autistic inertia

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I am not sure what I experience is a part of autism per se, but I absolutely have some sort of inertia and it feels like I should be able to and want to do something but just don't. It is a very serious problem I have. Autistic inertia is the only term or description I have found of this outside of schizoid personality disorder or parkinson's-like issues, which aren't themselves terms.

Anyways, this article I found quite insightful that talks about facets of 'not doing something'.

http://archive.autistics.org/library/inertia.html

I found the article to provide helpful insights. Thanks for the link!

Yeah, I'm there.

At first I wasn't sure that "inertia" was a good term for my problem, because people mention that it's also hard to stop things once they get started, and I don't have that problem so much. But when I thought about it, I guess I actually do have that problem too, it's just less troublesome. In keeping with the physics metaphor terminology, then unpleasantness of an activity could be the "friction." Friction makes it harder to start and easier to stop... but even when there's little or no friction, it still takes some force to get going.

When I googled "paralysis of will," I found people describing similar problems, but no help. Also, this hilarious blog post makes me feel less alone. I think a problem like this might be why the author has relatively limited "capacity for responsibility," but the post focuses more on the results that happen if you try to fix the problem through sheer force of will.

haha, shared the link on my fb

There is another recent thread about this in the in-depth living part of wp, but no help in there


The psychiatrist seems to think I might have an identity issue of some sort that relates to it in that I do not actually know what I want to do vs doing something for others. I do not want to be a selfish person though, and things and ways of being and existing, like being able to make my own money, have been drilled into me as 'this is what you need to do', and unsurprisingly to the point where if I am not at least trying to earn money, then I am being morally abhorrent.
I suppose this ties into "I tend not to notice my own emotions/desires without a careful conscious process of checking to see how I'm feeling" from the article I linked.

Last edited by cavernio on 16 May 2015, 11:57 am, edited 1 time in total.

Helpful article; it definitely points out a lot of issues I and my mother struggle with. I'll want to start something, but start thinking about possible consequences, weighing in my mind if other things are of higher priority, and end up not starting anything. When I do start something, however, I get so involved that I lose sight of other things
I wonder if it's a symptom of ADHD as well.

Yeah, when I looked up "paralysis of will" I got a lot of ADHD-related hits.

I think this inertia is different from executive dysfunction (problems with working memory, organization, planning, prioritizing, etc), but the two problems together really compound each other.

If your problem is like mine, I can see why your psychiatrist thought that, but I think he's missing the mark.

There are a lot of things society (or just your family) says you "have" to do, but if there aren't actually any significant consequences to not doing those things, I think those of us who have trouble doing things will dump those obligations pretty fast. Obligations that can't be discarded completely will be minimized. Maybe our moms will judge us or whatever, but we have enough trouble doing stuff that's actually worth doing, so we can't go wasting energy on stuff that's not necessary.

Like, lots of people think you HAVE to vaccuum your carpet every [week, fortnight, or month--however often their mom did it], but screw vaccuuming. I don't even own a vaccuum.

My point is, even though society says you HAVE to make money, or at least try, you probably have your own reasons to want to make money. So your problem isn't that your being held back by some inner lack of desire to make money.

I think it is more of an issue with...the fact that a part of me DOES want to do the thing, but it is mixed up with the part of me that says its an obligation.

I dunno, maybe you're right. I'm having a hard time grasping at the idea that was there about it when he told me about it.

I get "Autistic inertia" quite badly. I wish I didn't.

I buy DVDs because I want to watch the movies but when they arrive they often sit on the shelf for months before I eventually force myself to make the effort to watch them. I want to do lots of things but I keep putting them off indefinitely and simply do nothing of any consequence instead. My personal motto used to be "Why put off until to tomorrow what you can put off indefinitely."

I often have to make the effort to do things.

The link does not work for me but I definitly have this executive dysfuction problem.