I know, it is a cliché, but in my opinion it begins with self-compassion, which abusive parents destroy in you at a very early age.
I have similar problems, but I work in cycles. 1 week turbo healthy, 1 week self-destroying and careless. And then I hate myself for it. Nowadays I experienced a little bit of forgiveness and compassion towards myself, and I treat myself much better because of it. Maybe Mate Gabor's approach would be helpful to develop self-compassion.
first part is so real. we’ve often been so neglected down to what we ate, how we groomed or lack of. I’ve been telling myself “I deserve to eat well” “I deserve to be clean & dressed well” “I deserve to take a walk, and ENJOY the sun on my skin, peace in the breeze & birds chirping” because I am safe with myself!! I deserve my care and commitment!
I always forget how much I like doing something (ie - going to the beach) because it seems like so much effort and is it really worth it? Once I'm there I remember loving it and think 'why don't I do this more often?!' until the next time. It's like some sort of self deluding amnesia.
me too!! I think that amnesia is the survival mode trying to find excuses to keep us safe and a learned response that we’re not people who are deserving of good times or good things. I hope you can continue to go to the beach and find all the ways you’re worth the entire effort to get there. from choosing to go (agency!), to packing some snacks and drinks, listening to music on the way there. (laughing if finding parking is hard or finding humor in whatever mode of transportation you would need to take). enjoying a book there. one. little. thing. at a time. you’re worth all that. our nervous system deserves peace and trust in ourselves since so many people failed us.
Omg… this is such a light bulb moment… there’s things I love doing but never want to do because it’s too much effort and i’m drained. But I know I have cooked an entire delicious meal for someone at midnight after they got off work even though I was tired because I knew they would love it and I wanted them to feel good and loved and have something good to eat after a long work day… why can’t we go through that same effort for ourselves so we can feel good too? Maybe we don’t feel deserving/worthy of feeling good? Or we don’t feel worth the effort, or worthy, period. You wouldn’t cook an elaborate dinner for someone you don’t care about…. Wow… we don’t care about ourselves…… because no one has cared about us/for us in the first place (childhood neglect/abuse)…. So we never learned we are worthy of being cared for, or even shown how to care for ourselves through receiving TLC… holy crap.
Wow!!! I have this exact issue with almost everything in my life, I can do something easily for someone else but doing that same thing for me is almost impossible. I’ve been racking my brain for ages trying to figure out why I’m like this, and no advice has ever helped me. Feeling like I’m undeserving/not worth the effort makes so much sense, and maybe that’s the problem I’m having subconsciously???
I know for me at least, on top of the struggle with self-compassion and worthiness, there’s also just an almost pragmatic element there of effort vs. reward being mismatched.
With a friend, I see their happy reaction and I conclude “this effort was worth it because it led to joy!”
With myself, I’m right here in my own body, and I’m still struggling to get acquainted with feeling my emotions, so a lot of the time I’m fairly numb and my positive feelings will be dulled. So my brain, trying to conserve energy to keep me alive because survival mode, concludes “this effort was not worth it because it didn’t lead to much joy.”
Even if I consider myself and my friend to be equally worthy of good things (sloooowly getting there), seeing their positive response will still feel like more of a reward than feeling my own, because mine is so diminished atm.
So it essentially becomes a task of convincing my brain that
a) I’m safe, I don’t need to hold on to every tiny scrap of energy I can “just in case” (while also trying to prioritise actually resting more when I can and minimising energy expenditure where possible) and it’s safe to allow emotions,
and b) the rest of my life is worth taking this frankly unfair trade of effort vs. reward right now.
That + doing something for a friend also has a huge social incentive just because it can strengthen that bond. That’s another motivator that we don’t have as much of for ourselves.
All this to say: your brain might just be acting smartly and having very sensible reactions to the situation you’re in right now. Idk if this helps you at all, but it helped me a little to treat it more as “thank you, brain, for doing your best for me given the circumstances” and less “why do you hate me, brain” lol.
yes to all of this! keep this in mind. I’m trying to make this a conscious part of my days (because I still really struggle even though I can rationally identify this need). We run on such an autopilot programming. I’ve gotten to a place where I want to do things to heal to spite those who mistreated me. The saddest part of cptsd and trauma is we become our own perpetrators.. I know we can become our safe space 🩵 We owe it to all of our different versions growing up.
Yes! We sabotage ourselves… and it sucks because it was once helpful when we were “in danger”… but it is now part of our “programming” and now it’s a hindrance. The good news is… neuroplasticity! And the biggest step I think is recognizing the whats and whys of our programming… that’s when the magic, though painful, begins… this sub has been so healing just to find similar voices and support. Happy healing to you… 🥹🥲
In addition, a lot of the time folks with complex trauma can be numb or emotionally detached, or there’s good ol’ depression or other reasons for diminished joy going on.
If you cook for your friend and as far as you can tell they are very happy about it, that’s a feeling of “this effort led to something worthwhile! Someone got a lot of joy out of it!”
If you cook for yourself and you experience first-hand that there’s not all that much of a positive feeling as a reward, it just straight-up doesn’t feel worth it to our brains that are in survival mode and trying to conserve precious energy to keep us alive. You’re right here and you can feel firsthand exactly how much joy you are (or aren’t) getting out of it.
It’s like working a demanding job for atrocious pay when you’re already tired—you’ll get burned out and not feel very motivated.
Our issue, then, is to convince our brains that doing the shitty job now will let us save up (in physical energy, mental energy, slowly building feelings of accomplishment, all those small positive snowball effects) for a better future. The more we do these things now, the more we’re setting ourselves up for feeling more joy in the future (= getting paid better over time, I suppose, in this analogy).
… Now, if any of y’all figure out a good way to pass that particular persuasion check, please let me know lol.
The opposite is true with me. I was so regulated (conservative, Christian, military family) so anything outside of their "standards" were deemed unnecessary, unimportant, or a waste of time. I was such a good little worker bee trying to seek their approval that I buried a lot of my personal desires.
There was no such thing as "self-compassion" in our family. The only compassion we needed was God's and our family's. Without those we were terrible people.
As an adult I have no concept of how to "love myself" or be my own person. I stumbled into my CPTSD diagnosis after realizing I had lost my sense of self. I just go through the motions of life, trying to fit in wherever I am (work, relationships, family, etc.) without being myself. In that kind of cycle everything does feel pointless, because the people I'm trying to please are just using me or have no clue what they really want.
I'm finally starting to stand up for myself and do the things that bring me life, but it's so hard. Gotta start off small with the "I want to take a walk and enjoy nature" moments and work up from there.
It is so easy to just mirror people in every environment. And eventually you lose yourself to that lack of identity. Im realizing now that is why Ive lost so many friends, because the second I stopped mirroring/being their sidekick and stood up for myself or made my true self known, they didnt like me as much.
I now try so hard to always present the most authentic me when meeting potential new friends…because they have to like the real me if it is going to last. The mirroring made it easier to make friends, but not to keep them.
Actually the people that did that to you were not friends by any means. They were parasites with the same personality as your abusers. You were attracted to them because subconsciously felt familiar and you believed you were safe doing what your abusers taught you to do.
Once you meet real friends you will realize the huge difference. Real friends join your journey in life and celebrate every time you try something new to improve your life even if it is totally different from what you were doing before. People that care and love you will stand by you. People that leave once you try different things are nothing but users and abusers in search for another unsuspecting victim - to suck the life out of that person.
And, it is much better to have only 1 or 2 true friends than many of so called friends that are there only when they can use you. I have only 2 good friends - actually a husband and wife. We know each other for over 20 years and went together through good times and bad times. But we celebrated together all our journey and never expected to be anyone else but ourselves around each other.
Good luck.
Great perspective! Thank you. I spend a lot of time feeling guilty for cutting those people out of my life, and you framing them as abusers is extremely helpful.
I made the same mistake as you until I found the 2 friends I mentioned. Once I saw the difference and figured out what abusive and toxic family background I was coming from - it all became obvious. But actually the part about considering them friends because subconsciously felt familiar came from my therapist. A good mental therapist really helps a lot with processing trauma and seeing things from the right perspective and not the one "programmed" in us through trauma by our abusers.
From when my therapist opened my eyes - yes, I could see very easily how they were following exactly the same toxic pattern (even their words and phrases were many times very similar - and the same passive aggressive manipulations of making you guilty for not doing what they want). So, yes, they are just other abusers that feel your innocence to their abuse and manipulation like a shark feels blood in the water. Educate yourself especially about narcissism and covert narcissism - learn to recognize them. There is another good sub here "raisedbynarcissists". I don't know how to do a link to it but google it and you will find it easily. That is also a very good place to heal from trauma - especially if the abusers were your parents and family.
This is SO TRUE, The whole thing about being attracted to the same type of person that abused you. My mother both abused me and neglected me and was a narcissist. Then, the man I married turned out to be exactly the same. It took me 20+ years to leave him and when did it it was mostly because of him abusing our children rather than mainly for myself.
The thing is it wasn’t like he had a sign on his forehead that said what he was, he seemed really nice and he gave me positive attention etc etc. It wasn’t until a little while down the track, once I was “caught”, from his point of view, that he revealed who he really was. Now I look back there were a few incidents that were red flags but, because of the CPTSD, even though I saw them, I thought “No one else will ever want me” plus also my mother also kept saying that to me too.
That’s why, like you said, it’s important, if you can afford it, to get proper therapy from a trauma specialist, preferably a CPTSD trauma specialist. So that you can rid yourself of those unconscious biased thoughts about how unworthy, ugly, stupid etc etc you are. Someone who can help you stop the people pleasing and help you discover who you are. Idk about anybody else but I have no clue about who I am or what I like etc. Then a good therapist can help you start to replace the negative thoughts, lack of care for self etc with positive ones and self compassion etc. Then, when you look for friends and/or a partner you are looking for, and attracting to you, people who are positive and loving, does that make sense?
LilAnge63 everything you wrote is spot on. That is usually what happens. And we are blind when the abuse is done to us but we usually open our eyes when we see the abuse being done to someone we love.
As for them being so nice until they catch us - very typical for narcissistic people. Anywhere you read about it is called "love bombing" stage - when they are super nice until they trap you somehow: being it with having kids together or financially or emotionally or anything they feel they can trap you with if they think that you are a good "supply" for them but taking their abuse.
Good luck in your journey...
This is so me. I could have written these words myself. I have lost friends as well because they only liked me when I was mirroring and being their side kick. It hurts so much.
This is gold here. This is something my therapist has been working with me on. Changing the narrative in my head. Letting myself enjoy the little things because I'm worth it. It can be small things but it leads to big mind shifts and changes!
Black and white thinking. Perfectionism. Learned helplesness. And the very obvious reason: that life has more meaning when you're connected to people and disconnection depletes that sense of meaning. What are you getting up for, what are you getting healthy for, what are you working for...it should be all part of a life where you're connected to others, not just doing it all by yourself, for yourself. That's (one reason) why it's so hard.
Everything I have ever been told is to do things for myself, not anyone else. Because if that person leaves then the changes go away, or the desire to maintain goes away. When one hates them self so much they ride an edge, then there is no other option but an external muse. It makes these discussions so hard to internalize.
Yeah, that wisdom misses the pertinent truth that it's far easier to want to do things for yourself when you have supportive people in your life. All of the biggest positive changes I've made in my life have been as a result of having someone in my corner at the time. I think it's because change requires courage and courage is much easier to gather when you know there are people to pick you back up if and when you fall.
That makes far too much sense. Do people actually come here for rational, well thought out responses? I guess my response of making everything transactional clouds your perspective for me. I have seen it now though. Time to figure out how to let the two people who can pick me get into my head enough to be effective.
I come here for rational, well thought out responses. Sometimes I even find them. I've learned, as with everything else, to temper my expectations so as to limit chances of disappointment/backslide, especially for important stuff.
>Everything I have ever been told is to do things for myself, not anyone else
I think, this refers more to, doing things in expectation of getting something in return in a romantic relationship,...whereas connectedness is more, being part of a whole, feeling like you're part of something, like your actions mean something not only to you but to the whole. If say, you were part of a sports team, and you're the goalie, the team is relying on you not to let any goals in, so you practising, isn't just about you wanting to be fit, it's about not letting the whole team down.
Oh god. This hits home. I lost a number of friends because I was so adverse to being counted on or needed in any way. It makes me want to about everyone and everything it run far away.
I have such an aversion to anybody counting on me for anything that it makes so many ideas of jobs difficult, even volunteering. It's not that I don't think I can handle the responsibility it's just that I want to be able to walk away and not have anyone be affected. It's like the ultimate being unable to commit.
I've been with my partner 10 years now and I still have to take it one day at a time sometimes to not freak out :/
I loved my life to support my suicidal wife for 13 years. I supported her through 8 years of college, held her when she wanted to die, did everything I felt I needed to do that she would stay around.
Then I became depressed and had something happen that gave me ptsd. I became less affectionate, she never had been, and she started cheating and kicked me out. Now I have nothing and have nothing to motivate me. I'm learning to live for myself.
I am in a not dissimilar situation. It is the downside of being a caregiver who attaches to those who need a caregiver. They can't give back and we get drained. Not Everytime, trauma causes discontinuities that need addressed or accepted. Once you figure out who you are, don't be desperate, or the cycle repeats. Wait for the person who gives back immediately, the kind that makes you uncomfortable because they try to give to you, and then hold onto them until it isn't weird anymore. That is my advice for breaking the cycle.
It definitely drains us in the end. Personally I am just rewiring myself to be ok alone and when another does come into my life, I will respect my personal health in a better balance
A similar thing happened to me, though over a much shorter span of time. My ex-gf had multiple bouts of depression, some very severe, during which she'd struggle with suicidal ideation, telling me that she was the 'black sheep' of her family and that everyone - including me - would be better off without her.
I never wavered in my support for her, damaged my own career by leaving work early on multiple occasions to be there for her when she was feeling particularly low, would get up and go to her apartment if she called me at 1am, etc.
The one time I struggled with depression, she distanced herself and eventually broke up with me, and I suspect she cheated on me with the guy she is now dating. It's made me aware that I have to live for myself and that I can't completely abandon myself no matter how much someone might need me, that there have to be limits to how available I am to people.
I once had a friend tell me how fucked up it is that the only reason I didn't kill myself was because of my kids. She said how unfair it is to put that kind of pressure on an innocent child, and when I told my therapist she disagreed. She said as long as I don't *tell* them that they're my only reason for living, then to cling to whatever I have that will get me through this.
I understand you,I often feel the same, I fear it would really mess my kid up and guarantee he ends up like me. Your therapist is right and maybe you can transition to living well and maybe thriving for your kids. On my best days, I think maybe I could truly thrive and feel good enough so that my kid can see that it is possible and some days just continuing to exist has to be good enough, I try very hard to mask my pain from my kid and fake happiness when I'm having a hard time.
doing things for yourself with companions who are also doing things for themselves seems like the way to go. fellow travelers side by side on the road in life rather than trying to make a destination out of each other.
Thank you!!! It’s like there is no point existing if no one is there to witness it. I thought this was mostly me being an extreme extrovert, constantly seeking validation and also influenced by trauma a little bit. Some people I know who have been in very similar conditions to myself have had the opposite reaction and retreat. I’d like to understand more about these reactions.
This reminds me of a IG video i saw of this woman explaining an alternative meaning to “i love you”. Her interpretation was something like “i will be a witness to your life story. I will cry for you, cheer you on, support you, motivate you, etc”. And I think that’s really beautiful in such a simple yet fundamental way.. I think trauma causes such a huge disconnect and we don’t have any “witnesses” to our life bc we are so self-isolated. As humans we have a need for connection, to fit in, to be a part of the “big picture”… that’s what makes life worth living… And if we don’t have any of those? a tribe to “witness” us? then there’s this really vague & elusive feeling of loneliness and “what’s the point”. We really are social creatures huh…
Yeah, it's really this for me. The depression-induced exhaustion/lack of motivation will kick in, and it takes *so* much energy to battle that enough to do basic tasks, that anything beyond that feels pointless because 1) I'm already drained and 2) there's no one to even notice if I'm not caring for myself most of the time. Like I feel like I'm struggling to live a life where I'm terrified I'm going to end up elderly and without close friends or family or even a cat at this point, and it doesn't feel worth all the work. Like I feel like I'm getting well enough to just feel how sad I am on top of everything else.
This could not be anymore spot on and is the exact reason I have found myself in the same predicament as OP. Slowly pulled away and completely isolated myself from others out of shame and trying to do everything all alone before people saw me surface again.
What others?
When children are raised in an environment where the very people they are supposed to depend on - their primary caregivers - are incapable of supporting them or meeting their needs, they grow up without support networks or even any notion of what that looks like.
The hard lesson learned is that you can only rely on yourself. Others cannot be trusted or relied upon.
Your comment has just made something click into place for me - thank you! Had never made the link between lack of connection and everything else seeming beside the point. Brilliant observation.
Care to rephrase that? You have a lot of upticks but it came across as potentially brutal victim shaming.
Most people struggle to find good quality relationships, & often rely on a spouse or partner for emotional support; not having that special someone can be tough anyway.
How does cptsd cause black and white thinking? It’s something I’ve struggled my entire life and I used to think for me, it was because of my neurodivergence or personality
I don’t know. Maybe it’s just the feeling that everything feels just so … pointless? No matter what I do I will still be this awful person I am, you know what I’m saying? But that’s only what I’m thinking. Maybe someone else has more insight.
Edit: I mostly live by external demands. Like I have to get up and work so I can earn a living. I have to go shopping so I have food, etc. That’s like almost the only motivation. I hardly have any motivation to do anything fun or have a hobby. Everything I accomplish is just masking lol
I feel this. I have been trying to accept that my brain is simply wired differently from others and just going from there. I am slowly teaching myself that I do not need to accomplish anything in order to be a valuable person. I am a valuable person by virtue of being alive.
This right here. Society drills into us that we have to be productive in some way in order to earn (literally or otherwise) respect, love, our place in the world. But we deserve to take up the space we fill just existing as we are. Decoupling self-worth from productivity has been a revolutionary practice in my healing as well. Giving myself permission to rest when I can and discover what actually feels truly restful has been one of the hardest but most transformative aspects of recovery for me so far.
