all one by one, but you keeping the timeframe out for me to check on me had be typing all this on the spot. Thanks <3
I can only speak from my own experience.
My strategy is committing to planning my day at the beginning of the day (9:10AM after I’ve gotten my kids to school) and then talking with my wife before bed about how well I managed to stick to the plan. Ie did I actually plan tasks for the day, did I accomplish those tasks, is there anything she’d like me to add to tomorrow’s tasks etc.
Planning my day includes assigning time frames for the tasks, including one task right after planning. If I know I’m likely to want to play video games that day, plan a time and duration, and set an alarm on my phone to interrupt my play at the time I thought I should stop.
Try really hard to frame things in an analog way. Ie As progress instead of as victory or failure.
What I mean is you didn’t do exactly what I asked, and that’s fine you made real progress towards developing a sustainable solution.
I use a paper productivity planner to plan my day and I’ve found it very helpful. maybe do 30 minutes of research into options available to you.
Thanks for the write-up again.
Don’t get me wrong but having to report to your accountability partner sounds very daunting to me. I have tried making to-do lists with time blocking in the past and was only half successful with them. I’ll try to implement the accountability method in a way that puts with less pressure on myself. Thanks.
I’m not a doctor and I don’t want to jump to conclusions, but this sounds like symptoms of undiagnosed ADHD. What you’re describing is called executive dysfunction.
Thank you I will look up on it.
Personally I’m fundamentally disconnected from any meaningful relationships with living things (people, animals, plants, the landscape) and addicted to the internet as a replacement. The only times I haven’t felt the way you described is when I had social scaffolding around me. (And the wherewithal in terms of time and energy to pursue “self-actualisation.”)
I don’t know, I always think about an extremely competent woman living a self-sufficient traditional lifestyle with all the skills to survive who just stopped eating after her grandchildren had to run away abroad. A life is a complex thing and it takes a lot of things to be tuned just right for a person to be functional. It’s even too simple to say “we find meaning in social relationships” or whatever, we just need the right system of incentives and comforts and pleasure and pain and there’s no single formula.
I was self-actualising when I had love, understanding, time, and money. Now I’m missing some parts of that package, and none of them are things you can just will into existence, especially not at the cost of other things.
Not a therapist, but you’re also describing anhedonia, one of the more annoying and disabling parts of depression. You really should see if you can get in to see a therapist or psychiatrist, or even your GP to talk about this. Medications work. Therapy can work.
I looked up a bit on anhedonia and it sounds way drastic than I am currently feeling rn. Maybe I do have it or maybe I don’t, idk.
As for the therapist, I really cannot afford one for now. Thanks for your comment tho <3
Simple: your brain does not produce enough dopamine, so you need to start taking substances that force your brain to do so. (Like others have stated, you probably have ADHD.)
I can’t get Adderall (and frankly I’m scared of it), so Kratom is my dopamine-producing chemical of choice.
I’d like to point out that you have done a single thing: you made this post. Good on you! This is an accomplishment. You have shown that you can do a single thing.
One of the many awful things about depression is how overwhelming it can feel. It feels impossible to deal with all this crap. Yet the way out is to do one single thing at a time. You did a post today. Give yourself credit for that. If you can do one more thing today, go a ahead and do it. If not today, then tomorrow. No zero days. Take a shower. Wash some cloths. Tidy up a bit. Anything. And every single time give yourself credit for the accomplishment. You deserve it.
And, seriously, depression sucks. It’s hard. You don’t have to deal with it alone. You’ve reached out here. Now reach out to a therapist.
Thank you for your very uplifting comment <3
Honestly I am not sure whether I’m depressed or not. Two people here have assumed it without a doubt, so maybe I am depressed. Depression is board concept and I didn’t think I come under the blanket definition of it and identify myself as depressed. I cannot really afford a therapist right now.
This is kind of how my life felt before I got medicated for ADHD. Not being able to do things even when they’re super easy (or worse when they are things you want to do but you just can’t get yourself to do them for no fucking reason) is called Executive Dysfunction, and it is the ADHD symptom I probably suffer from the most. Good news: meds can help with this.
Now, I still feel unmotivated sometimes even on my meds, and general hopelessness from the meaninglessness of existence is ever present.
However, just the ability to plan and to start tasks without having to spend hours building the motivation is amazing. I just do things when I think about them even when I don’t want to. Like I’ll say, “I have time to put of this work and play video games” and then before I even start playing I decide I might as well do the task first.
I still don’t get pleasure out of completing tasks, but being able to complete and keep track of tasks means that eventually I reach a point where I don’t have any more tasks to do in the moment, and that peace is incredible.
It’s so nice not being anxious all the time about all the tasks I need to do because they’re just done.
Also, meds actually help me sleep soundly and like regularly to the point I don’t really need an alarm. Despite that, they don’t make me feel sleepy during the day. (I should note I also take melatonin before bed so maybe it’s like the combination that leads to perfectly regular sleep idk)
Anyway, if I were you I might look into talking to a psychiatrist to see if you have ADHD.
PS: tip for anyone with ADHD meds, if they give you meds that don’t work for you, don’t be scared to ask for a change. Methylphenidate made me super anxious, killed my appetite, and wore off fast. Adderall doesn’t have any noticeable side effects and works well.
It sounds like you might be describing existential angst or existential dread by a lack of meaning or purpose. If it’s not a medical condition and you’re trying to find fulfillment I would suggest a healthy dose of philosophy books (Socrates’ The Republic is a good starting point, from there follow your curiosity) followed by a couple courses of psilocybin mushrooms if you’re dealing with death anxiety and at least in your 20’s and not prone to psychosis.
Another practical suggestion would be to instead of picking easily obtainable goals carry multiple goals; one for short term stuff that are easily completed, and a long term goal that may not even be possible to achieve. You don’t get the satisfaction of accomplishing the long term goal, but it’s always available for something to strive towards. Traditionally I think these would be things like honing a skill or hobby or trying to be a better person morally than you were before by putting your focus on the needs of others & relationships.
If at all possible, I’d try to arrange for a break.
A lot of this sounds like it may stem from burnout (before getting into any more long-term conditions). Taking a break probably won’t help you see your job in a new light (some jobs simply suck, or aren’t a good fit for people personally), but it could give you time to rest enough to look for other opportunities. However first and foremost any such break should focus on resting and recovery to get you to a better state to just be well and happy.
Once you know you can sort out breaks and recover, you can set aside more time to look for opportunities. Right now it seems almost like this may be among your best options: carve out breaks for yourself to rest and recover. Once you’re feeling better, take time you’ve reclaimed for yourself to seek out opportunities to change jobs and improve your work situation.
Same.
Find what brings you that dopamine. Be it coding, writing, reading…, pomodoro technique can be helpful to practice, even if loosely. There’s lots of good advice on this thread, keep taking care OP
