No drive or get up and go

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Anyone else have this problem, I feel like I am just wasting my life I feel exhausted most of the time!

Before putting it down to depression or an ASD related problem , check that you are eating reasonably healthily,( including green stuff and not too much white stuff!!, not suffering from pernicious anaemia for instance as a result of nutritional deficiencies), that you are sleeping enough ( which for some can mean 10 hours a day ), getting at least 20 mins a day of fresh-air, sunlight ,and mild exercise ( eg; walking ) aswell as not suffering from sleep apnea ( snoring/breathing blockage that can cause serious oxygen deprivation) , nor from a food intolerance ( well known for fatigue effects , best signs are eating a food everyday which simply "couldn't go without"!) nor suffering from an actual physical illness .

Whenever I feel like I am wasting my life it is usually because I think I should be doing something else.
Check this .
It's true that this and many other thoughts can be exhausting.

But don't forget the body counts too! Very seriously.

ouinon has some good suggestions.

It could also be ME / CFS or clinical depression.

I watched some video on youtube where this girl explains that sometimes it feels like a heavy blanket is on us all the time. We know what to do, how to do it, and even sometimes have the desire to do it.............but there is just something there that keeps us from doing it. I think it has a lot to do with our desire to repeat the same thing over and over again. If we start something "new" it is going against the grain of what we were doing before. We have a hard time making decisions and changing directions. Think of Aspergers like the infinity symbol. We love familiarity and repeating the same activities, words, thoughts, etc.

It might have been literal. I literally feel weighed down. I don't have clinical depression at all as several reports have pointed out. It has come to my attention recently that it could be simply my senses like internal rather than surface senses feel my body much more. Things like taking a hot shower can provide temporary relief. University Collage London found out on the molecular level that a heat signal will block a pain signal for up to 45 minutes. This is especially true of things like period pains and gastroenteritis but it might work with this overall weighed down feeling. Also I find if I sleep with my arms contorted and underneath me I get better quality sleep, even if my arm is completely limp in the morning and I have to manoeuvre it with the other arm and try get eh blood flowing. Though I've found that I can sleep on some muscle and it doesn't cut the circulation off. Sometimes I wake up in a sweat because I’m too warm. But the quality of sleep from that is still better.

So I would say warming yourself up and doing exercise for endorphins can help a little. I struggle with what I thought was poor motivation but am actually distractibility and my brain stalling because of my cognitive problems. Tell me about it I’m desperately underachieving and am actually very ambitious person.

I feel both that I'm wasting my life, and I'm sort of tired, at least in the sense that I'm overwhelmed enough just by the relatively little I deal with, and need to recharge/rest at home.

But I don't think I'm depressed. I just can't have everything that I would like out of life-it's just sort of a factual statement that I'm wasting my life, and I don't really think about it all THAT much.

Wow, I have that. That's amazing. For a while now I've found that I often sleep with my arms under me when can't get to sleep in any other position. And sleep better as you say.(despite cutting off circ to arm!!) I wonder why that is!!

And about sensing internal activities/sensations/state of body as much as or more than my bodys contact with/experience of the "outer" world is also def true.
I think that's why I hate being cold so much cos it increases the data coming from the outside; my skin more aware of "outside" of body than when is 19°c outside or more.

Yes, and me too , spent all this time thinking was suffering from depression, and actually feeling depressed because of that!! , when it has been ASD all along.

