Executive dysfunction vs. laziness/not caring?

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This all makes beautiful sense. I get stuck, I get fixated and perseverate, I am unable to do a task because I can't understand it, then another day am able to do it with almost no effort - 'though those days don't happen as often as I need them to. I'm happier calling it problems with executive function because I'm constantly looking for ways to overcome it.

For those who are interested in trying it, I found that vitamin B12 really makes things easier a lot of the time, all other things being correctly in place as far as my health goes (sleep, diet etc).

sometimes I'll stay doing the same thing for hours, needing the toilet. but kind of not being able to work out how to get there. I know where it is, but getting there involves working out how to do something other than I am at the moment. like I'm lost.

with me, if I've got a lot of anxiety at the time, just one word can knock me into that state, then as if by magic I'll be OK again.

physical pain can also do it to. (anxiety is a type of emotional / mental pain)

sometimes I'll just read the same page, over and over and over again, not really reading it either.

B12 is supposed to help with anxiety, so I'll give it a go.

http://www.suite101.com/content/vitamin ... der-a70971

often for me anxiety is a bit like pain on the outside of my consciousness, usually more pressure like.

The feeling goes away when I get in the 'stuck' kind of executive function problems.

I would say that I believe in the book 'The man who mistook his wife for a hat' Oliver Sacks says that he's seen a few people who can't sense where their body is, and that they took a lot of B12 supplements.

Again, this is a belief I can't defiantly remember. and it's also only a belief of Oliver Sacks

The cure is still the same. Giving yourself a push to do something. I experience the same problems as others, getting "stuck" and not knowing how to approach something, but you have to realise that there is no objectively "right" way to approach anything, all that matters is beginning somewhere. Anywhere, any random thing at all which isn't what you were already doing, is where you should approach from.

If that way doesn't work, you just have to push in another direction until you find the way that does, rather than staying in the relative comfort of the momentum or inertia that you've previously developed.

Convincing yourself you have an elaborate and inescapable illness isn't going to help, it only throws you in a deeper hole which is even harder to see your way out of and encourages you to come up with stronger reasoning explaining to yourself that it's impossible. It's more helpful simply trying to forcefully focus on doing something different, regardless of whether it seems like the "right" thing and regardless of what it actually is.

Once caught in a rut or a loop, the only way out is to make yourself do something, anything differently.

And don't bother throwing some stereotype at me like "oh typical NT, doesn't understand and thinks it's easy"... I'm not NT, and I experience the exact same problems, and I just know there's no sense in trying to take on the baggage of yet another arbitrarily defined "illness" which has been created to take the responsibility for doing something about it out of my own hands, just so some supposed "specialist" or "expert" (on an arbitrarily conceived subject, mind) can take that responsibility into their hands instead.

Next time you notice you're stuck, move. There is no "right" way to move, just move, any movement at all is a start which can then be built on. Stop overthinking it and just do whatever random nonsense comes to mind first. Stuck in a chair? Get up. It's not like you don't realise you're stuck, otherwise we wouldn't be having this conversation.

I'm supposed to be doing something else right now, but I'm stuck on the internet. It happens frequently. Guess what? I'm getting up.

No it's not easy, but I'm doing it... In a minute...

It is possible to have a genuine problem and acknowledge that without using it as an excuse to do nothing about it. For me, it helps to know that the fact that - in spite of a great deal of effort and in spite of the fact that I do care very much - I get things done much more slowly and inefficiently than other people my age and that I still struggle with basic self-care skills at times, is not due to a moral failing or depression but rather to the fact that my brain works less efficiently than theirs. This allows me to dispense with all the guilt and psychological self-clobbering and to focus on just addressing the problem in the most effective ways that I can.

I also think it is possible to have executive dysfunction AND be a lazy person, without them being the same thing, just as it is possible to have Asperger's and be a jerk, without those therefore being the same thing.

I think maybe I should clarify that in the last line of my last post I was not intending to suggest that you were a jerk, it was just the first thing that came to mind that seemed like a good analogy.

Thanks for the input, everyone who commented.

I am currently thinking that my disorganization is more from laziness and less from executive dysfunction, though I wouldn't be surprised if it's a mix. I think along with the laziness comes the fact that I haven't learnt some of the skills/habits/techniques needed to be organized and keep my life in order. Some of the techniques suggested to help people with executive dysfunction manage things look like they could be useful to me, so I think I'll try and see if they're helpful, even if the reason I find them helpful is different. I do want to get my life in order.

