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Original Post
Hi UV,
Just want to say that procrastination, sluggishness, slowness are all problems for me that I have gained some significant ground on over the last year of steady psychodynamic work. They are not 'gone' as problems for me, and I haven't made progress in every area with this, but actually when I look back as I am at the moment (doing some self-evaluation as my t is leaving) I feel a LOT less stuck in many areas and take action a lot more speedily.
I'm not sure how close our situations are (though I've done a lot of staring into space too). For me it's not exactly motivational - in theory I know I WANT to be doing stuff, I just mess around so much on the way to doing it because I can't quite bring myself to do it.
A couple of things have really, really helped. One is understanding that 'tuned out' inactive state as dissociation. This was scary at first because I thought of dissociation as a freaky thing - but now I understand it as just a continuum of more or less normal responses to trauma and stress. For me it's not that extreme, no personality change, no out-of-body stuff or anything like that, just disengagement. I float around in my brain and nothing quite goes forward or back or anything. Sounds a lot like what you are experiencing with your 'doing nothing' time. Once I understood it as dissociation, I could start to see that it was a response I'd learned to traumas of my childhood, and I was using it as a way to deal with stresses of adulthood. I'm not saying I then stopped doing it, or even tried to stop doing it - I haven't at all. But just being aware of it that way has really helped me understand what is going on, and I think naturally as I deal with the background traumas and deepen my understanding of when and why I am withdrawing, I do it less.
The other thing that has helped HEAPS is going through the process of having and repairing little and not-so-little conflicts with my T. I include there things that don't apparently seem like conflicts - feeling scared about telling her something and telling her anyway. I think that is the single most useful thing I've experienced in therapy so far.
I know it doesn't seem directly connected to the motivation issue, but I've found that for me they are one and the same. My inaction is basically about avoiding stuff that I am scared of - because I'm scared of being exposed, getting things wrong, being revealed as horrible and unworthy, never getting things right, and so on. All that stuff just steals the impetus to do ANYTHING that is slightly tricky or challenging.
Now I find when stuff comes up that I am scared about, I actually have a lower tolerance for sitting in the agony of not doing it. Having that practice of taking risks with exposing myself and possibly entering conflict, and having those risks persistently turn out okay, has made me much more ready and resilient about exposing myself in little ways in other situations. And more aware, too, of the underground fluctuations of feeling that keep me stuck in one place.
Incidentally, that feeling of being 'overwhelmed' has been a really big theme in my therapy too, and staying in one place is a lot about trying to contain all those overwhelming feelings. As my T has helped me with containing the feelings (by reflecting them back to me, helping me really understand them and have the full space to express them and have them accepted) they have become less overwhelming.
Hope this helps, UV - it is a really tricky thing to get traction on, and I know I've spent many years wishing for a way to push myself forward.
J
Just want to say that procrastination, sluggishness, slowness are all problems for me that I have gained some significant ground on over the last year of steady psychodynamic work. They are not 'gone' as problems for me, and I haven't made progress in every area with this, but actually when I look back as I am at the moment (doing some self-evaluation as my t is leaving) I feel a LOT less stuck in many areas and take action a lot more speedily.
I'm not sure how close our situations are (though I've done a lot of staring into space too). For me it's not exactly motivational - in theory I know I WANT to be doing stuff, I just mess around so much on the way to doing it because I can't quite bring myself to do it.
A couple of things have really, really helped. One is understanding that 'tuned out' inactive state as dissociation. This was scary at first because I thought of dissociation as a freaky thing - but now I understand it as just a continuum of more or less normal responses to trauma and stress. For me it's not that extreme, no personality change, no out-of-body stuff or anything like that, just disengagement. I float around in my brain and nothing quite goes forward or back or anything. Sounds a lot like what you are experiencing with your 'doing nothing' time. Once I understood it as dissociation, I could start to see that it was a response I'd learned to traumas of my childhood, and I was using it as a way to deal with stresses of adulthood. I'm not saying I then stopped doing it, or even tried to stop doing it - I haven't at all. But just being aware of it that way has really helped me understand what is going on, and I think naturally as I deal with the background traumas and deepen my understanding of when and why I am withdrawing, I do it less.
The other thing that has helped HEAPS is going through the process of having and repairing little and not-so-little conflicts with my T. I include there things that don't apparently seem like conflicts - feeling scared about telling her something and telling her anyway. I think that is the single most useful thing I've experienced in therapy so far.
I know it doesn't seem directly connected to the motivation issue, but I've found that for me they are one and the same. My inaction is basically about avoiding stuff that I am scared of - because I'm scared of being exposed, getting things wrong, being revealed as horrible and unworthy, never getting things right, and so on. All that stuff just steals the impetus to do ANYTHING that is slightly tricky or challenging.
Now I find when stuff comes up that I am scared about, I actually have a lower tolerance for sitting in the agony of not doing it. Having that practice of taking risks with exposing myself and possibly entering conflict, and having those risks persistently turn out okay, has made me much more ready and resilient about exposing myself in little ways in other situations. And more aware, too, of the underground fluctuations of feeling that keep me stuck in one place.
Incidentally, that feeling of being 'overwhelmed' has been a really big theme in my therapy too, and staying in one place is a lot about trying to contain all those overwhelming feelings. As my T has helped me with containing the feelings (by reflecting them back to me, helping me really understand them and have the full space to express them and have them accepted) they have become less overwhelming.
Hope this helps, UV - it is a really tricky thing to get traction on, and I know I've spent many years wishing for a way to push myself forward.
J