Fom the summer of 2000 to roulghly January 2004, I had what my doctors called Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. I had previously caught pneumonia, and was just getting over that when CFS got me. One day, I went downstairs and came back up exhausted.
From then on a steady decline in energy resulted in four years of not wanting to do anything in particular. This is when my latent obssessions picked up again, because not going out became more enticing and doing something over and over was my day.
The only way I made any sort of headway was to go for short walks, gradually getting longer. I got a job, and emersed myself in a college course on Business Studies, where I found that I could do maths properly for a change.
Having been mercilessly bullied at my job, I walked out because talking to my boss would have been too exhausting on me. From then on my lead blanket got lighter.
I don't really know where I'm going with this now I've started...
Oh yeah, super tiredness sucks. Directionless talking now over

Wow thank you there is some great advice in these posts. XX

well... the one thing I dont recall being addressed in any of the previous posts is well... do you have goals in life? What do you want to acomplish with your short time on this planet? What keeps me motivated is fear, fear ill waste my time/life. Im 25 and boy did those years go by fast, but I know what I have to do to acheive what I need to in life to be happy, do you feel similarly??

I'll sort of add to what ouinon has said: analyze your diet. It's really hard to get enough iron from your diet, so I take an iron supplement (Liquimins makes a good one: click here) and it makes a big difference. Insufficient iron can result in feeling run down.
Also, keep yourself hydrated. Drink lots and lots of water. This can help with energy levels too. If need be, set an alarm for yourself as a reminder to drink water, maybe 8 ounces every half hour (8 ounces is only 1 cup ).
(Liquimins makes a whole host of really good supplements. They're available in a lot of health food stores or online.)

Tbh if you mention something like this to your doctor the first thing they do is give you a blood test, talk about diet and such. You can rule out stuff like that pretty quickly. Then they check for some major diseases. Beyond that good luck.

Some doctors refuse to recognise CFS or ME. Some doctors only give ME diagnosis to females. Though to be honest I don't think they know much about fatigue. I think in my case the sensory explanation make a lot of sense. I've pretty much accepted it will always be there but is not fatal. What I found excruciating was trying to explain that it was a physical fatigue rather than drowsiness.

Same issue here and have had it for years and years.
But I also have underactive thyroid.
But yes, I feel I am wasting my life totally, sitting and achieving nothing by society's or indeed, anyone's standards.
I mean to write books... I never manage to start.
Total lack of motivation and focus even though the ideas are in my head.
Hard to bring myself to even talk most days.

Yet another person who can relate to this here.

I am unemployed and spend all day by myself. There's so much I could be doing yet this lethargy bogs me down.

Here's the problem though: since I graduated 7 years ago and have been out of work, I've tried to engage in various hobbies that I feel may be useful/interesting/diverting, everything from teaching myself PHP to learning to create my own digital instruments. I'll be going okay with one thing but all the while in my mind something is going "you've been neglecting x, you should really be doing that", so I move to x and my mind is "you've been neglecting y, do that", so I move onto y. Eventually I end up spending 15 minutes here, 20 minutes there and not achieving anything.

Then I'll suddenly stop, just totally stop what I'm doing and stim for a bit, all the while my mind is trying to latch onto something I can get my teeth into, but the choices paralyze my mind.

So either I'm doing something and not getting anywhere, or doing nothing and not getting anywhere. I can't win!

Some days I can be busy but after several hours have absolutely nothing to show for it.

It really is most frustrating because there's so much I want to do, things I know I can do and would really enjoy if only I could spend more than 20 minutes on it at a time.

There have been points where I drink alot of water, that goes some way to easing the fug of lethargy, though not enough to help me concentrate.

I will have to try the diet thing, more greens, less biscuits. I know it's not a miracle cure-all but it's well worth a go, especially since I so want to, say, finish a piece of music. Hah, I have started working on so many pieces of music, pictures, web pages, and other projects, I have gigabytes of unfinished stuff here! I just want to lose the lethargy!

It's most frustrating though when you know what you want to do, you have your hobbies and interests, but for whatever reason you just can't stick with it.

Vimster I think we could be one and the same!!

Well if this is the case then you'll also maybe agree that even free time is hell. I can't watch a film of TV programme without my mind telling me I could be doing something more productive, yet when I do stop and get on with something.... see my previous post.

Finally, just because we lack get-up-and-go doesn't mean we're lazy, but that is probablyhow people see us.