Need Motivation

[surfboardguy]

While my problems aren't as severe as some in this thread, I'm going to post my bit in here and solicit some advice.

I've been living with depression all my life. Only late last year did I realize it.

My 20s were a blur of struggling through college, hopping from crappy job to crappy job, getting married (the only good thing to come out of that decade), and failure, failure, failure. I couldn't understand why I seemed physically incapable of dealing with life and accomplishing things. Anxiety, moroseness, and inability to see past myself put my relatively young relationship with my wife in danger, so I finally went to a therapist. A few months later, I got on meds.

Wow. So this is what people usually feel like. I know lots of you have gone through this, but I just have to say again how much weight I didn't realize I was living with before meds. Seriously, if you're on the fence ... TRY THEM.

I started to feel a little better, but the doctor warned me of irritability and mood swings until they kicked in.

And boy, did my mood swing. After kicking a hole in the wall at my crappy admin assistant job, I was fired. That was in November. I continued to feel better, and did something I never did during the last couple of years of frequent unemployment: I did something about it.

Instead of finding another crappy job I would hate, I started looking into freelance work on the Internet. I started earning a minimum wage, basically, but with no health insurance. But I was on my way.

Then my meds started to wear off. The psychiatrist said something about my neurons self-correcting and having to add more meds. No problem, except I'm going to feel like crap until the new ones kick in in a couple of months.

And that's where I am now. I'm on a pretty regular schedule of week-on/week-off periods of productiveness and depression until I feel better. As I type, I'm in the middle of one of my bad weeks. I've essentially gotten nothing done in the past few days. I hole up in my living room, sometimes with the lights off, and think about getting to work all the time, but it's like I physically can't.

I know I'll probably feel fine next week, but for these down periods, does anyone have any suggestions on how to motivate yourself when it feels like your muscles won't move? I need some kind of mechanism.

[Murphy]

does anyone have any suggestions on how to motivate yourself when it feels like your muscles won't move? I need some kind of mechanism.

God, do I ever relate to that. I feel heavy, or like I'm walking through water sometimes, and my body does not want to do anything at all.

It's a hard thing to deal with...I wish I had some kind of magic fix. What I know some people do is have someone to keep them accountable, call them and make sure they're doing something, etc. This isn't my preferred method because I inevitably get mad at whoever it is.

Sometimes you gotta take the small wins. Set a small goal for the day, even if it's something that takes 30 minutes, and if you did it, feel good that you did what you set out to do that day. If you do more, great. If you don't, at least you did something.

[BecomingKind]

Murphy is right. Being active and doing things helps. Exercise can make a huge difference. I think the reason is that it increases the circulation and helps flush the chemicals. Combination of writing/expressing myself and heavy exercise can make me feel euphoric. Inactive days of petty self-criticism slowly accumulates depression-chemicals, and makes me feel slow, heavy, awkward, clumsy, and so on. Maybe the brain is trying to sedate itself?

The real problem is how you motivate yourself. It doesn't work if you threaten yourself by repeating thoughts or voices like "unless you do this or that, you're worthless" . That's the trap of accomplishing things. That's possibly why certain things become so difficult as soon as they "matter". Some people can sing, but not infront of an audience because "if they fail, they'll be judged and considered worthless". "Here we go, my one chance to prove my worth as human being." Here is maybe the reason for procrastination.

The real solution is fixing the deep thoughts and voices. I think the details of that are different for everybody.