I can't make my body do that, often I can't even keep my head up or talk.

yes! The lady without proprioception. All I remember is the pre-med or anasthesia did that to her. There was something at the end of that chapter, but I'm thinking it would have been B6. B6 will hurt you, but B12 is not toxic unless you drown in it or choke on it. Or something.

The toilet thing happens to me too.

I like Invader's idea - do anything to change the activity. There's a dream called The Hag - you might know of it. It causes paralysis and a feeling of another presence, so is mistaken for a paranormal experience. The paralysis is lifted when the sufferer is able to make a tiny movement, usually lifting a finger. I don't know if that will be enough for me to get up and do something else, 'though. Maybe shaking a leg...

"The Hag"

sleep paralysis?

I had that for hours on end, sometimes I would just go into sleep paralysis, often not knowing I was sleeping, but not being able to move when I tried sometime later, and could remain that way for maybe upto 10 hours, sometimes having waking a bit and having a part of a conversation with my partner, then when I blink go straight back into sleep paralysis.

sometimes can do all sorts of out-of body stuff or more lucid dreaming stuff.
odd sensations, things like my body being crushed, or something moving up my body crushing me.

most of that stopped after the neurological withdrawal went away (that took about 8-9 months)

I started getting it a bit on the neuroleptics.

Laziness is something that people indulge in because lounging around doing nothing instead of working makes them feel good. If not getting things done is causing you misery, that is not laziness. It could be depression, uncertainty, anxiety, fear of doing the wrong thing, or executive dysfunction, or perhaps something else, but people don't just indulge in laziness willy-nilly, not when it's causing them serious problems. If it's a problem, then you're not lazy; there's something else going on that is beyond your control or at least not easy to control.

Yea. I tend to think that truly lazy people are generally happy and content in their listless state. That is not the case for someone suffering from the effects of depression or mental inertia.

Invader, what happens when you know that precisely because the ways of approaching the problem are all equal, you find yourself completely unable to be random?

What happens when you forget how to move? I mean literally forget how to move. Like, let's run through an example scenario to illustrate what goes on.
Suppose it's morning and you're taking a long time to get out of bed.
1. If your bed is warm and your room is cold, you're awake but lying still so as not to face the shock of getting up.
2. If you're being lazy, you could wake up and do anything, but you want to lie in bed because it's fun.
3. If you're tired, you can move your body, but you have little enough strength that you're physically straining to get up.
4. If you have executive dysfunction, your room could be warm (or it could happen to be cold), you don't want to lie in bed and your body is fine, but you still can't move.

Just giving yourself a push has to be done in precisely the right way to be effective, and then it only works sometimes. If you want to brush your teeth, but have forgotten which step goes between standing in front of the sink and holding the toothbrush, you can't just tell yourself to BRUSH YOUR TEETH, BRUSH THEM NOW!! !! Instead, you have to talk to yourself. "You need to brush your teeth. You're standing here at the sink. What do you need to do in order to use the toothbrush? You need it in your hand, so you need to pick it up." USUALLY, that level of detail will let me remember how to pick it up.

Getting stuck in a routine and not being able to stop something you don't want to do just because it's a routine, or something you're doing, seems to benefit from a push... but remembering what you want to do instead is pretty hard.

What happens when you brain and body have woken up out of sync, as hard as you try to move you can't, or just fall over when you get up.
all you can do is try and push out all the 'horrible'ness in the different parts of your body, until it wakes up.

I can move when I have executive dysfunction, I can also talk, just badly and often jibberish and unable to follow a conversation properly.

maybe you just get laziness?

So, I accept that there's laziness, which I can overcome with an effort of will, and there's executive disfunction, which I can talk myself through, a bit. What do I do on those dreadful days when I notice things without judgement if I notice them at all, my co-ordination has failed me, and I can't put thoughts together to speak? It seems so strange that the preceeding day or the following day I can be bursting with energy and able to be effortlessly organised.

Nope, there's a difference, for me at least.

Oliverthered, ''something moving up my body crushing me'' is an exact description of part of the Hag experience. That's where the nightmare sitting on the chest imagery comes from. Neurological withdrawal? Intriguing, if awful.