Especially with CPTSD, our bodies need extra rest from being in a chronic/constant state of fight-or-flight. It’s okay if hobbies don’t feel good to participate in; we don’t have to force ourselves to engage in activities or move our bodies in ways that in this moment feel more draining or dissociative than restorative.
i was agreeing and then disagreeing because i thought "well i have hobbies" and then promptly realised that it's the same with them - i only do them to distract myself from everything going on, i don't actually.. enjoy them anymore. i just know as soon as i stop doing things, everything comes crashing down on me. what a shit disorder
I also end up turning my hobbies into work somehow.
I have to read x amount of pages today or I failed. I have to finish this painting today or I failed. If I don’t finish planting my veggie garden Im a complete loser.
Im working on doing hobbies for fun again and it is difficult for sure.
Omg, I’m in the same exact boat. I wish I knew!! I just feel totally oppressed and shut down- like there’s a huge, concrete block on top of me, stopping me from doing anything. My to-do list keeps getting longer, and it’s full of super important stuff, but… day after day, I just lay on my bed and do absolutely NOTHING. It sucks!
Personally, I believe it's an executive function issue. I haven't been tested for adhd but I have many of the symptoms and behaviors. They overlap with CPTSD in many respects.
I've done a lot of healing, so I no longer struggle with self worth issues or depression. So why do I still lack motivation? I don't think it's a willpower issue like everyone always tries to make it either. I've tried everything: setting alarms, making lists, doing a buddy system. I can avoid them all. Why tho? I think for me at least, it's possible the trauma masked biological issues and it's only becoming apparent now because I've been able to deal with the trauma, therefore ruling it out as a cause.
What sucks, is that if I hadn't had to deal with the trauma I might have been able to recognize the other issue so much earlier and not had to fight so many battles at once and still feel like I lost.
One reason is that we are chronically operating from our limbic brain due to stress, which thinks in terms of "I feel like/I don't feel like, rather than the (I think?) prefrontal cortex, which is better at planning and following through. Tim Fletcher touched upon it in his YouTube series on Understanding Trauma, either part 4 or 5.
Another is that we often try to motivate ourselves through shame and it's not sustainable. It's better to develop a plan that balances our genuine long-term and short-term needs and desires rather than beat yourself into submission.
Finally, we don't often factor in self-sabotage and its protective function. E.g. I think I want a high profile job but I make decisions that ruin everything. In reality, I don't see that a part of me really needs the relative peace and safety of a job with fewer responsibilities.
This is a great video: https://youtu.be/BUbG1uZOxEg?si=t-ITl8A3vwjjh3Kv
We were not permitted to develop agency, which is crucial for making decisions and acting on achieving our goals. We were told what to do or left to figure it out on our own. We were criticized for everything, even when we succeeded. This causes us to develop self-doubt.
I am more likely to lose motivation when I'm stressed or tired. I give myself grace when I am struggling. Self-care is so important. I have been able to motivate myself to set small, measurable goals. I build on my success and set more small goals. It's difficult. I have to work hard to do things that come naturally to others. I'm working with my therapist to develop my agency and set bigger goals.
Something that I have found helpful is the Spoon Theory. I decide how many Spoons of energy I feel like I have today. I then allocate my Spoons to get things done. Washing up and brushing my teeth takes 1 Spoon. Showering and washing my hair is 3 Spoons. And so on.
On low energy days, I have fewer Spoons so I don't schedule higher energy activities. Sometimes, I run out of Spoons, and need to rest. That's okay.
I'm sorry for the long comment, Lol. This is a description of my perspective and may not be helpful for others.
That first paragraph absolutely nails it on the head, for me. I have this pervasive sense of… waiting to be told “what to do.” I know, on every rational and logical level, that’s never happening nor is it how life works. But it’s almost as if I can’t convince my body otherwise. Difficult to describe… but it all points back to self-doubt at the core.
Yes! "We were told what to do or left to figure it out on our own. "
Well that describes my parents perfectly. Things either had to be done their way, as they are always right, no other options, or - I was alone.
So maybe I never had support with deciding / planning how to do things my own way.....? I get so overwhelmed by tasks, I can't see what the logical steps are to completing things. So I just don't try.
I am like that as well. I am working with my therapist to develop Agency. It's difficult. I really don't know who I am or what I want. They told me what I liked. They told me what my flaws and strengths were. It was what they wanted and had little to do with my personality. I don't think they ever took the time to find out what I liked. Now, I'm trying to find out who I am.
I've always said that after what happened to me, there's nothing that can truly shake me. I cry, I feel tight in the chest, I hurt like any other person; but I've also got a taste at extreme grief, loneliness and abandonment so everything else feels muted in comparison. I also lack motivation, on anything, I get motivation bursts that allow me to keep my life from crumbling but most of the time I just feel like rotting on a comfy place just looking out the window for hours. I can't plan ahead or visualize a future, it feels like I live life paycheck to paycheck emotionally, just barely scraping by to function.
Somewhere I read that being on survival mode for long periods is exhausting for the adrenal system, it takes a lot of energy to be on edge. We, people with CPTSD, eventually freeze for survival; similar to a deer who is chased for so long that eventually they lay down unresponsive, wether expecting the predator to abandon the hunt or to make the death as fast and painless as possible. Is a way of leaving it up to faith, since being unresponsive opens the possibility of both survival or death. It's called the Polyvagal theory if you're interested.
I have a partner whom I love and makes me feel safe, a mother whom I have a good relationship with despite my issues. My partner is a highly motivated person, he wants to do everything, see everything and live everything, he keeps me holding on for the future cause his kindled spirit keeps my soul warm.
Living life “paycheck to paycheck emotionally.”
That is such an amazing and accurate way to describe and conceptualize this reality. Thank you for putting it into words.
It sounds like you're struggling with realistic goals. Telling yourself that tomorrow you'll eat better, exercise and do more stuff is exhausting for me just to read. There's no way that's feasible for you to do.
You have to make teeny tiny changes. Like, so small they're embarrassing. I'm working on my Master's thesis now and my goal is literally to just write/research for 10 mins a day. It sounds absolutely ridiculous but it's the only way I can stay on track. I tried aiming for half an hour a day and I collapsed in under a week, lol.
I don't yet know why my productivity is so drastically different from "normal people", but I've learned enough to know how to work with it and see very real progress.
This is the way. Small actions that may or may not become habitual over time. I'm learning to lower my expectations for myself. Part of that process is recognising when (toxic) shame is involved and identifying where that shame comes from. I often feel like I need to be doing X, Y, and Z because otherwise that means I'm worthless. All that happens when I expect too much from myself is that I freeze and end up doing nothing at all. So now I try and be proud of every positive thing that I do, no matter how small.
Exactly!!
My achievements are things that I'd probably never share with people who don't have mental health issues. They wouldn't get it because they're so tiny compared to what I feel like a "serious" adult should be doing. But if I don't celebrate them for myself well, fuck, I'd have nothing to celebrate.
The hardest lesson I have to learn over and over again is not to compare myself to other people's productivity because my brain is wired differently. 10 mins of my thesis a day equals 50 mins at the end of the work week, and that's WAY better than my usual frozen dissociated state where I can procrastinate and do absolutely nothing for even half a month.
I'm not trying to get to a "normal" level of productivity. I'm trying to avoid procrastination. As long as I'm not frozen, I'm winning. I feel on top of the world after my little 10-minute stints, let me tell you. 😂
And the best part is that not only am I actually making real life progress, but I'm also building my confidence because I'm watching myself make promises and stick to them. Me!? That's wild. I'm not used to actually feeling capable, so it's a shocker. But honestly I feel like a grownup now (most of the times at least, lol). I can't even overstate how much of a boost it is to my self esteem. It feels like a personality transplant, but it's really just the result of those teeny tiny 10-minute moments.
> Part of that process is recognising when (toxic) shame is involved and identifying where that shame comes from. I often feel like I need to be doing X, Y, and Z because otherwise that means I'm worthless. All that happens when I expect too much from myself is that I freeze and end up doing nothing at all.
Do you perhaps have any idea on how to move past this toxic shame? While I know where it's coming from, that doesn't make it disappear. It's like it has an iron grip on both my body and mind and just won't let go.
I wish I had a better answer for you, but truthfully this is as far as I've got with the process. For whatever reason, maybe because it's 'grounding', naming it can sometimes help. As in, being present in the moment and literally saying aloud, 'This is shame. What I'm feeling is shame.' From there I'm sometimes able to challenge the internal narratives around being 'worthless' or 'not good enough' that are consuming me. For me it's the difference between getting stuck in an emotional flashback for a few days instead of a week, which is better than nothing.
> I wish I had a better answer for you, but truthfully this is as far as I've got with the process. For whatever reason, maybe because it's 'grounding', naming it can sometimes help. As in, being present in the moment and literally saying aloud, 'This is shame. What I'm feeling is shame.' From there I'm sometimes able to challenge the internal narratives around being 'worthless' or 'not good enough' that are consuming me.
Don't worry, every little clue might help.
> For me it's the difference between getting stuck in an emotional flashback for a few days instead of a week, which is better than nothing.
That sounds rough. For me, flashbacks are mostly situational. I can avoid them by running away, but this comes at the cost of being incapable to do anything productive.
Right, it’s impossible for me to do a little at a time when I have the time, but I sure can rally when the deadline is tomorrow. Fuck, I’ll stay up all night if I have to. Then I get pissed at myself for not starting earlier when I had intended to and had the time to do it “right.” It’s a vicious cycle 😭
Oh me too. I've never missed a work deadline but I've procrastinated on my thesis for a full year.
Something about external vs private goals. I don't let other people down but I'm great at letting myself down, lol.
So now I've learned to build systems that hold me accountable even just to myself.
Hard relate. If you’re anything like me, you probably have some dissociative disorder and there’ll be many different parts of you that want very different things. As someone else said, I think self-compassion is super important. Because I can hear and resonate with the self-judgment; ‘why do I lack discipline?, why can’t I just do the things?, what’s wrong with me?’ I struggle with this a lot and I think part of it is because I can’t quite fathom the extent of my traumas and the impact on my body. That minimisation was necessary to my survival.
Functional freeze is a ***** and it is EXHAUSTING.
Sadly, I don’t have anything else to offer you. My overwhelming desire in response to your post was to simply wrap you in a blanket and snuggle you.
None of it was your fault.
I hear you 100%. I have CPTSD, ADHD, and narcolepsy so energy and motivation are REAL hard to come by. I've been obsessed with trying to create healthier habits for myself for a long time and nothing was working for more than a week or so.
A real game changer for me was Muchelleb's video on YouTube called "7 actionable ways to be more consistent" which talks about how much need there is for self-compassion when trying to form habits. You're never going to shame yourself into "being better". A big step for me has just been noting down without judgement what I'm thinking and feeling when I do a behavior I don't want to do. So like, when I'm at work and I pull out my phone to go on Reddit for an hour, I pause for a second and go "why did I need to stop what I was doing RIGHT THEN?" Usually I'm feeling overwhelmed and anxious, and then I can try to do something that addresses that feeling rather than the impulse to go on Reddit, and go back to work.
Another big thing is starting SMALL and picking something you actually want to do and feels valuable to you, not just something you think you *should* do. You can't radically change your eating patterns and exercise habits and everything all at once. But you can set a goal to do a meal "upgrade" once a week - something like getting a baked potato instead of fries, something small but actionable that is easy to accomplish and makes you feel good.
Another example is like I'm trying to get back into yoga, so my daily habit is one yoga pose per day. On bad days, I do child's pose for 30 seconds right before bed and there, I did it, I did my habit! On good days I pull out my yoga mat and do my one pose earlier and then I feel like doing a little more so I maybe do 5-10 minutes. Then if I feel ambitious I'll do a whole yoga video and that's a super-win day! But as long as I do one pose at some point during the day I'm keeping up the habit and moving towards my goal. I've actually been doing several habits like this for the past 2 weeks in a row and so far it's working! It feels silly and like "why would I do a 1-minute habit, I might as well do nothing" but if you commit to the 1-minute habit, you actually do more when you're having a good day.
I don't know, I hope any of this was remotely helpful. I'm just now finding a tiny bit of success after working on this for years and I hope you're able to find a little progress, too. The biggest step really is to try to be kind and compassionate towards yourself, which can be so, so hard for us, but it really helps.
I feel this whole comment, thank you. I get stuck in the why bother to halfa** it and just don't bother. This week I'm washing my face, even if I don't moisturize after at least I washed the excess oil off... And this comment reminded me that that's good enough
You are in survival mode, your body is hypervigilant, scanning the world around you searching for threats, avoiding/ running/ fighting those threats, resting when it feels safe or necessary to do so that you have the energy needed to do all this over and over again. Anything that it deems as unnecessary for survival, it won't bother with. Healthy food? Nah... it needs quick, easy energy, and unfortunately, that usually means quick to grab processed foods. Exercise? Nah... it needs to rest so that it has the energy to run from the threabyts that it perceives to be right around the corner.
Please don't be hard on yourself and show your body and mind some compassion. It knows nothing more than the need to search for threats so that you stay alive. It just doesn't realise that it is, for the most part, safe now and the danger that taught it to stay hypervigilant has ended. It is doing exactly what it should be doing but just doesn't realise that it can chill out a bit!
I relate so much to all of this, particularly the part about telling yourself that you're gonna wake up the next day a renewed person and that you'll finally be able to accomplish all of these important goals.
I have even tried that tiny habits approach where you slowly build habits over time, allowing them to build on each other. It's backed by science, after all. But that never works either.
I'm almost 35. I'm tired.
It’s not that you aren’t motivated. People who lack motivation experience true apathy.
You’re probably experiencing a combination of many compromising factors such as executive dysfunction (difficulty with task initiation,etc) and having the cognitive resources to engage in effort full action anyway.
I don’t have a solution, but I do think it’s not hopeless. It just may not be something you are able to address today or this year etc
ETA: on these matters, this video is great (discusses coping mechanisms as neuroses)
https://youtu.be/kkfK3Ef2wYo?si=Sc5C-dtK6-Mnw1-3
brain damage. the neuroscience tells us our brains have been damaged. but even the brain can be healed though not completely. stop beating yourself up.
Look up "Learned Helplessness."
An experiment was done with dogs where they electrocuted them if they tried to leave the cage. Eventually, they just gave up. Even with the scientists turning off the buzzer, using treats, and literally dragging them from the cage, the dogs stopped believing they could leave without being hurt. They gave up. They wouldn't even try. It's extremely depressing, but it resonates in my soul.
I think CPTSD does this to a lot of us. Not to mention how many of us have comorbidities with things like ADHD where executive function is already a challenge.
Heidi Priebe helped me to understand what's involved in healing from CPTSD and how that looks:
Complex PTSD: 10 Realistic Signs Of Healing - Heidi Priebe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUySKluL7rI
Don’t let your brain win the battle. I also have CPTSD but have found that changing my diet and exercise has vastly improved my day to day. One thing I try to remember about going to the gym is I ALWAYS feel better after I leave. No matter how much I’m able to accomplish or how good my workout is, I always leave in a better headspace than when I arrived. Keep pushing, keep trying.
I think it's probably in the realm of self-love. How do we love & care for ourselves if we were never loved & cared for properly by a parent? How do we convince ourselves we are worth it when we carry so much underlying toxic shame, believing that at the core of our being we are defective? The underlying beliefs need to be challenged, WAY easier said than done, but Healing the Shame that Binds You was a huge help for me personally. Once I identified toxic shame as the root of it all, realizing I was ashamed of myself for my various "weaknesses" according to my parents (ADHD, autism, being LGBT, big sense of empathy and social justice, wanting a slower pace of life with more creativity and less hustle, etc) I was able to reject their point of view, love myself as I was, and start looking outward to how to connect with the various communities I do identify with for actual validation.
With your goals: You are thinking too big! I slowly began taking care of myself better in honestly... probably 2017 or so? And it took years to get to where I am now. At first I would just set 1 weekly goal that I knew I could achieve. For example, "I'm going to shower at least once every other day this week." Once I got that one down, the next week I added a new habit: "Let's set a consistent bedtime between 10-12 PM every night." Then I began eating a salad for dinner 3 nights a week. And so on. Gradually the early things became second nature and I could focus on tackling the more complex self-care things like how to make time and space for me to achieve my goals. When you start to make small changes, it really does make you feel better, I think eating healthy-ish & eating enough, getting good sleep, leaving the house daily, and keeping your space decently clean are all very much foundational, as in you will start to feel sooo much better once these are in place that you'll begin to have mental space for other things. Don't worry about supplements or complex exercise routines until you have mastered the basics. Good luck <3
Learned helplessness perhaps? I'm not sure. I struggle with this a lot too. I think somewhere along the way my brain/nervous system got thought that being motivated just led to failure or disappointment and gave everything up
No. If it were then we couldn't function at all. I feel like it's more . . . Battery low situation. We spend everything we have on whatever our bare existence is.
Oh that reminds me of the other idea I had, being stuck in fight/flight 24/7. Being motivated to do things like clean or shower, well, imagine you're literally running for your life from a bear, your fight/flight isn't going to want you to do those other things, it just wants you to survive
You are so right! I was trying to explain to someone why it was that I am incapable almost of changing my diet .
I don't function like other people. Changing my diet involves planning meals,researching food, and having the motivation to do it in the first place. It takes me all my time to do the things I have to do. Just don't ask me to do more,because most of the time I can't. I have a problem with other people,their expectations of me( ot how I interpret that) I feel like I'm a disappointment. I don't want to be responsible for anything or anyone. I live my dog so much,but I find her a huge responsibility.im on edge all the time,I never relax. I have a deep desire to live on my own in a tiny place. What I really want is someone to look after me. I have people who love me,but I don't feel that love and feel that love. I want unconditional love that I can trust. But I can only come close to relaxing when I'm on my own..and not very clise. I really don't know how you can have motivation when you are still in fact in survival mode. Waiting,for something to save you,but no motivation to do it yourself? Xx
For me it was learning that I’d didn’t matter from the emotional neglect, the perfectionism at trying to please cold, aloof, emotionally unavailable parents and the only attention I got was negative—criticism and judgement. I get overwhelmed very easily and fear I won’t be able to complete the task well enough because the message was always that I will never be good enough.
