I am having kind of a crappy night becuase I’m extremely allergic to weed, and live in Colorado on this here 4/20, so I’m answering asks while on chemical house arrest, so let’s break this down:
1. The thing you’re describing is Executive Dysfuntion, where the descison-making parts of your brain are in a perpetual logjam becuase your mental “rewards for doing stuff” sytem is fucked. Executive dyfunction is a symtom of Chronic Depression, ADHD, PTSD and about 50 other mental disorders.
2. If you haven’t already, talk to your pyschiatrist and/or psychologist about this. They can help you much more than some random also-mentally-ill person on the internet can.
3. Some things I do that help, that you can try but seriously see point #2, in no particular order:
Excecutive Function As Taking Care Of Someone Else: Sometimes, it’s a lot easier to do things when you’re doing them for other people. 90% of Charlie’s job as my Emotional Support Animal is to be a dog that can’t take care of himself- I have to get out of bed and take him outside in the mornings, so no 20-hour depression nap, and a semi-dirunal schedule. I have to bring in enough income to afford food and vet bills and toys for him. I have to keep the house clean enough for him to be safe.
Executive Function As Figuring Out How To Make The Boring Minutae Of Staying Alive Not Terrible And Maybe Even Fun: Maintaining a this meatsuit we call a body is kind of boring. Actually, it tends to be extremely boring, triple especially if your brain chemistry is kind of fucked. So! We MAKE things like eating and chores and your terrible Job fun, and hack that stupid rewards sytem we have!
Step one is to remove anything that particularly annoys you about a task, or even the entire task, if possible. I HAAAAAATE doing the dishes in general but particularly after we have the D&D group over becuase there are SO MANY of them. So I get paper plates. Boom! No More Dishes! Hated having to carry out heavy bags of trash with a semi-busted shoulder, got one of those collapsible dolly carts to just take the whole can out, reduce shoulder pain by 90%.
Step 2 is adding bonus rewards to a task that are available IMMEDIATELY UPON COMPLETION, becuase executive dysfunction also messes up your rewards timetable. Promising myself “You can have this cool thing next week if you do X today.” does squat becuase that’s too far in the future and time is an illusion. Having a reward technically be available before completeion doesn’t work either becuase I’ll just take the reward and skip the task. I started the #tonight’s dinner is tag becuase I got the reward of being able to show people a completed project (notes, notes are made to give you a dopamine hit! Use it!) right when the project was done, which really helps with making food, and healthy-ish food at that. I also blast music real loud when housecleaning becuase that is a fun party time activity and also dancing to “Take Me On” with the broom is fun. To quote an enginnering proverb: If it looks stupid but it works, it’s not stupid.
Executive Function As Advanced Fantasy Roleplay: You know that post about “Sometimes I pretend to be an 11th-century peasant time-travelling to the future to cheer myself up”? That shit actually works. Literally nobody can tell what you’re thinking unless you say something, and if you’re alone nobody can judge you. Laundry’s a lot more fun when you’re explaining washing machines to Gytha from before the Norman Invasion, who is very impressed that you don’t take your clothes down to the river and beat them with a stick, you have a machine for that!
Some other fun ones:
- Cooking as explaining the Omnivorous Human Diet to horrified aliens
- Taking out the trash like you’re getting rid of the evidence of your involvment in a multi-million dollar heist before the cops get here
- Showering, getting dressed and/or putting on makeup like you’re a spy putting on all the details of a false identity before a secret op.
- Going To A Party as an alien taking notes on human behavior for the Galactic Union of Civilized species, which is considering offering humanity membership.
Executive Function As Taking Care Of Your Future Self: Sometimes, you’re going to have to do something unplesant, that requires your full presence, with few ways to make it fun, pretty much for your own benefit, like Taxes, or going to the Doctor. When this happens, I go “Future Me is going to be so grateful I did this.” You know how nice it is to find out something nasty has been handled for you? Give your future self that gift. it’s like planning a party for your friend, only you get to have a party in your honor too.
Executive Function As Your Brain Is An Organ And Needs To Be Maintained Like One: So you know how we all have that relative that gets on our case about eating better, going to bed early and staying hydrated whenever we bring up Depression or other mental illnesses?
None of that stuff will cure depression on it’s own BUT BY GOD DOES IT HELP, ESPECIALLY WITH EXECUTIVE DYSFUNCTION.
No, really. taking care of your brain like it’s an organ that needs nuturiton, excercise and rest REALLY helps it actually function like it’s supposed to. it won’t make things 100% better, but it WILL make things like therapy and medication MUCH MROE EFFECTIVE. like items invideogames that let you do double damage on attacks or whatever.
It’s not the end of the world if you miss a few of these things but doing at least some of them some of the time will help, and if you can get into the habit of doing at least some of them you’ll notice the benefits fairly quickly. Remember to Feed your brain!
That’s about all I got, I hope that helps!
hey gallus! got any tips on attempting to work when all u really wanna do is lie in bed and watch hours of youtube videos + while dealing w some not yet diagnosed chronic illness? my brain is always yelling at me to do the things but the urge to not do the things wins far too often (hope you’re having a good day/night/vague time!)
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