Need motivation help
I need a psychological evaluation as to why I’m acting like this lately. I’m a serious type A personality. I get OCD, am very scheduled and routines, and super on top of things. But I also freak out over little things if they go wrong and must know every step far in advanced.
However, ever since I graduated from college, I’ve been slacking. I’m procrastinating a lot more and not achieving the tasks on my to do list like I usually do. I’ve been just hanging out with friends and watching TV when I know there’s other things I need to be doing. It takes me forever to unpack from a trip, the house is a mess, and it’s really hard to muster up the motivation to do anything useful. I just feel like sitting on the couch and watching TV and when I start, I can’t stop.
Why am I like this now when I’m usually the exact opposite?
@drzombienoodles While i´m in no way a mental health professional and can´t offer you an evaluation, In my untrained opinion, it is very possible that you are experiencing burnout to some extent. It´s very common for people who pushed hard their entire life, especially if you just recently finished school to simply be happy to be alive.
So my suggestion for you is
1. Find out what your feelings are at the moment and what are your best guesses for what is making you feel this way. Some of the possiblities to consider:
- your life had structure defined by others or outside elements that suddenly got taken away and now you need to figure it out on your own how to act on inner drive instead of outside one
- aforementioned burnout from pushing too hard and never really having the opportunity to reset from the chronic stress
- others expectations - were the things you had the drive to do before your own wish or fulfilling the expectations of others
- depression - if this is the case, the question is why
- dissatisfaction with your current situation/lack of life direction - maybe you don´t see purpose in your current situation. Do you have any long and short term goals you are slowly working towards? Do you know what you want from life, at least right now? (both in terms of do you want a family, do you want this kind of job, do you want to live like this or that etc)
- too drained mentally - what´s your support giving vs recieving ratio? Are your social interactions fullfilling? Are you overcommiting?
- are you getting the proper balance of rest types? There are many forms of rest, from physical, spiritual, emotional, active, passive, creative etc. And the trick is to counterbalance it. For example, if you work an office job, you may need some active rest in a form of exercise or time outside, away from all the screenlight. If you are on your feet all day, you may need to take a bubble bath. If you work a mentally demanding job, you may need a calming activity, but if you work a monotone and not really hard on thinking job, you may enjoy getting creative or playing around with some puzzles. So check what kind of aspect of your life is overloaded and what is the rest type to counter it
2. Once you have an at least guess on what is going on, act accordingly. Maybe take a rest. Maybe say no to plans. Maybe take just a part time low pressure job that won´t follow you home until you recover. Also, booking a therapy appointment is always very recommended. You got this!