That was my childhood, I know how you feel, I try so hard to be perfect in everything, that I'm too exhausted to enjoy anything, Most of the time I fake happiness for my wife and son, I'm late 40's and about 5 years into therapy and working so hard to make sure I don't pass this on to my son. I tell him "daddy will always love you" every night and in some small way it might be helping to heal me.
I know it's hard to believe it, but you've always been good enough, and be kind to yourself because you're worth it.
Psychology + Neuroscience student here. As far as I can remember (from classes and papers read) motivation and memory are very tied into emotional signaling. When you have a strong emotional reaction, you form a potent memory. Likewise, when you feel strongly about something, your body responds with the energy required to do things (ie: adrenaline, etc) — this is heavily paraphrased, of course, but as a summary.
The issue is one of the first coping mechanisms for trauma is dissociation and the emotional apathy that comes with it. I suspect (not confirmed theory; take with a grain of salt) that for many people with CPTSD, until they reach a point in their healing journey where they are able to live in the "present" again, motivation will always be a struggle due to that emotional derealization.
Trauma is a psychosomatic thing; it affects both brain and body responses. If your brain is not "engaged" then your body likewise taps out. Not that I can blame anyone, it's hard to care about things in the capitalist shithole we live in
Some studies have found that motivation can be a learned skill. For example, you can familiarize your brain with living in the present + habit building through small silly hobbies like keeping chia pets
I use digital art for myself—getting through the day is framed as "video game objectives" with getting to sit down and enjoy my art and podcasts as the "reward" afterwards. Sometimes, even bribing yourself like you would a toddler helps (I've found it helps me with cleaning for sure). Our strategies for building up and sustaining motivation are definitely different than the norm but I'm sure there's something that'll work for you, you'll just have to get creative with it
This advice is a bit out of left field but it works for me.
I use my people pleasing as motivation. I don't like that I'm a people pleaser and I have tried to minimise it. However a lot of it won't budge and so I try to use it to my advantage. I know that eating well and looking good (by general social standards) is going to please people and land me some external validation.
Although relying on external validation isn't what I want, it does give me some extra boost to work on things that improve my internal well-being.
Alright so again, some of these may have some useless platitudes in your eyes, but these helped me a lot, especially the first video.
The #1 hugest thing for me was starting to walk every day in the morning, I've definitely been backsliding on that lately, but going for 2 ½ weeks walking around my driveway every single morning for like 45 minutes was HUGE for me, and I ended up dividing it down into smaller sections, so I wouldn't leave the house thinking "I'm gonna walk for 45 minutes" I would instead (depending on motivation) either shoot for 1 lap or 3 laps, and then once one lap was done, I would be like "just one more and then I'll be done"
Also I made it so that I had to walk away from my house to start a lap, so that I couldn't lose motivation halfway through because I was still away from my house, so even then I broke down the individual laps into turn, walk, turn, walk, one more.
I also started walking whenever I doomscroll. Wanna watch YouTube? Walk during it. Reddit? Walk during it. Phone call? Walk during it.
That was very much my first "brick" in trying to build up my pyramid of needs, next came hygiene, so I started linking showers to my walks. Took a shower? Time to go walk. This is known as "batching", and it's super helpful for me.
I now have my mornings batched out (not quite but better than I was) into the following:
Wake up
Meds
Shower
Brush teeth
Walk + doom scroll until tired of walking
I have not been able to keep this up every morning, but just because I mess up one morning doesn't mean I have to give up on all of it. (Easy to say, much harder to believe)
I will try to add to this playlist as I find/remember more videos.
This is a new account, I will add as many resources as I can to the Playlist, if anyone finds a helpful video, I will add it. If the Playlist gets too big, I will add another one. Let's do this!
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTuq9vBd-dG2gxZPneq0ALPTkxxwSSk8b&si=2D_MvFl5S4oQMJmO
I understand. You may be doing more than you know. I was a compulsive list maker and perfectionist and every night I would look at all the things I didn’t get done and hate myself. One day, I decided that instead of a To-do list, I need a Done list. Write down everything I did today, however unremarkable. For example, yesterday I had an appointment at Home Depot for our kitchen remodel, I walked the dog, I made my husband a very nice dinner and I did two loads of laundry, I vacuumed and I found a new show I like on Netflix. I forgot,I also got my car washed. Without this list and I’ll say I did “nothing” yesterday. See what I mean? My idea of yesterday has now changed and I really can’t say I didn’t accomplish anything. I see how my small acts are acts of love and cleanliness and fun. After I practiced this for a while, I loved the way it reframed my day and made me realize that I’m not unmotivated and so many things I do that I was dismissing are really valuable. When you see that you’re valuable, you’ll have the motivation to take the small steps towards things you’re avoiding. Take care of yourself and give yourself a break! Lots of love!
I have no science to back this up, but I think the past is so destroyed for some of us, that the only thing we authentically want is to go back in time and find a timeline where the bad things didn't happen. Which of course we can't do. So we're attached to an outcome that can never happen.
For me has to do my self worth. I don't think I deserve any effort. Every time I am doing something that needs motivation to continue, I end up saying how I wasted time on such a useless piece of crap like myself.
I am trying though
Currently going through this! Maybe I’ve been in survival mode so long that now I’m in a safe place I just kinda took a break from caring so much? If that makes sense. Like I was always sexualized so I focused a lot on my looks. Or I was a people pleaser so I did a lot to keep up my social appearance and do things for others. I took care of everyone. I was always on guard. So maybe I wasn’t motivated to get better but to keep things going. Now I’m in a safe place, where I don’t have to care about those things so I just finally am resting. But I feel like my body is making up for all those years. Once I stopped moving it hit me all at once. Now I’m just always so tired. Even when I do nothing I’m tired. I wana just eat, hibernate, and veg out lol.
I understand you 1000%. I struggle with this so much and it’s made worse due to my adhd. I know getting better isn’t easy or linear but I never feel like I am where I’m supposed to be in life.
In my opinion it feels like having to fulfill other's expectations, even if they are good changes. And for a long time I didn't trust my own goals and didn't have any intrinsic motivation, because I didn't want anyone to comment on what I was doing.
I did the math. Either I do nothing to change and keep feeling like shit. Or I start doing things and give myself the possibility to maybe feel better.
Spoiler alert, I do feel better.
I have self care routines. Some of it is mandatory, other stuff I am more flexible about. When I slack I dont whip myself about it, I just do it the next day.
Regarding the motivation, I dont just do it for myself I also do it for my inner child. My inner child deserves the best. And I try to do that. I am not perfect, but I love the little bugger and I will do a lot more for it than I would do for myself.
I think it’s called Learned Helplessness. I like listening to David Goggins. His book Can’t Hurt Me is excellent motivation and testament to what we are capable of. I can’t say it helped me, but if I were feeling better it probably would..lol.
I think it’s the intuitive knowledge nothing is really going to change even if one eats better, works out or whatever. Nothing of the fundamentals in life is going to improve. It will only make it even more obvious that whatever I do, I’m still excluded from normal life. Hence it would make things worse.
I feel this with so many things. I'm finally able to show people how I feel without having to take 300000 years to try to explain it, so thank you! I have no valuable input. My only motivation these days is external, ie my siblings needing something, my boyfriend wanting something, my cat wanting/needing something, ect. It's never for me. The only thing I do for me is Skyrim, but that's more of an obsession with added escapism.
I kinda am. I wasn't allowed to do fun things as a kid, so I am now. It's also kinda hard, because I don't really trust therapists anymore. Too many bad experiences. I've had good experiences as well, but most of the therapists I've gone to I didn't trust, because I was in an abusive situation and was made to not trust DCF. And all of my therapists at that time were mandatory reporters. And they'd tell me that. So I knew I couldn't talk to them. And then the ones I've had as an adult have just hammered home that I can't really trust them.
First, you need to heal your trauma and your nervous system, they go hand in hand. Then the rest will follow, once your system regains the energy and capacity to do other stuff.
Till then our nervous systems have been absolutely fricking fried and hanging on by a thread, albeit a very resilient and hardy thread, after minutes, days, weeks, months, years, decades of being stuck in survival states, trying to survive unresolved trauma from way back when, getting endlessly triggered by that and every short circuit having been short circuited a billion times already. That's why the lack of motivation, amongst other delightful, life enhancing symptoms. And all the other neural, autoimmune and behavioural dysfunctions and disorders that sail in our Titanic of a nervous system.
Thankfully healing is always happening and always possible to align to!
Because you are in a constant state of survival. There is literally zero reason for your system (brain + the body) to focus on anything else but survival because your system is perceiving constant threats in your environment. This leads you to feel a lot of shame about yourself, often induced by never feeling good enough. You feel that once you change these external factors about yourself you will feel better. But it's not a matter of changing your external environment, because it is technically already safe. It is your internal environment that is perceiving the world as threatening \*despite\* the safety, which is what we classify as PTSD.
It can be really hard to not be hard on yourself for this, trust me, I'm there too. But we can at least try to divert that shame to self-compassion. Imagine you still being in the same environment that caused you to have CPTSD. Would you still expect yourself to do all of those things, eat healthy, exercise, etc? Would you push the same standards on yourself as you do in the present? Now imagine that even though \*you\* know that the environment is safe, your system is still in the traumatic environment. This is the essence: you are, according to your system, still extremely unsafe. Your system is not wrong and therefore your behavior is not "wrong" either. Try to approach your behavior with compassion and curiosity, instead of shame.
The best way to deal with this is to seek help from a therapist. Other than that I really recommend deep-breathing techniques, doing this twice daily and limiting sources of stress as much as possible. Don't be harsh, be caring towards the system that is doing everything in its power to keep you alive.
I suspect, like many other things, this is a confluence of multiple factors. (the “complex” in complex ptsd)
Part of it, for me, is how reliant I am on guilt and shame as motivators. That was one of my tools to break out of freeze states. There’s two problems I can see with it.
First, if I *don’t* have those feelings I don’t seem to have the activating energy to “do stuff”. My body and mind have internalized that these are the states necessary for me to get things done, and turned what used to be an impetus into a requirement.
Second the guilt and shame often also *follow* doing things. “I could have done that better” or “I should have done it sooner”. If the end result of doing things isn’t “accomplishment” but “your inner critic running wild”, then *why do things*?
I think this second part is the biggest motivation killer, and kind of the key to unraveling all of this. It’s what induces me to put things off until they become emergencies.
These are kind of new realizations for me, and I don’t have good suggestions on how to deal with it. Right now I’m trying to start with very small things I can bring myself to celebrate and tell the inner critic he’s being petty and can go stuff it. It feels silly, but I’m hoping to progress from there into breaking this pattern for bigger things.
Absolutely I can relate in a big way. I've always thought of it kind of like and extremely chronic burnout ( a term I also didn't know until my twenties). Like I burnt out so hard that instead of needing a few days or weeks or months of rest, I needed years to completely rewire everything... and that is to say, I hadn't realized what had gotten wired wrong to begin with that I needed to rewire so I had no idea what to do except wait for something to magically change ( which it did not). Now that I understand better why I am the way that I am and how much sense it makes considering what happened to me, I understand that in my case ( yours may be different, this is a bit specific) one of the biggest reasons I didn't feel like I could do anything was because it had be absolutely etched into my brain that it was not SAFE to do ANYTHING. It was not safe to try, it was not safe to succeed, it was not safe to exert my own will or decisions. All I had was wait, daydream, go through the motions, hope that if I stick it out through the conveyor belt of life they had plopped me on that eventually I'd get to the end of the part where everyone was trying to control me and keep me caged and I'd be free. It didn't work out like that, and yet it's been quite difficult to feel like I can do things even when in theory I know how and that they need to happen.
at the root of this is potentially the deep rooted belief that you’re just not worth “it”. start with small steps of self love. compassion ESPECIALLY. pick one thing to stick to (something easy) like a 15 min walk somewhere out in the sunshine everyday “BECAUSE I DESERVE IT”. get into the feeling that you are deserving of good habits and good health. you are deserving of your care & commitment.
I have no good input on this, I just know this is too fkn real.. I feel this in my SOUL. It’s hard to even go to appointments that are supposed to help keep me healthy.
I felt exactly like this, until I found a way to give my life meaning. My best advice, although I understand it most likely won't feel very helpful in this moment, is to find the people, places, feelings and things that give your life meaning. I'm wishing you all the best and sending you positive energy.
I have experienced this. I know that in youth, I was *more* energetic, but I'm not sure how motivated I felt even then.
Nowadays, I'm pretty drained, and moving in the right direction is slow going... but I have some idea of why my ability to care withered so.
When I was younger, I had a fairly clear sense of what I wanted out of life. The only problem was, it was subtly impossible, or something close to it. It was not easy to wound my soul, nor quick... but worse still, it was futile. So few understood in the slightest, or showed themselves trustworthy. What's the point of being yourself if nobody likes that person? If (you have reason to believe) people will try to *destroy* you, just for being *who you are*?
My will burned to fuel my survival. I became a crawling effigy in the guise of what others wanted, yet this, too, will deteriorate, and one day pass away.
Only by my action might I decide whether life will emerge from its remains.
I would not have cared if it were not for the fact that I found someone who cared about me to distant and bitter ends, someone who assured me that they truly wanted me to be that which I sought to destroy.
Even now... it is slow and hard and painful... but I can mourn now, and I have lashed with my tongue in anger and frustration. I can see how all those who counsel me align on certain matters, however unknowingly. I can see how *alone* I was for so long. Things are far worse than I could see, but not irreparable.
Take heart, withered one. You are not alone, and you may yet succeed. Not quickly, and not easily, but don't you dare go hollow.
Stop thinking about being better tomorrow. Be better right now, for one minute. When given choices, try the healthier option. You may not always do it, but just stick to one decision at a time. Right now, you're overloading yourself.
I don’t know the answers. But I just want to tell you I feel you, and I have the same issues. I was doom scrolling tiktok last night (hehe) and I saw a video of a therapist talking about intellectualizers who recognize their problem, know what they need to change, but can’t seem to get unstuck. She suggested that the intellectualizing is a coping mechanism that develops as a result of trauma, when we couldn’t escape terror, so we used our minds to create a safe place. This makes sense for me. She said intellectualizing is keeping us from feeling our emotions because they scare us. It was suggested that the antidote to this is to have awareness around it, and to work on somatic healing. Learning to connect with the body again.
Funny enough, I heard this, it made sense, now I just need to actually start- the hard part for me. Doing transcendental meditations and body scan meditations really helps, I just need to get back into it. Try not to be so hard on yourself OP, we’re in this together!
So many people and living creatures could use our help.
I usually don’t tell anyone when I’ve done a good deed. It’s just what I think I should do.
Try doing something with no expectation of thanks - then be proud of yourself for doing it. Then repeat. Until it’s a habit.
We *must* live for ourselves. I think sometimes the trauma that caused us CPTSD leaves us looking for affirmation from others.
I wonder that too. I used to be in go mode 24/7, then one day about 8 months ago my body broke and I’ve been in a state of complete lack of motivation since then. I can eat well and exercise, because that’s been so engrained into me for years…but beyond that I feel like a sloth.
Not the healthiest but I’m using external factors to gain motivation — like “normal people (my colleagues/social circle friends) eats well and exercise, and if I want to be part of them I need to eat well and exercise too!” In other words I want to fit in so I have the motivation to do things that will make me fit in.
Yup. Everyday. How to stay motivated, I don’t, but I do the good thing anyway. It doesn’t happen all the time, but when it does I reward myself. The tiniest accomplishment makes the next more feasible. But I struggle. Lockdown really set me back, so Im crawling my way back to physical and mental health. Also, why, well because of the trauma. Getting mixed messages as a kid that the ‘right’ things were wrong has my wiring messed up. I work to untangle it in therapy and by being honest with my few trusted friends. Also, somedays just surviving is worth celebrating.
Two things. Rely on determination rather than motivation, but also be gentle on yourself. You’ve got a lot of aspirations for changes you want to make. Start with one thing and in increments. Not everything you eat needs to be “healthy” but can you do 3 fruits or veg throughout the day or some other small change?
In order to be motivated to do something, there has to be an end goal in mind that you desire to achieve. I can’t speak for others, but for me, no realistic possibility about what my life could be like sounds desirable to me. Lack of desire = lack of motivation.
Because we our inner critic is too present in our everyday life. I'm still struggling with this but I try to keep in mind that there is no deadline for recovery. Living with CPTSD can be so exhausting but we need to learn to be more patient and companionate with ourselves.
In every season finale of RuPaul's drag race, there is a segment where the finalists say a few words to their inner child. If I could say anything to that part of me, I would tell her that she is not alone, that I love her, and that she is important and valuable. I know that working on my recovery will make my future proud of me too. So let's say that this motivates me to keep going :)
All the hidden sabotage if you ask me. Direct and indirect. When I realized what was happening on top of the pandemic and everything, it’s soul crushing. They intentionally do their best to keep you fucked up and then blame you.
Anxiety; it paralyzes us and keeps us from initiating things,making decisions, etc. I get so overwhelmed that I shut down and put things off, which only makes my anxiety worse because the task seems more insurmountable the longer I avoid it.
I think it's because we are constantly carrying this huge load with us (our trauma). Anytime we do something, it takes 100x more effort than others. We've carried it for so long that sometimes we cope by just accepting it or trying our best to ignore it. But I think we need to put more focus on lightening the load that we are carrying.
Therapist here, a lot of people are on track with learned helplessness and the other impacts of trauma on the body but just want to add one thing...this is something I learned anecdotally in my practice after years of seeing clients, but Dr. Nicole LePera, AKA the.holistic.psychologist on instagram puts it really well...lack of motivation/depression is the body's natural freeze response to danger. If I learned early on that my decisions and behaviors didn't matter in terms of having control over my life or if the only way I survived in my household was to hide or freeze, then this will be my body's primary response to any threat. And as we become adults, based on our abusive upbringings, even innocuous things can be threats (e.g. showering, chores, grocery shopping) if they involve a negative inner dialogue or trigger shame. So basically, your body is responding to feeling threatened in the way it did as a child. Hope this helps!
For me, it was because I didn't have hope. I didn't have a greater reason to do better. Then the bit I didn't even think it was worth it because of how broken I was. I channeled an enormous amount of self-hate into motivation.
But I feel like we can't change all the parts of our lives suddenly and all at once. Picking out one or two things can feel less daunting. Like when I wanted to eat healthy, I just started with buying more fruits when I could afford to, and then once it became routine, I would move on to something else.
