snarky-synesthete:
dankmemeuniversity:
Beloved ones. You feel this way BECAUSE you don’t do anything all day. Whether mental illness holds you hostage, or an aspect of neurodiversity says, “Hmm not today!” Or if your self-care day turns into weeks of paralysis, or you just take the damn day off…chances are, at the end of the “do nothing” period, you will feel more overwhelmed and exhausted than you feel you have a right to be. You are borne down by in insupportable weight of time passing by, empty of anything meaningful. Panic can set in, or despair, or guilt, or numbness, or mania, or any/all combinations thereof…it hits us all differently.
If this feeling is bothering you, see if you can find the energy/focus/spoons to do ~something with your hands~
It doesn’t have to be quote-PRODUCTIVE-unquote. You can color (a real page with real writing implements, even if it sucks). You can massage your hands and feet with good-smelling lotion. You can go outside and stack little rocks on top of each other until they fall down. Arrange leaves into a heart shape. Count the anthills in the sidewalk near your house. Draw on concrete with chalk. Paint your nails or toes. The more useless and non-taxing for you, the better.
The point is, you ~complete a physical task~
Your animal-brain doesn’t know that this task has no “productive” value! Certain parts of your brain can’t necessarily parse that sort of thing!!! The deep wiring in your noggin senses that you initiated a task, spent time & energy on it, and completed it! Even something as small as the ideas above can start to re-wire your brain back into functionality when you’re overwhelmed and paralyzed. The biggest part is to engage with the PHYSICAL WORLD, because while our phones & computers & tablets can be serotonin-generators, the deep ancient-animal wiring in our brain still doesn’t quite interpret it as REAL. (This is also why practical VFX are always more charming than CGI, but that’s a rant for another time.)
Sincerely,
Someone who has fought this battle many times before (and studied it, and researched it in others, and almost literally has a Masters degree in motivating the unwilling)
[Image is the ‘Are you winning, son?’ meme.
The father says, “are u ok?”
The crying son says, “I literally don’t do anything all day and I still feel overwhelmed. What’s wrong with me.”
End ID.]
I’ve got the anxiety AND the crippling executive dysfunction. I’m finally getting house-cleaning under control (for the first time in over a decade of house ownership). I’m also watching my husband work through a deep, motivation destroying, depression, as he deals with unemployment and the damage working has done to him.
Doing A Thing is important. (I have a variety of crafts, and Make Lists.) Something else I’ve found valuable is to Feel How Terrible It Is To Try To Do A Small Important Thing.
There are often a lot of bad associations with the things I need to do. My brain is good at protecting me from the awful emotions and sensations that come up - usually by avoidance. No matter how hard I try, the emotions don’t come up until I actually go to do the thing. Then they paralyze me.
If I feel like I NEED to do the important thing, I get SO frustrated with being paralyzed. But by going to do the thing, and then standing there, forcing myself to just accept how bad it feels, I slowly work through the baggage.
Sometimes, standing there and feeling is enough, and I can actually do the important thing! Other times, the feeling has to be enough by itself. I still can’t do the thing, and need to do this again next time. But I’ve slowly trained myself to recognize that this was Exposure Therapy, an extremely valuable way to work through anxiety, OCD, and other mental health problems. I DID accomplish something, and will multiply that effect by being proud of myself!
The 'Small’ part is really important. Big things are too complicated, and need to be handled after you’ve got all the small stuff out of the way. You need the room.
Ex. I dealt with cleaning paralysis by trying to sweep the hallway. It takes about a minute, but brings up all my baggage related to housework. Many days, I’d just stand there, and then eventually put the broom away, having accomplished 'nothing’. But it slowly stopped feeling like a big deal, and eventually I started washing the dishes - a different chore that felt easier. Now I regularly do the dishes, keep the bathroom mostly okay, keep on top of the laundry, and … occasionally sweep the hallway and living room.
I feel less overwhelmed now than I did when I did no cleaning.
also, as i understand it, part of how this happens is (to oversimplify wildly) that digital achievements are generally quite bad at delivering serotonin, which is involved in the satisfaction-sensation of 'having done things.’
which over time means you do a lot of trying and wanting, and certain parts of your brain think you are failing every single time because none of the 'action/success’ triggers they recognize are getting tripped.
this is not an ideal thing to convince your body of.
