Emotional Resistance to Responsibilities

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lack of motivation is most likely a symptom of your depression. some types of talk therapy or a med adjustment might help.

I just spent probably an hour in bed, hungry, thinking it would be nice if I made eggs, and the proceeded to not get out of bed to make eggs. The internal experience is maddening and stuff like this happens everyday. I don't know what to do about it besides asking my dr out of the blue for parkinson's meds.

In another thread about this, I posted the Hyperbole and a Half post, This is Why I'll Never Be An Adult, which makes me feel less alone. I figured 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.

Since then, I was able to read her book, and sure enough, there's a chapter where she describes this exact thing. I wish I could give a link to the book, but instead I'll just plagerize the first couple chapters.

"One of the most terrifying things that has ever happened to me was watching myself decide over and over again--thirty-five days in a row--to not return a movie I had rented. Everyday, I saw it sitting there on the arm of my couch. And everyday, I thought, I should really do something about that... and then I just didn't.

"After a week, I started to worry it was never going to happen, but I thought, Surely I have more control over my life than this. Surely I wouldn't allow myself to NEVER return the movie."

Then the cartoon picture of herself, standing next to the movie and couch, looking glum, thinking, "...I wouldn't just... NOT do something this easy, right?"

Then there's a few pages of cartoons of her arguing with herself about putting away a plate she had food on three days ago.

Sigh. This is totally me. I actually have a library book in my car that was due in September 2013. I put it in my car so I would remember it.

Alas, her technique for dealing with this problem is that she'll allow (or cause) the situation to get so bad that her fear of the consequences of not doing the task are worse than her feelings about doing the task. She doesn't seem to advocate this.

My perception is that the problem is the emotions are not really based in the circumstances under consideration. I find my emotions to be unreliable indicators. I am often unduly pessimistic and anxious and these emotions distort my perceptions and sense of possible courses of action and result in unbalanced estimates of probability of positive and
negative outcomes.

This is the "noise" in the decision making process. Not emotions altogether, but emotions not actually base in the thoughts under consideration.

Fortunately, I have slowly learned to take my emotions less seriously than I once did.