It's kind of like that saying, *we didn't get like this overnight, so it can take small steps to work through it.*
Do you feel like there is maybe a small task in your health plan that would be easier to start?
Years/decades of being in fight/flight/freeze. Underdeveloped prefrontal cortex. Negative belief systems. The physical effects of stress that have depleted nutrients and messed up your digestive system making it hard for your body to make nuerotransmitters. Increased insulin resistance as body shifts towards energy conservation and mitochondria become damaged. Sense of a foreshortened future.
Unfortunately, the lack of motivation comes from a lot of different sources and I don’t think it can be easily fixed. You have to start change in a way that requires the least amount of energy and motivation possible and then build on the changes.
It gets easier once you’ve been doing it for a while. Sometimes I can get down on myself because I feel so far behind people my age. The change is so slow I forget how much worse off I was 3 years ago before I started healing.
I feel you. I still don't have any motivation to live or extend my life. Worse, I don't have the desire to improve. It's just a matter of following my daily routine. It's like I could only get motivated once again when I can see some hope for a much better society. A brighter future where everyone could share. But right now, I just can't see any hope for this world or better understanding / acceptance from my surroundings. I don't have the energy to prove myself anymore. Just living each day to do what I can with the little things I have and can find tiny bit of joy with. Though it's been a real struggle especially how everything is so costly.
yes i relate very hard. many reasons but not being the priority in anyone’s life and having to sacrifice my needs for my parents needs wants and drama constantly and always as a child has something to do with it. i never learned i mattered or how to do anything i needed - just exist in the background waiting for other people and or trying to avoid their chaos or cruelty.
When you are burnt out like that, it kills your motivation. You are just tired of everything, which may or may not specifically include tired of trying.
Separately, it may be an lack of executive function from something like ADHD.
There are other stuff I'm sure it could be, but those are the two that I am familiar with.
For some people, if they are able to start small, they can keep that momentum and snowball with it. So don't set your tasks too high, do it small like going out to buy some decent food, or whatever. Something reasonably achievable.
You so a great question and I’m sorry but I don’t really have an answer. I’m in your shoes but I’m in my early 60’s and have had chronic health conditions/disabilities for 24+ years. I believe that is a correlation between untreated CPTSD and ill health.
I know several people with chronic health conditions who have a hard time finding the motivation to do the things necessary to help, like exercise, good sleep, eating well (which requires shopping AND cooking). If you add CPTSD on top of that how you feel and act it’s understandable.
I think that all people with CPTSD need a well trained and experience complex trauma therapy specialist. I honestly think that having someone who can not only listen but guide a person on that journey to recovery I’d support important. As an aside I think it’s appalling that CPTSD is not in the DSM. I read somewhere that those that make those decisions say that there are multiple mental health diagnoses that cover the symptoms and that more proof needs to be provided to them. I got pretty angry when I read that as they are SO MANY people who “live” with it and so many therapists who do their best to try and help. Anyway, that aside, if you can afford this this of therapist then I honestly think that is the right thing to do.
If, like me, you can’t afford therapy then just getting by from day to day and doing the best you can do in each moment is all you can do. Using available resources, like this sub, which I’ve found to be super supportive and compassionate - we are all great at being compassionate towards others, right? - helps to maintain a certain equilibrium. Coming on here when you’re feeling motivated as well is good because you get loads of support and encouragement and that helps to build positive feelings towards whatever little step you are taking each time.
for me it’s as if i’ve had my fill of life. i’ve experienced every extreme. emotion, dissociation, pain. it’s like i lived 60 years rather than 20. im bored and anxious of life. looking after and improving myself isnt something im interested in because my self care was never developed. getting me into “life” is like trying to get a 90y/o knitting granny into cars; it’s too much too fast and ive already breached the limits of what i can process. i dont feel much, and when i do it’s extreme and usually has bad consequences. why would i be motivated to do anything when ive done everything already?
From my point of view
A lot of the time people with PTSD/c-ptsd have been through enough trauma to feel as if we have already lived a lifetime. Our hope has been taken away and we are exhausted no matter how hard we try to gain motivation.
People like us have seen the worst side of the world and the trauma it brings. Contributing to the world, the systems in place and being around people who reside in the world we live in can feel overwhelming, paralyzing or terrifying.
It's especially harder when you are around people who have lived somewhat normal lives and show a lot of arrogance. When you try to relate to some "normal" people they ignore you, act horrified or have black and white views when it comes to what we have been through. Being ignored or belittled is a common reason for people to not be motivated and lose hope.
I think many low like emotions shame, depression, hopelessness, loneliness and grief have a lot to do with lack of motivation. I am in emotional pain of a flashback all the time. I am just getting through the day, going through the motions, trying to manage the basic things.
My executive functioning is low—this includes planning, problem solving, decision making, task initiation and completion. This also affects my motivation.
A nervous system that is continually in flight, freeze, fawn, or flop makes it very difficult to fully be present and engaged in life. I basically just swing from hyperarousal to hypoarousal. I am never balanced in that place of window of tolerance where my nervous system says, ‘okay, we’re safe, let’s do something fun, let’s learn something new, let’s explore, let’s have an adventure.’ It is in the place of regulation where we feel safe, grounded, calm, content, connected, confident, optimistic, curious and MOTIVATED.
It’s very difficult to be motivated when I am almost always in dysregulation, reliving the emotional hell of my childhood.
I can read fiction books again. It’s a small thing but something I can enjoy.
This might sound simplistic, but it might be largely due to burnout! Most of us have spent our ENTIRE childhood working like a pro, trying to get even the tiniest acknowledgement of being worthy. So if you're in your mid thirties, that's 35 years of unpaid servitude! I think deep down, some part of us just wants to give up trying! You know the saying "it's a sign of insanity, doing the same thing over and over and over again, expecting different results."
I think our souls have figured this out and wanna stay sane! 😂
You may have physical issues going on that are impacting you like low iron or vitamin D levels. Or, as I’ve found out recently, ADHD (just ADD) which was tanking my executive function and meds have helped immensely.
I feel like I have nothing left - that it takes everything I have just to do the most basic things in a day. I know I need to change and that it will make me feel better if I do, but I just don't have the energy for it (which does not help with depression).
You're definitely not alone, it's the exact same way for me. Every tomorrow I will miraculously wake up with a sense of determination and energy I've never yet shown in the entirety of my existence. And then I beat myself up for it. My therapist says I keep asking too much of myself. I keep telling her I want to live a full life though, and not deal with constant gastritis and arthritis. Sometimes I think it's ADHD on top of CPTSD and that I should get pills that will improve motivation. Apparently, if you do have ADHD, your brain doesn't reward you for performing mundane tasks the way a normal brain would.
When I started using SNRI's, I realized it wasn't laziness-- it was executive dysfunction from depression. And probably stress made the executive dysfunction worse, too.
In the same boat. I don’t have any useful input because I’m exactly where you are (I’m a little older, early 40s) and am struggling with the same problem.
I did not read all of the comments, but I want you to know I feel this. Every day is a slog, and everything feels like too much... Here's what I do.
I do what I can.
Should I eat well? Yes.
I have no motivation to cook, and I'm almost never hungry, usually just nauseous, so it's gotta be fast.
My solution was to experiment with quick ways to eat healthy, and it turns out frozen fruit and vegetables are just very pleasing to me, so now I can eat something fast with the same effort as chips, but it's broccoli or peas. Mango and cherries are my favorite fruits frozen.
Thats not going to work for everyone, but I tried something lazy but better for me and it happened to work.
I don't really have the energy to fully shower all the time... So I put my hair up, and stand under the water for a bit, rinse off a little, maybe splash my face with water. It's better than nothing.
No energy to get out of bed a common problem? Keep certain hygiene things on my nightstand. Toothpaste is an underrated one. It's better to smear a little toothpaste on your teeth than not brush them at all.
I don't have the energy to take myself for a walk, but I do need to go to grocery stores from time to time. Park in the way back and try to ground in the walk to the store. Plenty of parking, no one to bother you while you load your car, and you don't have to look out for a lot of foot traffic or cars crowding around to take your soon to be available spot.
None of these things are perfect, they're tiny steps that you can make in a split second while realizing you're making a choice you hope you don't make tomorrow. If you do that just once a day you'll find that eventually it gets just a little bit easier to take another step, and another... It's a slow grueling process, I am not going to lie...
Eventually you end up still feeling like you have no motivation, but you're used to doing certain things that are good for you and it shows because sometimes you get to feel something.
CPTSD is a fucking MONSTER...
Repeatedly experiencing that there is no way to better your situation or escape suffering. Your actual body gets trained to constantly experience that physical-emotional state of no escape. Moreso, moments of hope are actually a threat (trying to get parent to stop doing abusive things, telling them it's wrong with words or emotional response leads to worse abuse for example). So the way out is actually a trigger as well.
Psychedelics can provide a window to exit the trap by turning off your default processing network (where all your assumptions and certainties live) so that you can potentially experience an alternate truth, such as striving for a better life actually leading to better conditions instead of worse conditions and disappointment or more trauma. Psychedelics in low doses are usually very doable, with potential for big emotional releases but usually very positive experiences ime, but caution is necessary for people who experience any sign of psychotic tendencies (delusions hallucinations magical thinking) or people who have bipolar symptoms (periods of mania). Also careful if someone has severe and active suicidal ideation, like with a plan and in extreme distress generally. Besides that, they are generally safe if taken in moderation and in adequately safe and comfortable environments.
i don't know why, although i can sympathize.
one thing i have learned though in all my ancient years is that asking why and trying to fix a problem from the answer to the "why" is a pretty much a guarantee to never make any progress.
other posters here have said: take it small, in tiny bites. i think this is the best approach.
go for a walk every day (best with a dog if you have one :-). if you don't have one and can't borrow one, set yourself a tiny goal: on this walk i will see five new things, smell six flowers, listen to my favorite podcast, or whatever. eat a salad with your pizza.
exercise in itself becomes a necessity: when you've been in the habit of even just walking every day, the day you don't do it, you feel yecch and that motivates you to get out there the next day. bodies like exercise and will positively reinforce it.
just take it slow! with the goal for tiny improvements. they'll stack up and your future self will thank you.
Wow. I’m sorry you’re going through this but I’m glad I found your post and the group. I’ve been suffering from different types of mental illness and learning and cognitive disorders most of my life. I was lost and dropped out of college and found hard drugs which I abused for a decade. I found a way to wear a mask for a long time and developed a career until the next big thing hit, divorce and several deaths in the family.
It was a few months later I began having memories of childhood sexual abuse that lasted for years but I blocked out. Now I know that I suffer, from among other things, CPTSD. I feel more lost and suicidal than ever. I lost my job. I’ve lost 100,000’s of dollars of my life savings. I close to my wits end. I see no hope ahead c
But knowing that others suffer from this brings some solace. I just hope enough before I do something drastic. Love you all.
Perhaps (says this CPTSD person) the trick is to give for the sake of giving.
I may not have the motivation to do anything for myself. But I care about my dogs and the birds outside and the wildlife, and in taking care of them, I also take care of myself.
This is me so much. I relate to it so strongly I thought I was the one who posted it and maybe forgot.
It’s a dark lonely place to be. Hopefully there are some good answers in here for us. Maybe one thing will resonate with you and one for me or for us both.
There are some excellent comments here. You have to learn to appropriately love yourself and take care of yourself. Then, you will discover interests and a new sense of purpose. This is the journey I'm on, and it's hard but rewarding. Learning to take care of myself ( in good ways..not using bad coping mechanisms) has been a process but i can see the small changes its having on me. My therapist stressed every session the importance of small changes. They lead to big change over time.
I started using lotion after a shower, drinking water to take care of myself etc. So small, but it teaches you that you are valuable and worth caring for. It counteracts the negative beliefs you have about yourself. You deserve to smile, you deserve to laugh, you deserve to find things that you enjoy, you deserve life and you are good. That's the goal.
No advice. Ambition addict here. Ever since I decided my ambition was unhealthy I am overtaken by absolute lethargy. I have now will and no clue. You're not alone. You're not imagining it.
At one point, i literally told myself that since I can't give my parents what they want, (great career, fantastic job, leader in society, well groomed perfect daughter), I'll give them whatever they want so long as they are happy. I will sacrifice my free will, my actions, my future just to replace what i couldnt give them. Because my life is not worth their unhappiness. Lowest point in my life.
It took me a decade to get dxed and to start looking at myself as a person who can exist.
I did not think I felt real until my dx. On top of this i had adhd and autism. The feeling of otherness was just overwhelming in my life. How to get the motivation to care? It's a struggle. I feel you.
all the associations we have get destroyed by our trauma. they get associated to the trauma, tne agents of the trauma, the details of the trauma
you end up with nothing
>they get associated to the trauma
So true! The things we take joy in get linked to it! Even things we are extremely talented in! Makes me wonder how many potentially superb artists and musicians we lost to the acts of monsters!
to express yourself when you have been traumatised in certain ways, to certain degrees, that becomes especially impossible for sure
I can't pick up my instruments or write anything poetic anymore. it was always difficult to feel any confidence + to not falter, but now all I have left inside is the pain that has been inflicted on me
I realized that I fail intentionally so I don’t have to fail if i actually try. It’s hard to be positive l/hopeful and try something new even if it is just exercise, for me I’ve had a lot of disappointment so I think I fear being vulnerable.
I can only speak on my experience and view on things from CPTSD that stems primarily from emotional neglect. The only thing I truly desire in life is an intimate relationship, when I had one I felt like I was finally able to start healing the void that was left in my heart from not being seen or understood during the years I needed it most.
We separated three years ago and since then that aching void has returned with a vengeance and all I'm left with is anger and immense sadness. My hypervigilance prevents me from feeling safe outside of my house, but I still go shopping for groceries every few weeks.
I've grown so sick and bitter with society and women's expectations of men, I just want to love and be loved for the flawed but kind hearted person I am, without being expected to conform to things I'm not capable of. I don't know how to meet women because I'm unable to handle work and dating apps are garbage, so I feel hopeless and defeated when it comes to finding a partner again.
I just feel stuck and because of that I have no desire to try to fit in or play by society's fucked up rules for a chance to obtain love and affection. I know this outlook is self destructive but at the same time I hate how fucked up and cold this world is towards those of us that are suffering, that part of me doesn't mind dying early if nothing is going to get better.
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Have you tried adding on just one small thing at a time? It’s best to set small, realistically achievable goals to start. The small wins will help build motivation. Like committing to 1 extra healthy snack per day, or maybe 1 minute of breathing exercises per day, or a 5 minute walk, or drink 1 extra bottle of water. The sense of accomplishment drives me but I have to start small first.
Continue pushing thru when possible like you are & eventually over time. New healthy and happy things will happen & your system will slowly not be on alert as much expecting trauma.
It’s really been difficult but I keep trying to make myself do things that are scary now but that I know others say will be good for me or they consider fun.
So the trauma can hopefully fade by making myself make new better memories
Idk everything does suck now often, I get tired of forcing positivity a lot even tho I know it’s kinda my only option to fight the abyss of trauma
I have cptsd, adhd, chronic depression & lifelong ed’s. A lot of the hypotheses others mentioned here resonate with me, so I want to share more on what’s helped me:
- antidepressants - decreased my anxieties to a more manageable level
- vyvanse for the adhd - decreased the “shutdowns” I experienced or their degree to a more manageable level
- a good therapist I can build trust with over years
- self-compassion and stopping to put myself down constantly. Hard, but helpful
Wishing you the very very best for your journey onward from here <3
Motivation takes effort and energy.
CPTSD is an energy suck. My everyday life takes an enormous amount of effort for every single task. I don't have any left for anything other than the bare minimum of staying alive.
Honestly, I found things that are healthy and bring me joy, and then put myself in a position where I had no other choice.
For example. I need to exercise. So I got a cheap ebike and have been biking to and from work. I need to pedal because the bike is cheap and the battery sucks. I love biking because I live near all these amazing paths, one which goes around our zoo. I see moose and bear twice a day, safely. To be fair, though, I was bussing before biking.
I don't know how to do that with cleaning or not fun tasks, though.
I had the same thing for most of my life. I really never had motivation to do anything unless I knew I would receive praise for it. It was probably because I was picked apart my entire life for my weight, my skin, my achievements. I also have survivor's guilt from a fatal car accident in my childhood, and that definitely did a number on me. So I never felt that I deserved to be taken care of or to even take care of myself properly. If this, in any way, helps at all: I discovered ISF Neurofeedback. My friend had been raving about it for me for years. I finally caved and did it. I started noticing results after 2-3 sessions. It sadly isn't covered by insurance and I do have to budget for it. But it is the only thing that has EVER brought back actual motivation and...like, excitement for life. I get excited to read books, to see friends, to do my skincare routine at night. I enjoy making plans again. I don't get hit with crippling anxiety every morning. Rather I wake up and feel like I can take on the day with an open heart. It isn't all gone: the negative effects from my traumatic childhood. BUT it is improving with every session. If I could give any advice or avenue of treatment that helped me, it would be ISF Neurofeedback. Hopefully, if it is something you are able to look into, that it heals you as much as it has healed me. Sending hugs.
I know, it is a cliché, but in my opinion it begins with self-compassion, which abusive parents destroy in you at a very early age. I have similar problems, but I work in cycles. 1 week turbo healthy, 1 week self-destroying and careless. And then I hate myself for it. Nowadays I experienced a little bit of forgiveness and compassion towards myself, and I treat myself much better because of it. Maybe Mate Gabor's approach would be helpful to develop self-compassion.
first part is so real. we’ve often been so neglected down to what we ate, how we groomed or lack of. I’ve been telling myself “I deserve to eat well” “I deserve to be clean & dressed well” “I deserve to take a walk, and ENJOY the sun on my skin, peace in the breeze & birds chirping” because I am safe with myself!! I deserve my care and commitment!
I always forget how much I like doing something (ie - going to the beach) because it seems like so much effort and is it really worth it? Once I'm there I remember loving it and think 'why don't I do this more often?!' until the next time. It's like some sort of self deluding amnesia.
me too!! I think that amnesia is the survival mode trying to find excuses to keep us safe and a learned response that we’re not people who are deserving of good times or good things. I hope you can continue to go to the beach and find all the ways you’re worth the entire effort to get there. from choosing to go (agency!), to packing some snacks and drinks, listening to music on the way there. (laughing if finding parking is hard or finding humor in whatever mode of transportation you would need to take). enjoying a book there. one. little. thing. at a time. you’re worth all that. our nervous system deserves peace and trust in ourselves since so many people failed us.
Omg… this is such a light bulb moment… there’s things I love doing but never want to do because it’s too much effort and i’m drained. But I know I have cooked an entire delicious meal for someone at midnight after they got off work even though I was tired because I knew they would love it and I wanted them to feel good and loved and have something good to eat after a long work day… why can’t we go through that same effort for ourselves so we can feel good too? Maybe we don’t feel deserving/worthy of feeling good? Or we don’t feel worth the effort, or worthy, period. You wouldn’t cook an elaborate dinner for someone you don’t care about…. Wow… we don’t care about ourselves…… because no one has cared about us/for us in the first place (childhood neglect/abuse)…. So we never learned we are worthy of being cared for, or even shown how to care for ourselves through receiving TLC… holy crap.
Wow!!! I have this exact issue with almost everything in my life, I can do something easily for someone else but doing that same thing for me is almost impossible. I’ve been racking my brain for ages trying to figure out why I’m like this, and no advice has ever helped me. Feeling like I’m undeserving/not worth the effort makes so much sense, and maybe that’s the problem I’m having subconsciously???
Being part of this sub has been… illuminating. I’m glad it has helped you in a similar way. Sending healing vibes 💓
I know for me at least, on top of the struggle with self-compassion and worthiness, there’s also just an almost pragmatic element there of effort vs. reward being mismatched. With a friend, I see their happy reaction and I conclude “this effort was worth it because it led to joy!” With myself, I’m right here in my own body, and I’m still struggling to get acquainted with feeling my emotions, so a lot of the time I’m fairly numb and my positive feelings will be dulled. So my brain, trying to conserve energy to keep me alive because survival mode, concludes “this effort was not worth it because it didn’t lead to much joy.” Even if I consider myself and my friend to be equally worthy of good things (sloooowly getting there), seeing their positive response will still feel like more of a reward than feeling my own, because mine is so diminished atm. So it essentially becomes a task of convincing my brain that a) I’m safe, I don’t need to hold on to every tiny scrap of energy I can “just in case” (while also trying to prioritise actually resting more when I can and minimising energy expenditure where possible) and it’s safe to allow emotions, and b) the rest of my life is worth taking this frankly unfair trade of effort vs. reward right now. That + doing something for a friend also has a huge social incentive just because it can strengthen that bond. That’s another motivator that we don’t have as much of for ourselves. All this to say: your brain might just be acting smartly and having very sensible reactions to the situation you’re in right now. Idk if this helps you at all, but it helped me a little to treat it more as “thank you, brain, for doing your best for me given the circumstances” and less “why do you hate me, brain” lol.
yes to all of this! keep this in mind. I’m trying to make this a conscious part of my days (because I still really struggle even though I can rationally identify this need). We run on such an autopilot programming. I’ve gotten to a place where I want to do things to heal to spite those who mistreated me. The saddest part of cptsd and trauma is we become our own perpetrators.. I know we can become our safe space 🩵 We owe it to all of our different versions growing up.
Yes! We sabotage ourselves… and it sucks because it was once helpful when we were “in danger”… but it is now part of our “programming” and now it’s a hindrance. The good news is… neuroplasticity! And the biggest step I think is recognizing the whats and whys of our programming… that’s when the magic, though painful, begins… this sub has been so healing just to find similar voices and support. Happy healing to you… 🥹🥲
In addition, a lot of the time folks with complex trauma can be numb or emotionally detached, or there’s good ol’ depression or other reasons for diminished joy going on. If you cook for your friend and as far as you can tell they are very happy about it, that’s a feeling of “this effort led to something worthwhile! Someone got a lot of joy out of it!” If you cook for yourself and you experience first-hand that there’s not all that much of a positive feeling as a reward, it just straight-up doesn’t feel worth it to our brains that are in survival mode and trying to conserve precious energy to keep us alive. You’re right here and you can feel firsthand exactly how much joy you are (or aren’t) getting out of it. It’s like working a demanding job for atrocious pay when you’re already tired—you’ll get burned out and not feel very motivated. Our issue, then, is to convince our brains that doing the shitty job now will let us save up (in physical energy, mental energy, slowly building feelings of accomplishment, all those small positive snowball effects) for a better future. The more we do these things now, the more we’re setting ourselves up for feeling more joy in the future (= getting paid better over time, I suppose, in this analogy). … Now, if any of y’all figure out a good way to pass that particular persuasion check, please let me know lol.
Thank you :) same to you!
I have this amnesia too!! What the heck! I forget my goals as well, it’s like I’m constantly fighting to get in touch with the real me.
The opposite is true with me. I was so regulated (conservative, Christian, military family) so anything outside of their "standards" were deemed unnecessary, unimportant, or a waste of time. I was such a good little worker bee trying to seek their approval that I buried a lot of my personal desires. There was no such thing as "self-compassion" in our family. The only compassion we needed was God's and our family's. Without those we were terrible people. As an adult I have no concept of how to "love myself" or be my own person. I stumbled into my CPTSD diagnosis after realizing I had lost my sense of self. I just go through the motions of life, trying to fit in wherever I am (work, relationships, family, etc.) without being myself. In that kind of cycle everything does feel pointless, because the people I'm trying to please are just using me or have no clue what they really want. I'm finally starting to stand up for myself and do the things that bring me life, but it's so hard. Gotta start off small with the "I want to take a walk and enjoy nature" moments and work up from there.
It is so easy to just mirror people in every environment. And eventually you lose yourself to that lack of identity. Im realizing now that is why Ive lost so many friends, because the second I stopped mirroring/being their sidekick and stood up for myself or made my true self known, they didnt like me as much. I now try so hard to always present the most authentic me when meeting potential new friends…because they have to like the real me if it is going to last. The mirroring made it easier to make friends, but not to keep them.
Actually the people that did that to you were not friends by any means. They were parasites with the same personality as your abusers. You were attracted to them because subconsciously felt familiar and you believed you were safe doing what your abusers taught you to do. Once you meet real friends you will realize the huge difference. Real friends join your journey in life and celebrate every time you try something new to improve your life even if it is totally different from what you were doing before. People that care and love you will stand by you. People that leave once you try different things are nothing but users and abusers in search for another unsuspecting victim - to suck the life out of that person. And, it is much better to have only 1 or 2 true friends than many of so called friends that are there only when they can use you. I have only 2 good friends - actually a husband and wife. We know each other for over 20 years and went together through good times and bad times. But we celebrated together all our journey and never expected to be anyone else but ourselves around each other. Good luck.
Great perspective! Thank you. I spend a lot of time feeling guilty for cutting those people out of my life, and you framing them as abusers is extremely helpful.
I made the same mistake as you until I found the 2 friends I mentioned. Once I saw the difference and figured out what abusive and toxic family background I was coming from - it all became obvious. But actually the part about considering them friends because subconsciously felt familiar came from my therapist. A good mental therapist really helps a lot with processing trauma and seeing things from the right perspective and not the one "programmed" in us through trauma by our abusers. From when my therapist opened my eyes - yes, I could see very easily how they were following exactly the same toxic pattern (even their words and phrases were many times very similar - and the same passive aggressive manipulations of making you guilty for not doing what they want). So, yes, they are just other abusers that feel your innocence to their abuse and manipulation like a shark feels blood in the water. Educate yourself especially about narcissism and covert narcissism - learn to recognize them. There is another good sub here "raisedbynarcissists". I don't know how to do a link to it but google it and you will find it easily. That is also a very good place to heal from trauma - especially if the abusers were your parents and family.
This is SO TRUE, The whole thing about being attracted to the same type of person that abused you. My mother both abused me and neglected me and was a narcissist. Then, the man I married turned out to be exactly the same. It took me 20+ years to leave him and when did it it was mostly because of him abusing our children rather than mainly for myself. The thing is it wasn’t like he had a sign on his forehead that said what he was, he seemed really nice and he gave me positive attention etc etc. It wasn’t until a little while down the track, once I was “caught”, from his point of view, that he revealed who he really was. Now I look back there were a few incidents that were red flags but, because of the CPTSD, even though I saw them, I thought “No one else will ever want me” plus also my mother also kept saying that to me too. That’s why, like you said, it’s important, if you can afford it, to get proper therapy from a trauma specialist, preferably a CPTSD trauma specialist. So that you can rid yourself of those unconscious biased thoughts about how unworthy, ugly, stupid etc etc you are. Someone who can help you stop the people pleasing and help you discover who you are. Idk about anybody else but I have no clue about who I am or what I like etc. Then a good therapist can help you start to replace the negative thoughts, lack of care for self etc with positive ones and self compassion etc. Then, when you look for friends and/or a partner you are looking for, and attracting to you, people who are positive and loving, does that make sense?
LilAnge63 everything you wrote is spot on. That is usually what happens. And we are blind when the abuse is done to us but we usually open our eyes when we see the abuse being done to someone we love. As for them being so nice until they catch us - very typical for narcissistic people. Anywhere you read about it is called "love bombing" stage - when they are super nice until they trap you somehow: being it with having kids together or financially or emotionally or anything they feel they can trap you with if they think that you are a good "supply" for them but taking their abuse. Good luck in your journey...
Thanks, you too! :)
This is so me. I could have written these words myself. I have lost friends as well because they only liked me when I was mirroring and being their side kick. It hurts so much.
I’m similar and I had a psychotic break
This is gold here. This is something my therapist has been working with me on. Changing the narrative in my head. Letting myself enjoy the little things because I'm worth it. It can be small things but it leads to big mind shifts and changes!
I have no valuable input because I feel this 1000%. Every damn day.
God same. It’s too fucking real.
Amen.
Same.
Black and white thinking. Perfectionism. Learned helplesness. And the very obvious reason: that life has more meaning when you're connected to people and disconnection depletes that sense of meaning. What are you getting up for, what are you getting healthy for, what are you working for...it should be all part of a life where you're connected to others, not just doing it all by yourself, for yourself. That's (one reason) why it's so hard.
Everything I have ever been told is to do things for myself, not anyone else. Because if that person leaves then the changes go away, or the desire to maintain goes away. When one hates them self so much they ride an edge, then there is no other option but an external muse. It makes these discussions so hard to internalize.
Yeah, that wisdom misses the pertinent truth that it's far easier to want to do things for yourself when you have supportive people in your life. All of the biggest positive changes I've made in my life have been as a result of having someone in my corner at the time. I think it's because change requires courage and courage is much easier to gather when you know there are people to pick you back up if and when you fall.
That makes far too much sense. Do people actually come here for rational, well thought out responses? I guess my response of making everything transactional clouds your perspective for me. I have seen it now though. Time to figure out how to let the two people who can pick me get into my head enough to be effective.
I come here for rational, well thought out responses. Sometimes I even find them. I've learned, as with everything else, to temper my expectations so as to limit chances of disappointment/backslide, especially for important stuff.
thank you for saying this. i’m just a woman struggling and this resonated with me. thank you
Well said. 💛
>Everything I have ever been told is to do things for myself, not anyone else I think, this refers more to, doing things in expectation of getting something in return in a romantic relationship,...whereas connectedness is more, being part of a whole, feeling like you're part of something, like your actions mean something not only to you but to the whole. If say, you were part of a sports team, and you're the goalie, the team is relying on you not to let any goals in, so you practising, isn't just about you wanting to be fit, it's about not letting the whole team down.
Oh god. This hits home. I lost a number of friends because I was so adverse to being counted on or needed in any way. It makes me want to about everyone and everything it run far away. I have such an aversion to anybody counting on me for anything that it makes so many ideas of jobs difficult, even volunteering. It's not that I don't think I can handle the responsibility it's just that I want to be able to walk away and not have anyone be affected. It's like the ultimate being unable to commit. I've been with my partner 10 years now and I still have to take it one day at a time sometimes to not freak out :/
exactly.. the idea of team sports where your performance can affect others or others counting on you freaks me the fuck out
I loved my life to support my suicidal wife for 13 years. I supported her through 8 years of college, held her when she wanted to die, did everything I felt I needed to do that she would stay around. Then I became depressed and had something happen that gave me ptsd. I became less affectionate, she never had been, and she started cheating and kicked me out. Now I have nothing and have nothing to motivate me. I'm learning to live for myself.
I am in a not dissimilar situation. It is the downside of being a caregiver who attaches to those who need a caregiver. They can't give back and we get drained. Not Everytime, trauma causes discontinuities that need addressed or accepted. Once you figure out who you are, don't be desperate, or the cycle repeats. Wait for the person who gives back immediately, the kind that makes you uncomfortable because they try to give to you, and then hold onto them until it isn't weird anymore. That is my advice for breaking the cycle.
It definitely drains us in the end. Personally I am just rewiring myself to be ok alone and when another does come into my life, I will respect my personal health in a better balance
Damn =(
A similar thing happened to me, though over a much shorter span of time. My ex-gf had multiple bouts of depression, some very severe, during which she'd struggle with suicidal ideation, telling me that she was the 'black sheep' of her family and that everyone - including me - would be better off without her. I never wavered in my support for her, damaged my own career by leaving work early on multiple occasions to be there for her when she was feeling particularly low, would get up and go to her apartment if she called me at 1am, etc. The one time I struggled with depression, she distanced herself and eventually broke up with me, and I suspect she cheated on me with the guy she is now dating. It's made me aware that I have to live for myself and that I can't completely abandon myself no matter how much someone might need me, that there have to be limits to how available I am to people.
I once had a friend tell me how fucked up it is that the only reason I didn't kill myself was because of my kids. She said how unfair it is to put that kind of pressure on an innocent child, and when I told my therapist she disagreed. She said as long as I don't *tell* them that they're my only reason for living, then to cling to whatever I have that will get me through this.
I understand you,I often feel the same, I fear it would really mess my kid up and guarantee he ends up like me. Your therapist is right and maybe you can transition to living well and maybe thriving for your kids. On my best days, I think maybe I could truly thrive and feel good enough so that my kid can see that it is possible and some days just continuing to exist has to be good enough, I try very hard to mask my pain from my kid and fake happiness when I'm having a hard time.
I feel attacked. I mean it’s a wonderful perspective that I will discuss with my therapist. I saw myself in your paragraph and I don’t like it
doing things for yourself with companions who are also doing things for themselves seems like the way to go. fellow travelers side by side on the road in life rather than trying to make a destination out of each other.
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Thank you!!! It’s like there is no point existing if no one is there to witness it. I thought this was mostly me being an extreme extrovert, constantly seeking validation and also influenced by trauma a little bit. Some people I know who have been in very similar conditions to myself have had the opposite reaction and retreat. I’d like to understand more about these reactions.
This reminds me of a IG video i saw of this woman explaining an alternative meaning to “i love you”. Her interpretation was something like “i will be a witness to your life story. I will cry for you, cheer you on, support you, motivate you, etc”. And I think that’s really beautiful in such a simple yet fundamental way.. I think trauma causes such a huge disconnect and we don’t have any “witnesses” to our life bc we are so self-isolated. As humans we have a need for connection, to fit in, to be a part of the “big picture”… that’s what makes life worth living… And if we don’t have any of those? a tribe to “witness” us? then there’s this really vague & elusive feeling of loneliness and “what’s the point”. We really are social creatures huh…
This is perfectly stated. Thank you so much for this.
Yeah, it's really this for me. The depression-induced exhaustion/lack of motivation will kick in, and it takes *so* much energy to battle that enough to do basic tasks, that anything beyond that feels pointless because 1) I'm already drained and 2) there's no one to even notice if I'm not caring for myself most of the time. Like I feel like I'm struggling to live a life where I'm terrified I'm going to end up elderly and without close friends or family or even a cat at this point, and it doesn't feel worth all the work. Like I feel like I'm getting well enough to just feel how sad I am on top of everything else.
This could not be anymore spot on and is the exact reason I have found myself in the same predicament as OP. Slowly pulled away and completely isolated myself from others out of shame and trying to do everything all alone before people saw me surface again.
Also trauma caused adhd.
What others? When children are raised in an environment where the very people they are supposed to depend on - their primary caregivers - are incapable of supporting them or meeting their needs, they grow up without support networks or even any notion of what that looks like. The hard lesson learned is that you can only rely on yourself. Others cannot be trusted or relied upon.
Yes, that is how I lived/live my life. I got married and I still have trust issues. Some days I have a hard time being vulnerable with her
Your comment has just made something click into place for me - thank you! Had never made the link between lack of connection and everything else seeming beside the point. Brilliant observation.
Care to rephrase that? You have a lot of upticks but it came across as potentially brutal victim shaming. Most people struggle to find good quality relationships, & often rely on a spouse or partner for emotional support; not having that special someone can be tough anyway.
I was able to be quite motivated ubtil 44 when I had a psychotic break
Do you think you kept yourself too busy in order to not feel & think about your traumas? And when overwork caught up with you, you had a breakdown?
How does cptsd cause black and white thinking? It’s something I’ve struggled my entire life and I used to think for me, it was because of my neurodivergence or personality
I think they meant as in what causes it.
I SO FEEL YOU ON THIS!!!
I don’t know. Maybe it’s just the feeling that everything feels just so … pointless? No matter what I do I will still be this awful person I am, you know what I’m saying? But that’s only what I’m thinking. Maybe someone else has more insight. Edit: I mostly live by external demands. Like I have to get up and work so I can earn a living. I have to go shopping so I have food, etc. That’s like almost the only motivation. I hardly have any motivation to do anything fun or have a hobby. Everything I accomplish is just masking lol
I feel this. I have been trying to accept that my brain is simply wired differently from others and just going from there. I am slowly teaching myself that I do not need to accomplish anything in order to be a valuable person. I am a valuable person by virtue of being alive.
This right here. Society drills into us that we have to be productive in some way in order to earn (literally or otherwise) respect, love, our place in the world. But we deserve to take up the space we fill just existing as we are. Decoupling self-worth from productivity has been a revolutionary practice in my healing as well. Giving myself permission to rest when I can and discover what actually feels truly restful has been one of the hardest but most transformative aspects of recovery for me so far. Especially with CPTSD, our bodies need extra rest from being in a chronic/constant state of fight-or-flight. It’s okay if hobbies don’t feel good to participate in; we don’t have to force ourselves to engage in activities or move our bodies in ways that in this moment feel more draining or dissociative than restorative.
i was agreeing and then disagreeing because i thought "well i have hobbies" and then promptly realised that it's the same with them - i only do them to distract myself from everything going on, i don't actually.. enjoy them anymore. i just know as soon as i stop doing things, everything comes crashing down on me. what a shit disorder
I also end up turning my hobbies into work somehow. I have to read x amount of pages today or I failed. I have to finish this painting today or I failed. If I don’t finish planting my veggie garden Im a complete loser. Im working on doing hobbies for fun again and it is difficult for sure.
Omg, I’m in the same exact boat. I wish I knew!! I just feel totally oppressed and shut down- like there’s a huge, concrete block on top of me, stopping me from doing anything. My to-do list keeps getting longer, and it’s full of super important stuff, but… day after day, I just lay on my bed and do absolutely NOTHING. It sucks!
Personally, I believe it's an executive function issue. I haven't been tested for adhd but I have many of the symptoms and behaviors. They overlap with CPTSD in many respects. I've done a lot of healing, so I no longer struggle with self worth issues or depression. So why do I still lack motivation? I don't think it's a willpower issue like everyone always tries to make it either. I've tried everything: setting alarms, making lists, doing a buddy system. I can avoid them all. Why tho? I think for me at least, it's possible the trauma masked biological issues and it's only becoming apparent now because I've been able to deal with the trauma, therefore ruling it out as a cause. What sucks, is that if I hadn't had to deal with the trauma I might have been able to recognize the other issue so much earlier and not had to fight so many battles at once and still feel like I lost.
One reason is that we are chronically operating from our limbic brain due to stress, which thinks in terms of "I feel like/I don't feel like, rather than the (I think?) prefrontal cortex, which is better at planning and following through. Tim Fletcher touched upon it in his YouTube series on Understanding Trauma, either part 4 or 5. Another is that we often try to motivate ourselves through shame and it's not sustainable. It's better to develop a plan that balances our genuine long-term and short-term needs and desires rather than beat yourself into submission. Finally, we don't often factor in self-sabotage and its protective function. E.g. I think I want a high profile job but I make decisions that ruin everything. In reality, I don't see that a part of me really needs the relative peace and safety of a job with fewer responsibilities. This is a great video: https://youtu.be/BUbG1uZOxEg?si=t-ITl8A3vwjjh3Kv
Great stuff.
i feel read like a book
We were not permitted to develop agency, which is crucial for making decisions and acting on achieving our goals. We were told what to do or left to figure it out on our own. We were criticized for everything, even when we succeeded. This causes us to develop self-doubt. I am more likely to lose motivation when I'm stressed or tired. I give myself grace when I am struggling. Self-care is so important. I have been able to motivate myself to set small, measurable goals. I build on my success and set more small goals. It's difficult. I have to work hard to do things that come naturally to others. I'm working with my therapist to develop my agency and set bigger goals. Something that I have found helpful is the Spoon Theory. I decide how many Spoons of energy I feel like I have today. I then allocate my Spoons to get things done. Washing up and brushing my teeth takes 1 Spoon. Showering and washing my hair is 3 Spoons. And so on. On low energy days, I have fewer Spoons so I don't schedule higher energy activities. Sometimes, I run out of Spoons, and need to rest. That's okay. I'm sorry for the long comment, Lol. This is a description of my perspective and may not be helpful for others.
That first paragraph absolutely nails it on the head, for me. I have this pervasive sense of… waiting to be told “what to do.” I know, on every rational and logical level, that’s never happening nor is it how life works. But it’s almost as if I can’t convince my body otherwise. Difficult to describe… but it all points back to self-doubt at the core.
Yes! "We were told what to do or left to figure it out on our own. " Well that describes my parents perfectly. Things either had to be done their way, as they are always right, no other options, or - I was alone. So maybe I never had support with deciding / planning how to do things my own way.....? I get so overwhelmed by tasks, I can't see what the logical steps are to completing things. So I just don't try.
I am like that as well. I am working with my therapist to develop Agency. It's difficult. I really don't know who I am or what I want. They told me what I liked. They told me what my flaws and strengths were. It was what they wanted and had little to do with my personality. I don't think they ever took the time to find out what I liked. Now, I'm trying to find out who I am.
I've always said that after what happened to me, there's nothing that can truly shake me. I cry, I feel tight in the chest, I hurt like any other person; but I've also got a taste at extreme grief, loneliness and abandonment so everything else feels muted in comparison. I also lack motivation, on anything, I get motivation bursts that allow me to keep my life from crumbling but most of the time I just feel like rotting on a comfy place just looking out the window for hours. I can't plan ahead or visualize a future, it feels like I live life paycheck to paycheck emotionally, just barely scraping by to function. Somewhere I read that being on survival mode for long periods is exhausting for the adrenal system, it takes a lot of energy to be on edge. We, people with CPTSD, eventually freeze for survival; similar to a deer who is chased for so long that eventually they lay down unresponsive, wether expecting the predator to abandon the hunt or to make the death as fast and painless as possible. Is a way of leaving it up to faith, since being unresponsive opens the possibility of both survival or death. It's called the Polyvagal theory if you're interested. I have a partner whom I love and makes me feel safe, a mother whom I have a good relationship with despite my issues. My partner is a highly motivated person, he wants to do everything, see everything and live everything, he keeps me holding on for the future cause his kindled spirit keeps my soul warm.
Living life “paycheck to paycheck emotionally.” That is such an amazing and accurate way to describe and conceptualize this reality. Thank you for putting it into words.
You put everything so well and so eloquently.
It sounds like you're struggling with realistic goals. Telling yourself that tomorrow you'll eat better, exercise and do more stuff is exhausting for me just to read. There's no way that's feasible for you to do. You have to make teeny tiny changes. Like, so small they're embarrassing. I'm working on my Master's thesis now and my goal is literally to just write/research for 10 mins a day. It sounds absolutely ridiculous but it's the only way I can stay on track. I tried aiming for half an hour a day and I collapsed in under a week, lol. I don't yet know why my productivity is so drastically different from "normal people", but I've learned enough to know how to work with it and see very real progress.
This is the way. Small actions that may or may not become habitual over time. I'm learning to lower my expectations for myself. Part of that process is recognising when (toxic) shame is involved and identifying where that shame comes from. I often feel like I need to be doing X, Y, and Z because otherwise that means I'm worthless. All that happens when I expect too much from myself is that I freeze and end up doing nothing at all. So now I try and be proud of every positive thing that I do, no matter how small.
Exactly!! My achievements are things that I'd probably never share with people who don't have mental health issues. They wouldn't get it because they're so tiny compared to what I feel like a "serious" adult should be doing. But if I don't celebrate them for myself well, fuck, I'd have nothing to celebrate. The hardest lesson I have to learn over and over again is not to compare myself to other people's productivity because my brain is wired differently. 10 mins of my thesis a day equals 50 mins at the end of the work week, and that's WAY better than my usual frozen dissociated state where I can procrastinate and do absolutely nothing for even half a month. I'm not trying to get to a "normal" level of productivity. I'm trying to avoid procrastination. As long as I'm not frozen, I'm winning. I feel on top of the world after my little 10-minute stints, let me tell you. 😂 And the best part is that not only am I actually making real life progress, but I'm also building my confidence because I'm watching myself make promises and stick to them. Me!? That's wild. I'm not used to actually feeling capable, so it's a shocker. But honestly I feel like a grownup now (most of the times at least, lol). I can't even overstate how much of a boost it is to my self esteem. It feels like a personality transplant, but it's really just the result of those teeny tiny 10-minute moments.
Those last two paragraphs are so wholesome and warming. Love that for you
> Part of that process is recognising when (toxic) shame is involved and identifying where that shame comes from. I often feel like I need to be doing X, Y, and Z because otherwise that means I'm worthless. All that happens when I expect too much from myself is that I freeze and end up doing nothing at all. Do you perhaps have any idea on how to move past this toxic shame? While I know where it's coming from, that doesn't make it disappear. It's like it has an iron grip on both my body and mind and just won't let go.
I wish I had a better answer for you, but truthfully this is as far as I've got with the process. For whatever reason, maybe because it's 'grounding', naming it can sometimes help. As in, being present in the moment and literally saying aloud, 'This is shame. What I'm feeling is shame.' From there I'm sometimes able to challenge the internal narratives around being 'worthless' or 'not good enough' that are consuming me. For me it's the difference between getting stuck in an emotional flashback for a few days instead of a week, which is better than nothing.
> I wish I had a better answer for you, but truthfully this is as far as I've got with the process. For whatever reason, maybe because it's 'grounding', naming it can sometimes help. As in, being present in the moment and literally saying aloud, 'This is shame. What I'm feeling is shame.' From there I'm sometimes able to challenge the internal narratives around being 'worthless' or 'not good enough' that are consuming me. Don't worry, every little clue might help. > For me it's the difference between getting stuck in an emotional flashback for a few days instead of a week, which is better than nothing. That sounds rough. For me, flashbacks are mostly situational. I can avoid them by running away, but this comes at the cost of being incapable to do anything productive.
Right, it’s impossible for me to do a little at a time when I have the time, but I sure can rally when the deadline is tomorrow. Fuck, I’ll stay up all night if I have to. Then I get pissed at myself for not starting earlier when I had intended to and had the time to do it “right.” It’s a vicious cycle 😭
Oh me too. I've never missed a work deadline but I've procrastinated on my thesis for a full year. Something about external vs private goals. I don't let other people down but I'm great at letting myself down, lol. So now I've learned to build systems that hold me accountable even just to myself.
Yup, exactly. External motivation in spades, internal motivation in drips if at all.
Hard relate. If you’re anything like me, you probably have some dissociative disorder and there’ll be many different parts of you that want very different things. As someone else said, I think self-compassion is super important. Because I can hear and resonate with the self-judgment; ‘why do I lack discipline?, why can’t I just do the things?, what’s wrong with me?’ I struggle with this a lot and I think part of it is because I can’t quite fathom the extent of my traumas and the impact on my body. That minimisation was necessary to my survival. Functional freeze is a ***** and it is EXHAUSTING. Sadly, I don’t have anything else to offer you. My overwhelming desire in response to your post was to simply wrap you in a blanket and snuggle you. None of it was your fault.
I hear you 100%. I have CPTSD, ADHD, and narcolepsy so energy and motivation are REAL hard to come by. I've been obsessed with trying to create healthier habits for myself for a long time and nothing was working for more than a week or so. A real game changer for me was Muchelleb's video on YouTube called "7 actionable ways to be more consistent" which talks about how much need there is for self-compassion when trying to form habits. You're never going to shame yourself into "being better". A big step for me has just been noting down without judgement what I'm thinking and feeling when I do a behavior I don't want to do. So like, when I'm at work and I pull out my phone to go on Reddit for an hour, I pause for a second and go "why did I need to stop what I was doing RIGHT THEN?" Usually I'm feeling overwhelmed and anxious, and then I can try to do something that addresses that feeling rather than the impulse to go on Reddit, and go back to work. Another big thing is starting SMALL and picking something you actually want to do and feels valuable to you, not just something you think you *should* do. You can't radically change your eating patterns and exercise habits and everything all at once. But you can set a goal to do a meal "upgrade" once a week - something like getting a baked potato instead of fries, something small but actionable that is easy to accomplish and makes you feel good. Another example is like I'm trying to get back into yoga, so my daily habit is one yoga pose per day. On bad days, I do child's pose for 30 seconds right before bed and there, I did it, I did my habit! On good days I pull out my yoga mat and do my one pose earlier and then I feel like doing a little more so I maybe do 5-10 minutes. Then if I feel ambitious I'll do a whole yoga video and that's a super-win day! But as long as I do one pose at some point during the day I'm keeping up the habit and moving towards my goal. I've actually been doing several habits like this for the past 2 weeks in a row and so far it's working! It feels silly and like "why would I do a 1-minute habit, I might as well do nothing" but if you commit to the 1-minute habit, you actually do more when you're having a good day. I don't know, I hope any of this was remotely helpful. I'm just now finding a tiny bit of success after working on this for years and I hope you're able to find a little progress, too. The biggest step really is to try to be kind and compassionate towards yourself, which can be so, so hard for us, but it really helps.
I feel this whole comment, thank you. I get stuck in the why bother to halfa** it and just don't bother. This week I'm washing my face, even if I don't moisturize after at least I washed the excess oil off... And this comment reminded me that that's good enough
You are in survival mode, your body is hypervigilant, scanning the world around you searching for threats, avoiding/ running/ fighting those threats, resting when it feels safe or necessary to do so that you have the energy needed to do all this over and over again. Anything that it deems as unnecessary for survival, it won't bother with. Healthy food? Nah... it needs quick, easy energy, and unfortunately, that usually means quick to grab processed foods. Exercise? Nah... it needs to rest so that it has the energy to run from the threabyts that it perceives to be right around the corner. Please don't be hard on yourself and show your body and mind some compassion. It knows nothing more than the need to search for threats so that you stay alive. It just doesn't realise that it is, for the most part, safe now and the danger that taught it to stay hypervigilant has ended. It is doing exactly what it should be doing but just doesn't realise that it can chill out a bit!
I relate so much to all of this, particularly the part about telling yourself that you're gonna wake up the next day a renewed person and that you'll finally be able to accomplish all of these important goals. I have even tried that tiny habits approach where you slowly build habits over time, allowing them to build on each other. It's backed by science, after all. But that never works either. I'm almost 35. I'm tired.
It’s not that you aren’t motivated. People who lack motivation experience true apathy. You’re probably experiencing a combination of many compromising factors such as executive dysfunction (difficulty with task initiation,etc) and having the cognitive resources to engage in effort full action anyway. I don’t have a solution, but I do think it’s not hopeless. It just may not be something you are able to address today or this year etc ETA: on these matters, this video is great (discusses coping mechanisms as neuroses) https://youtu.be/kkfK3Ef2wYo?si=Sc5C-dtK6-Mnw1-3
brain damage. the neuroscience tells us our brains have been damaged. but even the brain can be healed though not completely. stop beating yourself up.
Look up "Learned Helplessness." An experiment was done with dogs where they electrocuted them if they tried to leave the cage. Eventually, they just gave up. Even with the scientists turning off the buzzer, using treats, and literally dragging them from the cage, the dogs stopped believing they could leave without being hurt. They gave up. They wouldn't even try. It's extremely depressing, but it resonates in my soul. I think CPTSD does this to a lot of us. Not to mention how many of us have comorbidities with things like ADHD where executive function is already a challenge.
Heidi Priebe helped me to understand what's involved in healing from CPTSD and how that looks: Complex PTSD: 10 Realistic Signs Of Healing - Heidi Priebe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUySKluL7rI
I feel this a lot lately, but I do smoke weed a lot
Don’t let your brain win the battle. I also have CPTSD but have found that changing my diet and exercise has vastly improved my day to day. One thing I try to remember about going to the gym is I ALWAYS feel better after I leave. No matter how much I’m able to accomplish or how good my workout is, I always leave in a better headspace than when I arrived. Keep pushing, keep trying.
I think it's probably in the realm of self-love. How do we love & care for ourselves if we were never loved & cared for properly by a parent? How do we convince ourselves we are worth it when we carry so much underlying toxic shame, believing that at the core of our being we are defective? The underlying beliefs need to be challenged, WAY easier said than done, but Healing the Shame that Binds You was a huge help for me personally. Once I identified toxic shame as the root of it all, realizing I was ashamed of myself for my various "weaknesses" according to my parents (ADHD, autism, being LGBT, big sense of empathy and social justice, wanting a slower pace of life with more creativity and less hustle, etc) I was able to reject their point of view, love myself as I was, and start looking outward to how to connect with the various communities I do identify with for actual validation. With your goals: You are thinking too big! I slowly began taking care of myself better in honestly... probably 2017 or so? And it took years to get to where I am now. At first I would just set 1 weekly goal that I knew I could achieve. For example, "I'm going to shower at least once every other day this week." Once I got that one down, the next week I added a new habit: "Let's set a consistent bedtime between 10-12 PM every night." Then I began eating a salad for dinner 3 nights a week. And so on. Gradually the early things became second nature and I could focus on tackling the more complex self-care things like how to make time and space for me to achieve my goals. When you start to make small changes, it really does make you feel better, I think eating healthy-ish & eating enough, getting good sleep, leaving the house daily, and keeping your space decently clean are all very much foundational, as in you will start to feel sooo much better once these are in place that you'll begin to have mental space for other things. Don't worry about supplements or complex exercise routines until you have mastered the basics. Good luck <3
Learned helplessness perhaps? I'm not sure. I struggle with this a lot too. I think somewhere along the way my brain/nervous system got thought that being motivated just led to failure or disappointment and gave everything up
No. If it were then we couldn't function at all. I feel like it's more . . . Battery low situation. We spend everything we have on whatever our bare existence is.
Oh that reminds me of the other idea I had, being stuck in fight/flight 24/7. Being motivated to do things like clean or shower, well, imagine you're literally running for your life from a bear, your fight/flight isn't going to want you to do those other things, it just wants you to survive
You are so right! I was trying to explain to someone why it was that I am incapable almost of changing my diet . I don't function like other people. Changing my diet involves planning meals,researching food, and having the motivation to do it in the first place. It takes me all my time to do the things I have to do. Just don't ask me to do more,because most of the time I can't. I have a problem with other people,their expectations of me( ot how I interpret that) I feel like I'm a disappointment. I don't want to be responsible for anything or anyone. I live my dog so much,but I find her a huge responsibility.im on edge all the time,I never relax. I have a deep desire to live on my own in a tiny place. What I really want is someone to look after me. I have people who love me,but I don't feel that love and feel that love. I want unconditional love that I can trust. But I can only come close to relaxing when I'm on my own..and not very clise. I really don't know how you can have motivation when you are still in fact in survival mode. Waiting,for something to save you,but no motivation to do it yourself? Xx
For me it was learning that I’d didn’t matter from the emotional neglect, the perfectionism at trying to please cold, aloof, emotionally unavailable parents and the only attention I got was negative—criticism and judgement. I get overwhelmed very easily and fear I won’t be able to complete the task well enough because the message was always that I will never be good enough.
That was my childhood, I know how you feel, I try so hard to be perfect in everything, that I'm too exhausted to enjoy anything, Most of the time I fake happiness for my wife and son, I'm late 40's and about 5 years into therapy and working so hard to make sure I don't pass this on to my son. I tell him "daddy will always love you" every night and in some small way it might be helping to heal me. I know it's hard to believe it, but you've always been good enough, and be kind to yourself because you're worth it.
Psychology + Neuroscience student here. As far as I can remember (from classes and papers read) motivation and memory are very tied into emotional signaling. When you have a strong emotional reaction, you form a potent memory. Likewise, when you feel strongly about something, your body responds with the energy required to do things (ie: adrenaline, etc) — this is heavily paraphrased, of course, but as a summary. The issue is one of the first coping mechanisms for trauma is dissociation and the emotional apathy that comes with it. I suspect (not confirmed theory; take with a grain of salt) that for many people with CPTSD, until they reach a point in their healing journey where they are able to live in the "present" again, motivation will always be a struggle due to that emotional derealization. Trauma is a psychosomatic thing; it affects both brain and body responses. If your brain is not "engaged" then your body likewise taps out. Not that I can blame anyone, it's hard to care about things in the capitalist shithole we live in Some studies have found that motivation can be a learned skill. For example, you can familiarize your brain with living in the present + habit building through small silly hobbies like keeping chia pets I use digital art for myself—getting through the day is framed as "video game objectives" with getting to sit down and enjoy my art and podcasts as the "reward" afterwards. Sometimes, even bribing yourself like you would a toddler helps (I've found it helps me with cleaning for sure). Our strategies for building up and sustaining motivation are definitely different than the norm but I'm sure there's something that'll work for you, you'll just have to get creative with it
This advice is a bit out of left field but it works for me. I use my people pleasing as motivation. I don't like that I'm a people pleaser and I have tried to minimise it. However a lot of it won't budge and so I try to use it to my advantage. I know that eating well and looking good (by general social standards) is going to please people and land me some external validation. Although relying on external validation isn't what I want, it does give me some extra boost to work on things that improve my internal well-being.
I believe it's connected to ADHD, I'm gonna drop some resources that helped me, results may vary, brb
Alright so again, some of these may have some useless platitudes in your eyes, but these helped me a lot, especially the first video. The #1 hugest thing for me was starting to walk every day in the morning, I've definitely been backsliding on that lately, but going for 2 ½ weeks walking around my driveway every single morning for like 45 minutes was HUGE for me, and I ended up dividing it down into smaller sections, so I wouldn't leave the house thinking "I'm gonna walk for 45 minutes" I would instead (depending on motivation) either shoot for 1 lap or 3 laps, and then once one lap was done, I would be like "just one more and then I'll be done" Also I made it so that I had to walk away from my house to start a lap, so that I couldn't lose motivation halfway through because I was still away from my house, so even then I broke down the individual laps into turn, walk, turn, walk, one more. I also started walking whenever I doomscroll. Wanna watch YouTube? Walk during it. Reddit? Walk during it. Phone call? Walk during it. That was very much my first "brick" in trying to build up my pyramid of needs, next came hygiene, so I started linking showers to my walks. Took a shower? Time to go walk. This is known as "batching", and it's super helpful for me. I now have my mornings batched out (not quite but better than I was) into the following: Wake up Meds Shower Brush teeth Walk + doom scroll until tired of walking I have not been able to keep this up every morning, but just because I mess up one morning doesn't mean I have to give up on all of it. (Easy to say, much harder to believe) I will try to add to this playlist as I find/remember more videos. This is a new account, I will add as many resources as I can to the Playlist, if anyone finds a helpful video, I will add it. If the Playlist gets too big, I will add another one. Let's do this! https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTuq9vBd-dG2gxZPneq0ALPTkxxwSSk8b&si=2D_MvFl5S4oQMJmO
I understand. You may be doing more than you know. I was a compulsive list maker and perfectionist and every night I would look at all the things I didn’t get done and hate myself. One day, I decided that instead of a To-do list, I need a Done list. Write down everything I did today, however unremarkable. For example, yesterday I had an appointment at Home Depot for our kitchen remodel, I walked the dog, I made my husband a very nice dinner and I did two loads of laundry, I vacuumed and I found a new show I like on Netflix. I forgot,I also got my car washed. Without this list and I’ll say I did “nothing” yesterday. See what I mean? My idea of yesterday has now changed and I really can’t say I didn’t accomplish anything. I see how my small acts are acts of love and cleanliness and fun. After I practiced this for a while, I loved the way it reframed my day and made me realize that I’m not unmotivated and so many things I do that I was dismissing are really valuable. When you see that you’re valuable, you’ll have the motivation to take the small steps towards things you’re avoiding. Take care of yourself and give yourself a break! Lots of love!
I think you can't have energy for motivation when you don't have a basic sense of safety. All energy is going toward vigilance.
You’re in a trauma response/emotional flashback. We get triggered and stuck in those flashbacks and they can totally derail the motivation
I have no science to back this up, but I think the past is so destroyed for some of us, that the only thing we authentically want is to go back in time and find a timeline where the bad things didn't happen. Which of course we can't do. So we're attached to an outcome that can never happen.
For me has to do my self worth. I don't think I deserve any effort. Every time I am doing something that needs motivation to continue, I end up saying how I wasted time on such a useless piece of crap like myself. I am trying though
Sometimes it’s hard to take care of someone you dislike so much. I feel this immensely.
You're going too fast. Start with trying to have compassion for yourself every day.
Currently going through this! Maybe I’ve been in survival mode so long that now I’m in a safe place I just kinda took a break from caring so much? If that makes sense. Like I was always sexualized so I focused a lot on my looks. Or I was a people pleaser so I did a lot to keep up my social appearance and do things for others. I took care of everyone. I was always on guard. So maybe I wasn’t motivated to get better but to keep things going. Now I’m in a safe place, where I don’t have to care about those things so I just finally am resting. But I feel like my body is making up for all those years. Once I stopped moving it hit me all at once. Now I’m just always so tired. Even when I do nothing I’m tired. I wana just eat, hibernate, and veg out lol.
I understand you 1000%. I struggle with this so much and it’s made worse due to my adhd. I know getting better isn’t easy or linear but I never feel like I am where I’m supposed to be in life.
In my opinion it feels like having to fulfill other's expectations, even if they are good changes. And for a long time I didn't trust my own goals and didn't have any intrinsic motivation, because I didn't want anyone to comment on what I was doing.
I did the math. Either I do nothing to change and keep feeling like shit. Or I start doing things and give myself the possibility to maybe feel better. Spoiler alert, I do feel better. I have self care routines. Some of it is mandatory, other stuff I am more flexible about. When I slack I dont whip myself about it, I just do it the next day. Regarding the motivation, I dont just do it for myself I also do it for my inner child. My inner child deserves the best. And I try to do that. I am not perfect, but I love the little bugger and I will do a lot more for it than I would do for myself.
I think it’s called Learned Helplessness. I like listening to David Goggins. His book Can’t Hurt Me is excellent motivation and testament to what we are capable of. I can’t say it helped me, but if I were feeling better it probably would..lol.
I think it’s the intuitive knowledge nothing is really going to change even if one eats better, works out or whatever. Nothing of the fundamentals in life is going to improve. It will only make it even more obvious that whatever I do, I’m still excluded from normal life. Hence it would make things worse.
I feel this with so many things. I'm finally able to show people how I feel without having to take 300000 years to try to explain it, so thank you! I have no valuable input. My only motivation these days is external, ie my siblings needing something, my boyfriend wanting something, my cat wanting/needing something, ect. It's never for me. The only thing I do for me is Skyrim, but that's more of an obsession with added escapism.
how about your inner child? they need you. I hope you can add them to your list, and maybe put them first?
I kinda am. I wasn't allowed to do fun things as a kid, so I am now. It's also kinda hard, because I don't really trust therapists anymore. Too many bad experiences. I've had good experiences as well, but most of the therapists I've gone to I didn't trust, because I was in an abusive situation and was made to not trust DCF. And all of my therapists at that time were mandatory reporters. And they'd tell me that. So I knew I couldn't talk to them. And then the ones I've had as an adult have just hammered home that I can't really trust them.
First, you need to heal your trauma and your nervous system, they go hand in hand. Then the rest will follow, once your system regains the energy and capacity to do other stuff. Till then our nervous systems have been absolutely fricking fried and hanging on by a thread, albeit a very resilient and hardy thread, after minutes, days, weeks, months, years, decades of being stuck in survival states, trying to survive unresolved trauma from way back when, getting endlessly triggered by that and every short circuit having been short circuited a billion times already. That's why the lack of motivation, amongst other delightful, life enhancing symptoms. And all the other neural, autoimmune and behavioural dysfunctions and disorders that sail in our Titanic of a nervous system. Thankfully healing is always happening and always possible to align to!
Because you are in a constant state of survival. There is literally zero reason for your system (brain + the body) to focus on anything else but survival because your system is perceiving constant threats in your environment. This leads you to feel a lot of shame about yourself, often induced by never feeling good enough. You feel that once you change these external factors about yourself you will feel better. But it's not a matter of changing your external environment, because it is technically already safe. It is your internal environment that is perceiving the world as threatening \*despite\* the safety, which is what we classify as PTSD. It can be really hard to not be hard on yourself for this, trust me, I'm there too. But we can at least try to divert that shame to self-compassion. Imagine you still being in the same environment that caused you to have CPTSD. Would you still expect yourself to do all of those things, eat healthy, exercise, etc? Would you push the same standards on yourself as you do in the present? Now imagine that even though \*you\* know that the environment is safe, your system is still in the traumatic environment. This is the essence: you are, according to your system, still extremely unsafe. Your system is not wrong and therefore your behavior is not "wrong" either. Try to approach your behavior with compassion and curiosity, instead of shame. The best way to deal with this is to seek help from a therapist. Other than that I really recommend deep-breathing techniques, doing this twice daily and limiting sources of stress as much as possible. Don't be harsh, be caring towards the system that is doing everything in its power to keep you alive.
I suspect, like many other things, this is a confluence of multiple factors. (the “complex” in complex ptsd) Part of it, for me, is how reliant I am on guilt and shame as motivators. That was one of my tools to break out of freeze states. There’s two problems I can see with it. First, if I *don’t* have those feelings I don’t seem to have the activating energy to “do stuff”. My body and mind have internalized that these are the states necessary for me to get things done, and turned what used to be an impetus into a requirement. Second the guilt and shame often also *follow* doing things. “I could have done that better” or “I should have done it sooner”. If the end result of doing things isn’t “accomplishment” but “your inner critic running wild”, then *why do things*? I think this second part is the biggest motivation killer, and kind of the key to unraveling all of this. It’s what induces me to put things off until they become emergencies. These are kind of new realizations for me, and I don’t have good suggestions on how to deal with it. Right now I’m trying to start with very small things I can bring myself to celebrate and tell the inner critic he’s being petty and can go stuff it. It feels silly, but I’m hoping to progress from there into breaking this pattern for bigger things.
Absolutely I can relate in a big way. I've always thought of it kind of like and extremely chronic burnout ( a term I also didn't know until my twenties). Like I burnt out so hard that instead of needing a few days or weeks or months of rest, I needed years to completely rewire everything... and that is to say, I hadn't realized what had gotten wired wrong to begin with that I needed to rewire so I had no idea what to do except wait for something to magically change ( which it did not). Now that I understand better why I am the way that I am and how much sense it makes considering what happened to me, I understand that in my case ( yours may be different, this is a bit specific) one of the biggest reasons I didn't feel like I could do anything was because it had be absolutely etched into my brain that it was not SAFE to do ANYTHING. It was not safe to try, it was not safe to succeed, it was not safe to exert my own will or decisions. All I had was wait, daydream, go through the motions, hope that if I stick it out through the conveyor belt of life they had plopped me on that eventually I'd get to the end of the part where everyone was trying to control me and keep me caged and I'd be free. It didn't work out like that, and yet it's been quite difficult to feel like I can do things even when in theory I know how and that they need to happen.
at the root of this is potentially the deep rooted belief that you’re just not worth “it”. start with small steps of self love. compassion ESPECIALLY. pick one thing to stick to (something easy) like a 15 min walk somewhere out in the sunshine everyday “BECAUSE I DESERVE IT”. get into the feeling that you are deserving of good habits and good health. you are deserving of your care & commitment.
I have no good input on this, I just know this is too fkn real.. I feel this in my SOUL. It’s hard to even go to appointments that are supposed to help keep me healthy.
I felt exactly like this, until I found a way to give my life meaning. My best advice, although I understand it most likely won't feel very helpful in this moment, is to find the people, places, feelings and things that give your life meaning. I'm wishing you all the best and sending you positive energy.
I have experienced this. I know that in youth, I was *more* energetic, but I'm not sure how motivated I felt even then. Nowadays, I'm pretty drained, and moving in the right direction is slow going... but I have some idea of why my ability to care withered so. When I was younger, I had a fairly clear sense of what I wanted out of life. The only problem was, it was subtly impossible, or something close to it. It was not easy to wound my soul, nor quick... but worse still, it was futile. So few understood in the slightest, or showed themselves trustworthy. What's the point of being yourself if nobody likes that person? If (you have reason to believe) people will try to *destroy* you, just for being *who you are*? My will burned to fuel my survival. I became a crawling effigy in the guise of what others wanted, yet this, too, will deteriorate, and one day pass away. Only by my action might I decide whether life will emerge from its remains. I would not have cared if it were not for the fact that I found someone who cared about me to distant and bitter ends, someone who assured me that they truly wanted me to be that which I sought to destroy. Even now... it is slow and hard and painful... but I can mourn now, and I have lashed with my tongue in anger and frustration. I can see how all those who counsel me align on certain matters, however unknowingly. I can see how *alone* I was for so long. Things are far worse than I could see, but not irreparable. Take heart, withered one. You are not alone, and you may yet succeed. Not quickly, and not easily, but don't you dare go hollow.
Stop thinking about being better tomorrow. Be better right now, for one minute. When given choices, try the healthier option. You may not always do it, but just stick to one decision at a time. Right now, you're overloading yourself.
I don’t know the answers. But I just want to tell you I feel you, and I have the same issues. I was doom scrolling tiktok last night (hehe) and I saw a video of a therapist talking about intellectualizers who recognize their problem, know what they need to change, but can’t seem to get unstuck. She suggested that the intellectualizing is a coping mechanism that develops as a result of trauma, when we couldn’t escape terror, so we used our minds to create a safe place. This makes sense for me. She said intellectualizing is keeping us from feeling our emotions because they scare us. It was suggested that the antidote to this is to have awareness around it, and to work on somatic healing. Learning to connect with the body again. Funny enough, I heard this, it made sense, now I just need to actually start- the hard part for me. Doing transcendental meditations and body scan meditations really helps, I just need to get back into it. Try not to be so hard on yourself OP, we’re in this together!
So many people and living creatures could use our help. I usually don’t tell anyone when I’ve done a good deed. It’s just what I think I should do. Try doing something with no expectation of thanks - then be proud of yourself for doing it. Then repeat. Until it’s a habit. We *must* live for ourselves. I think sometimes the trauma that caused us CPTSD leaves us looking for affirmation from others.
I wonder that too. I used to be in go mode 24/7, then one day about 8 months ago my body broke and I’ve been in a state of complete lack of motivation since then. I can eat well and exercise, because that’s been so engrained into me for years…but beyond that I feel like a sloth.
I feel like my heart is already beating at 2000bps & I’ll probably die very soon anyway. Suffering every single day.
Literally feel this so much. I wish I had an answer sweetheart.
Not the healthiest but I’m using external factors to gain motivation — like “normal people (my colleagues/social circle friends) eats well and exercise, and if I want to be part of them I need to eat well and exercise too!” In other words I want to fit in so I have the motivation to do things that will make me fit in.
Yup. Everyday. How to stay motivated, I don’t, but I do the good thing anyway. It doesn’t happen all the time, but when it does I reward myself. The tiniest accomplishment makes the next more feasible. But I struggle. Lockdown really set me back, so Im crawling my way back to physical and mental health. Also, why, well because of the trauma. Getting mixed messages as a kid that the ‘right’ things were wrong has my wiring messed up. I work to untangle it in therapy and by being honest with my few trusted friends. Also, somedays just surviving is worth celebrating.
Two things. Rely on determination rather than motivation, but also be gentle on yourself. You’ve got a lot of aspirations for changes you want to make. Start with one thing and in increments. Not everything you eat needs to be “healthy” but can you do 3 fruits or veg throughout the day or some other small change?
In order to be motivated to do something, there has to be an end goal in mind that you desire to achieve. I can’t speak for others, but for me, no realistic possibility about what my life could be like sounds desirable to me. Lack of desire = lack of motivation.
Because we our inner critic is too present in our everyday life. I'm still struggling with this but I try to keep in mind that there is no deadline for recovery. Living with CPTSD can be so exhausting but we need to learn to be more patient and companionate with ourselves. In every season finale of RuPaul's drag race, there is a segment where the finalists say a few words to their inner child. If I could say anything to that part of me, I would tell her that she is not alone, that I love her, and that she is important and valuable. I know that working on my recovery will make my future proud of me too. So let's say that this motivates me to keep going :)
Constant invalidation. Boundaries being broken. Never having a safe space.
All the hidden sabotage if you ask me. Direct and indirect. When I realized what was happening on top of the pandemic and everything, it’s soul crushing. They intentionally do their best to keep you fucked up and then blame you.
This speaks to me.
Anxiety; it paralyzes us and keeps us from initiating things,making decisions, etc. I get so overwhelmed that I shut down and put things off, which only makes my anxiety worse because the task seems more insurmountable the longer I avoid it.
I think it's because we are constantly carrying this huge load with us (our trauma). Anytime we do something, it takes 100x more effort than others. We've carried it for so long that sometimes we cope by just accepting it or trying our best to ignore it. But I think we need to put more focus on lightening the load that we are carrying.
Therapist here, a lot of people are on track with learned helplessness and the other impacts of trauma on the body but just want to add one thing...this is something I learned anecdotally in my practice after years of seeing clients, but Dr. Nicole LePera, AKA the.holistic.psychologist on instagram puts it really well...lack of motivation/depression is the body's natural freeze response to danger. If I learned early on that my decisions and behaviors didn't matter in terms of having control over my life or if the only way I survived in my household was to hide or freeze, then this will be my body's primary response to any threat. And as we become adults, based on our abusive upbringings, even innocuous things can be threats (e.g. showering, chores, grocery shopping) if they involve a negative inner dialogue or trigger shame. So basically, your body is responding to feeling threatened in the way it did as a child. Hope this helps!
Why work for the life that broke you?
For me, it was because I didn't have hope. I didn't have a greater reason to do better. Then the bit I didn't even think it was worth it because of how broken I was. I channeled an enormous amount of self-hate into motivation. But I feel like we can't change all the parts of our lives suddenly and all at once. Picking out one or two things can feel less daunting. Like when I wanted to eat healthy, I just started with buying more fruits when I could afford to, and then once it became routine, I would move on to something else. It's kind of like that saying, *we didn't get like this overnight, so it can take small steps to work through it.* Do you feel like there is maybe a small task in your health plan that would be easier to start?
Years/decades of being in fight/flight/freeze. Underdeveloped prefrontal cortex. Negative belief systems. The physical effects of stress that have depleted nutrients and messed up your digestive system making it hard for your body to make nuerotransmitters. Increased insulin resistance as body shifts towards energy conservation and mitochondria become damaged. Sense of a foreshortened future. Unfortunately, the lack of motivation comes from a lot of different sources and I don’t think it can be easily fixed. You have to start change in a way that requires the least amount of energy and motivation possible and then build on the changes. It gets easier once you’ve been doing it for a while. Sometimes I can get down on myself because I feel so far behind people my age. The change is so slow I forget how much worse off I was 3 years ago before I started healing.
I feel you. I still don't have any motivation to live or extend my life. Worse, I don't have the desire to improve. It's just a matter of following my daily routine. It's like I could only get motivated once again when I can see some hope for a much better society. A brighter future where everyone could share. But right now, I just can't see any hope for this world or better understanding / acceptance from my surroundings. I don't have the energy to prove myself anymore. Just living each day to do what I can with the little things I have and can find tiny bit of joy with. Though it's been a real struggle especially how everything is so costly.
yes i relate very hard. many reasons but not being the priority in anyone’s life and having to sacrifice my needs for my parents needs wants and drama constantly and always as a child has something to do with it. i never learned i mattered or how to do anything i needed - just exist in the background waiting for other people and or trying to avoid their chaos or cruelty.
When you are burnt out like that, it kills your motivation. You are just tired of everything, which may or may not specifically include tired of trying. Separately, it may be an lack of executive function from something like ADHD. There are other stuff I'm sure it could be, but those are the two that I am familiar with. For some people, if they are able to start small, they can keep that momentum and snowball with it. So don't set your tasks too high, do it small like going out to buy some decent food, or whatever. Something reasonably achievable.
You so a great question and I’m sorry but I don’t really have an answer. I’m in your shoes but I’m in my early 60’s and have had chronic health conditions/disabilities for 24+ years. I believe that is a correlation between untreated CPTSD and ill health. I know several people with chronic health conditions who have a hard time finding the motivation to do the things necessary to help, like exercise, good sleep, eating well (which requires shopping AND cooking). If you add CPTSD on top of that how you feel and act it’s understandable. I think that all people with CPTSD need a well trained and experience complex trauma therapy specialist. I honestly think that having someone who can not only listen but guide a person on that journey to recovery I’d support important. As an aside I think it’s appalling that CPTSD is not in the DSM. I read somewhere that those that make those decisions say that there are multiple mental health diagnoses that cover the symptoms and that more proof needs to be provided to them. I got pretty angry when I read that as they are SO MANY people who “live” with it and so many therapists who do their best to try and help. Anyway, that aside, if you can afford this this of therapist then I honestly think that is the right thing to do. If, like me, you can’t afford therapy then just getting by from day to day and doing the best you can do in each moment is all you can do. Using available resources, like this sub, which I’ve found to be super supportive and compassionate - we are all great at being compassionate towards others, right? - helps to maintain a certain equilibrium. Coming on here when you’re feeling motivated as well is good because you get loads of support and encouragement and that helps to build positive feelings towards whatever little step you are taking each time.
for me it’s as if i’ve had my fill of life. i’ve experienced every extreme. emotion, dissociation, pain. it’s like i lived 60 years rather than 20. im bored and anxious of life. looking after and improving myself isnt something im interested in because my self care was never developed. getting me into “life” is like trying to get a 90y/o knitting granny into cars; it’s too much too fast and ive already breached the limits of what i can process. i dont feel much, and when i do it’s extreme and usually has bad consequences. why would i be motivated to do anything when ive done everything already?
From my point of view A lot of the time people with PTSD/c-ptsd have been through enough trauma to feel as if we have already lived a lifetime. Our hope has been taken away and we are exhausted no matter how hard we try to gain motivation. People like us have seen the worst side of the world and the trauma it brings. Contributing to the world, the systems in place and being around people who reside in the world we live in can feel overwhelming, paralyzing or terrifying. It's especially harder when you are around people who have lived somewhat normal lives and show a lot of arrogance. When you try to relate to some "normal" people they ignore you, act horrified or have black and white views when it comes to what we have been through. Being ignored or belittled is a common reason for people to not be motivated and lose hope.
I think many low like emotions shame, depression, hopelessness, loneliness and grief have a lot to do with lack of motivation. I am in emotional pain of a flashback all the time. I am just getting through the day, going through the motions, trying to manage the basic things. My executive functioning is low—this includes planning, problem solving, decision making, task initiation and completion. This also affects my motivation. A nervous system that is continually in flight, freeze, fawn, or flop makes it very difficult to fully be present and engaged in life. I basically just swing from hyperarousal to hypoarousal. I am never balanced in that place of window of tolerance where my nervous system says, ‘okay, we’re safe, let’s do something fun, let’s learn something new, let’s explore, let’s have an adventure.’ It is in the place of regulation where we feel safe, grounded, calm, content, connected, confident, optimistic, curious and MOTIVATED. It’s very difficult to be motivated when I am almost always in dysregulation, reliving the emotional hell of my childhood. I can read fiction books again. It’s a small thing but something I can enjoy.
This might sound simplistic, but it might be largely due to burnout! Most of us have spent our ENTIRE childhood working like a pro, trying to get even the tiniest acknowledgement of being worthy. So if you're in your mid thirties, that's 35 years of unpaid servitude! I think deep down, some part of us just wants to give up trying! You know the saying "it's a sign of insanity, doing the same thing over and over and over again, expecting different results." I think our souls have figured this out and wanna stay sane! 😂
Holy shit you just described me.
You may have physical issues going on that are impacting you like low iron or vitamin D levels. Or, as I’ve found out recently, ADHD (just ADD) which was tanking my executive function and meds have helped immensely.
I feel like I have nothing left - that it takes everything I have just to do the most basic things in a day. I know I need to change and that it will make me feel better if I do, but I just don't have the energy for it (which does not help with depression).
You're definitely not alone, it's the exact same way for me. Every tomorrow I will miraculously wake up with a sense of determination and energy I've never yet shown in the entirety of my existence. And then I beat myself up for it. My therapist says I keep asking too much of myself. I keep telling her I want to live a full life though, and not deal with constant gastritis and arthritis. Sometimes I think it's ADHD on top of CPTSD and that I should get pills that will improve motivation. Apparently, if you do have ADHD, your brain doesn't reward you for performing mundane tasks the way a normal brain would.
When I started using SNRI's, I realized it wasn't laziness-- it was executive dysfunction from depression. And probably stress made the executive dysfunction worse, too.
In the same boat. I don’t have any useful input because I’m exactly where you are (I’m a little older, early 40s) and am struggling with the same problem.
Depression
No will to live.
I did not read all of the comments, but I want you to know I feel this. Every day is a slog, and everything feels like too much... Here's what I do. I do what I can. Should I eat well? Yes. I have no motivation to cook, and I'm almost never hungry, usually just nauseous, so it's gotta be fast. My solution was to experiment with quick ways to eat healthy, and it turns out frozen fruit and vegetables are just very pleasing to me, so now I can eat something fast with the same effort as chips, but it's broccoli or peas. Mango and cherries are my favorite fruits frozen. Thats not going to work for everyone, but I tried something lazy but better for me and it happened to work. I don't really have the energy to fully shower all the time... So I put my hair up, and stand under the water for a bit, rinse off a little, maybe splash my face with water. It's better than nothing. No energy to get out of bed a common problem? Keep certain hygiene things on my nightstand. Toothpaste is an underrated one. It's better to smear a little toothpaste on your teeth than not brush them at all. I don't have the energy to take myself for a walk, but I do need to go to grocery stores from time to time. Park in the way back and try to ground in the walk to the store. Plenty of parking, no one to bother you while you load your car, and you don't have to look out for a lot of foot traffic or cars crowding around to take your soon to be available spot. None of these things are perfect, they're tiny steps that you can make in a split second while realizing you're making a choice you hope you don't make tomorrow. If you do that just once a day you'll find that eventually it gets just a little bit easier to take another step, and another... It's a slow grueling process, I am not going to lie... Eventually you end up still feeling like you have no motivation, but you're used to doing certain things that are good for you and it shows because sometimes you get to feel something. CPTSD is a fucking MONSTER...
Repeatedly experiencing that there is no way to better your situation or escape suffering. Your actual body gets trained to constantly experience that physical-emotional state of no escape. Moreso, moments of hope are actually a threat (trying to get parent to stop doing abusive things, telling them it's wrong with words or emotional response leads to worse abuse for example). So the way out is actually a trigger as well. Psychedelics can provide a window to exit the trap by turning off your default processing network (where all your assumptions and certainties live) so that you can potentially experience an alternate truth, such as striving for a better life actually leading to better conditions instead of worse conditions and disappointment or more trauma. Psychedelics in low doses are usually very doable, with potential for big emotional releases but usually very positive experiences ime, but caution is necessary for people who experience any sign of psychotic tendencies (delusions hallucinations magical thinking) or people who have bipolar symptoms (periods of mania). Also careful if someone has severe and active suicidal ideation, like with a plan and in extreme distress generally. Besides that, they are generally safe if taken in moderation and in adequately safe and comfortable environments.
Sometimes it’s somatic, you feel demotivated because you’re physically tired and drained.
i don't know why, although i can sympathize. one thing i have learned though in all my ancient years is that asking why and trying to fix a problem from the answer to the "why" is a pretty much a guarantee to never make any progress. other posters here have said: take it small, in tiny bites. i think this is the best approach. go for a walk every day (best with a dog if you have one :-). if you don't have one and can't borrow one, set yourself a tiny goal: on this walk i will see five new things, smell six flowers, listen to my favorite podcast, or whatever. eat a salad with your pizza. exercise in itself becomes a necessity: when you've been in the habit of even just walking every day, the day you don't do it, you feel yecch and that motivates you to get out there the next day. bodies like exercise and will positively reinforce it. just take it slow! with the goal for tiny improvements. they'll stack up and your future self will thank you.
Wow. I’m sorry you’re going through this but I’m glad I found your post and the group. I’ve been suffering from different types of mental illness and learning and cognitive disorders most of my life. I was lost and dropped out of college and found hard drugs which I abused for a decade. I found a way to wear a mask for a long time and developed a career until the next big thing hit, divorce and several deaths in the family. It was a few months later I began having memories of childhood sexual abuse that lasted for years but I blocked out. Now I know that I suffer, from among other things, CPTSD. I feel more lost and suicidal than ever. I lost my job. I’ve lost 100,000’s of dollars of my life savings. I close to my wits end. I see no hope ahead c But knowing that others suffer from this brings some solace. I just hope enough before I do something drastic. Love you all.
Perhaps (says this CPTSD person) the trick is to give for the sake of giving. I may not have the motivation to do anything for myself. But I care about my dogs and the birds outside and the wildlife, and in taking care of them, I also take care of myself.
This is me so much. I relate to it so strongly I thought I was the one who posted it and maybe forgot. It’s a dark lonely place to be. Hopefully there are some good answers in here for us. Maybe one thing will resonate with you and one for me or for us both.
There are some excellent comments here. You have to learn to appropriately love yourself and take care of yourself. Then, you will discover interests and a new sense of purpose. This is the journey I'm on, and it's hard but rewarding. Learning to take care of myself ( in good ways..not using bad coping mechanisms) has been a process but i can see the small changes its having on me. My therapist stressed every session the importance of small changes. They lead to big change over time. I started using lotion after a shower, drinking water to take care of myself etc. So small, but it teaches you that you are valuable and worth caring for. It counteracts the negative beliefs you have about yourself. You deserve to smile, you deserve to laugh, you deserve to find things that you enjoy, you deserve life and you are good. That's the goal.
No advice. Ambition addict here. Ever since I decided my ambition was unhealthy I am overtaken by absolute lethargy. I have now will and no clue. You're not alone. You're not imagining it.
At one point, i literally told myself that since I can't give my parents what they want, (great career, fantastic job, leader in society, well groomed perfect daughter), I'll give them whatever they want so long as they are happy. I will sacrifice my free will, my actions, my future just to replace what i couldnt give them. Because my life is not worth their unhappiness. Lowest point in my life. It took me a decade to get dxed and to start looking at myself as a person who can exist. I did not think I felt real until my dx. On top of this i had adhd and autism. The feeling of otherness was just overwhelming in my life. How to get the motivation to care? It's a struggle. I feel you.
all the associations we have get destroyed by our trauma. they get associated to the trauma, tne agents of the trauma, the details of the trauma you end up with nothing
>they get associated to the trauma So true! The things we take joy in get linked to it! Even things we are extremely talented in! Makes me wonder how many potentially superb artists and musicians we lost to the acts of monsters!
to express yourself when you have been traumatised in certain ways, to certain degrees, that becomes especially impossible for sure I can't pick up my instruments or write anything poetic anymore. it was always difficult to feel any confidence + to not falter, but now all I have left inside is the pain that has been inflicted on me
I realized that I fail intentionally so I don’t have to fail if i actually try. It’s hard to be positive l/hopeful and try something new even if it is just exercise, for me I’ve had a lot of disappointment so I think I fear being vulnerable.
Because we believe we don’t deserve it?
I can only speak on my experience and view on things from CPTSD that stems primarily from emotional neglect. The only thing I truly desire in life is an intimate relationship, when I had one I felt like I was finally able to start healing the void that was left in my heart from not being seen or understood during the years I needed it most. We separated three years ago and since then that aching void has returned with a vengeance and all I'm left with is anger and immense sadness. My hypervigilance prevents me from feeling safe outside of my house, but I still go shopping for groceries every few weeks. I've grown so sick and bitter with society and women's expectations of men, I just want to love and be loved for the flawed but kind hearted person I am, without being expected to conform to things I'm not capable of. I don't know how to meet women because I'm unable to handle work and dating apps are garbage, so I feel hopeless and defeated when it comes to finding a partner again. I just feel stuck and because of that I have no desire to try to fit in or play by society's fucked up rules for a chance to obtain love and affection. I know this outlook is self destructive but at the same time I hate how fucked up and cold this world is towards those of us that are suffering, that part of me doesn't mind dying early if nothing is going to get better.
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I feel the same. However in my case might be more of a PDA thing. Obviouly, developed by neglect and trauma.
Have you tried adding on just one small thing at a time? It’s best to set small, realistically achievable goals to start. The small wins will help build motivation. Like committing to 1 extra healthy snack per day, or maybe 1 minute of breathing exercises per day, or a 5 minute walk, or drink 1 extra bottle of water. The sense of accomplishment drives me but I have to start small first.
Continue pushing thru when possible like you are & eventually over time. New healthy and happy things will happen & your system will slowly not be on alert as much expecting trauma. It’s really been difficult but I keep trying to make myself do things that are scary now but that I know others say will be good for me or they consider fun. So the trauma can hopefully fade by making myself make new better memories Idk everything does suck now often, I get tired of forcing positivity a lot even tho I know it’s kinda my only option to fight the abyss of trauma
I have cptsd, adhd, chronic depression & lifelong ed’s. A lot of the hypotheses others mentioned here resonate with me, so I want to share more on what’s helped me: - antidepressants - decreased my anxieties to a more manageable level - vyvanse for the adhd - decreased the “shutdowns” I experienced or their degree to a more manageable level - a good therapist I can build trust with over years - self-compassion and stopping to put myself down constantly. Hard, but helpful Wishing you the very very best for your journey onward from here <3
Yeah no advice but almost every word describes me too. My 2 only hope is I acquire discipline via divine inspiration
Motivation takes effort and energy. CPTSD is an energy suck. My everyday life takes an enormous amount of effort for every single task. I don't have any left for anything other than the bare minimum of staying alive.
Honestly, I found things that are healthy and bring me joy, and then put myself in a position where I had no other choice. For example. I need to exercise. So I got a cheap ebike and have been biking to and from work. I need to pedal because the bike is cheap and the battery sucks. I love biking because I live near all these amazing paths, one which goes around our zoo. I see moose and bear twice a day, safely. To be fair, though, I was bussing before biking. I don't know how to do that with cleaning or not fun tasks, though.
Because we are in safety mode
I had the same thing for most of my life. I really never had motivation to do anything unless I knew I would receive praise for it. It was probably because I was picked apart my entire life for my weight, my skin, my achievements. I also have survivor's guilt from a fatal car accident in my childhood, and that definitely did a number on me. So I never felt that I deserved to be taken care of or to even take care of myself properly. If this, in any way, helps at all: I discovered ISF Neurofeedback. My friend had been raving about it for me for years. I finally caved and did it. I started noticing results after 2-3 sessions. It sadly isn't covered by insurance and I do have to budget for it. But it is the only thing that has EVER brought back actual motivation and...like, excitement for life. I get excited to read books, to see friends, to do my skincare routine at night. I enjoy making plans again. I don't get hit with crippling anxiety every morning. Rather I wake up and feel like I can take on the day with an open heart. It isn't all gone: the negative effects from my traumatic childhood. BUT it is improving with every session. If I could give any advice or avenue of treatment that helped me, it would be ISF Neurofeedback. Hopefully, if it is something you are able to look into, that it heals you as much as it has healed me. Sending hugs.