I actually told my therapist about this blog and gave them the URL (Hi, [I’ll think of a fake name later] hope you don’t send me to an institution after reading this shit!) An idea my therapist has was to publicly post my goals to my blog, that way people knew what my goals were and I could be held accountable, after all, it would suck to constantly admit you didn’t do a single one of your goals. I just don’t know how to do this. Do I do it daily? Weekly? Monthly? All of the above. I would appreciate some input.
I was thinking that when I get back to my old style of handwritten positivity journaling I would make a weekly post sharing what I wrote each day that week. In that journal, I used to write down simple goals for the day and check them off as I completed them. They usually were extremely simple tasks that I knew I could complete because seeing a bunch of “completed” checkmarks made me feel good. But this won’t help me in the moment with my accountability.
Getting clean has been really rough on me, and my latest realization is that I no longer have any motivation, but it’s more than that, I’m not sure what it is. I want to do things, I come up with ideas, but I feel completely frozen and stuck in behavioral a loop. I can’t leave my bed, I can’t eat, I barely shower, I haven’t done any chores, I barely wash my face, and I don’t even do fun things for myself. I’ve been sleeping on my bed with no sheets on it wrapped in a blanket for weeks because I can’t find the motivation to simply put sheets on my bed! It sounds a lot like depression, right? Here’s the confusing part, I’m in a pretty damn good mood! I’m smiling while I write this, I’m optimistic about the future, I’ve been looking up things that could help me in recovery, I’ve been completely medication compliant, I’m not tired, I have a regular sleep/wake cycle, I don’t feel sad, I don’t feel like relapsing, etc. So I don’t think I’m just depressed.
My behavior is odd, even for me, I’ve been lying in bed just repeatedly doing things like watching the same music videos over and over, this usually isn’t too odd for me because it’s one of my self-soothing things (hello, ASD!) Usually I get stuck in this self-soothing behaviour “ritual” when something has really stressed me out, not long term stress, like a sudden stressor or overstimulation that I can’t cope with in the moment (this has gotten really bad since I started trying to get clean, more on why in an upcoming post.) Nothing has suddenly stressed me, and certainly, nothing has suddenly overstimulated me every single day for weeks. Right?
This behavior will start within minutes of waking up, I’ve tried leaving my laptop and phone in my office so I can’t just impulsively grab them, I’ve tried to force myself to do something, literally anything, before letting myself fall back into that loop. I can’t do it. I’ll either lie there with a thousand thoughts running through my head and my imagination being overactive (something that also came back when I got clean), and I’ll just stare at the ceiling until my thoughts become too much and I have to get up and fall back into a self-soothing ritual or write for hours.
The awful part is, usually, my self-soothing might last an hour or two, sometimes a little longer, on occasion it has gotten in the way of things or made me late for things, but I usually can snap myself out of it if I need to. What I’m experiencing now lasts all day, and I can not for the life of me snap myself out of it. I feel completely paralyzed, I can’t do anything. I will sit in bed and obsessively watch the same group of music videos for 6+ hours. That is how I have been spending my days. I know this is how my brain likes to soothe itself, but why is it so desperately trying to soothe itself? I’ll feel good while doing it, but I hate that I’m wasting days and getting nothing done.
This isn’t some teenager-esque FOMO/nomophobia, you could unplug my router and I probably wouldn’t notice until I went to google to check the spelling of a word. Sure I go on the internet, but I’m not really using social media, most of my internet time is research and reading. I’ve actually deleted a lot of my social apps because I’m annoyed by the notifications, so I’m not obsessively checking for likes or whatever people addicted to the internet typically do. This is exclusively self-soothing behavior that came back the first time I tried to get clean; it just has never been this bad.
Aside from my obsessive self-soothing stimulation, I’ve also been writing a lot; this is odd behavior for me because I thought I hated writing. I have found writing about my struggles to be cathartic; I have so many thoughts in my head I’m actually enjoying writing, something I never thought I’d say. I think I write too much; I can crank out a nearly 5,000-word blog post in a matter of 5 hours! On top of that I can write paragraphs and paragraphs of thoughts all day, just look at how long this post already is! I had more subjects I wanted to talk about, but I’m going to have to spit them into separate posts. I just have so many fucking thoughts, and for some reason, I want to write about them all day long.
I’m confused, concerned and frustrated. This isn’t my OCD because I’m not afraid something terrible will happen if I stop and this isn’t my agoraphobia because I don’t even move around my house and I’m not afraid of doing things, I just can’t bring myself to do them. It’s so damn obsessive! My best guess is my brain needs to be soothed because the world and the way my brain naturally works and processes things is overstimulating and exhausting and I haven’t learned to cope with that while clean yet. But I’m no professional. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.
A big reason I feel I have been lacking in motivation and probably why it’s even harder to snap myself out of this loop is my reward system. Back when I was still using there would be a drug and/or alcohol related reward for everything I did that I didn’t want to do. I’d give myself a task and tell myself if I finished it I’d get to use, how much and what I got to use depended on the magnitude of the task. I’d frequently break bigger tasks down and get smaller “rewards” as I went and then when I was done I’d get my bigger “reward” (unsurprisingly this would backfire a lot.) If I had to clean my kitchen, for example, I’d tell myself when I finished I’d get a large amount of whatever my drug of choice was at the time, but if I got that corner done I’d get a little bit of something else I liked, and if I worked on it for an hour straight I’d get a cigarette. This cycle would go on and on; nothing could go without a chemical reward.
I’ve tried a drug-free version of this system, and for a while it worked. It’s awful that I have to bribe myself to do anything, but when you’ve wired your brain to get a dopamine rush every time you did literally anything when you stop getting that rush you stop completing tasks. Sure, the drug-free version didn’t give me an actual high, but I’d look forward to it, and it made me happy. Lately, I’ve been struggling with this. Even when I’d say I’d give myself something I considered a “full day reward” for the tiniest of tasks, I can’t bring myself to do it. The other day I said if I took the trash bag from the upstairs bathroom out to the dumpster I’d get a full on bath with a bubble bar, bath bomb, bath oils, my favorite tea, an audiobook, the works. Yes, all that as a prize for picking up a bag and walking to the dumpster. I didn’t do it; I still haven’t done it. I’m not having cravings, but I’m having “nothing measures up, everything is dull” thoughts and romanticizing a lot. A fun bath sounds nice, but it will never give me the same calm feeling or rush. Even my “big rewards” like a designer handbag seem boring. I don’t want it, nothing appeals to me, I can’t move or get out of this loop. Yes, even if you told me I’d get a beautiful $2,000+ handbag just for dealing with that trash bag, I would not be able to do it. I don’t want to use, but I can’t seem to motivate myself anymore. Maybe I’m subconsciously scared to do anything because my brain associates mundane tasks with drug use? Maybe I’m afraid I’ll relapse if I do anything?
I really don’t know why I’m like this. I can’t even pull myself out of bed and away from this cycle to go downstairs and get on the PlayStation. It’s not like I’m in here doing nothing though, when I’ve taken a break from my self-soothing I manage to write a lot, I go through recovery workbooks, I look things up that could help me in the future. I just don’t know why I feel so frozen in bed and incapable of doing anything. I also feel oddly sensitive to things that generally wouldn’t bother me. I actually felt a little hurt after getting some mild criticism on the internet, the criticism was nothing major, and I didn’t super bent out of shape over it, but that’s just not like me at all. It usually doesn’t phase me at all; I think I forget 99% of the hate thrown my way unless it was particularly creative, then I’m just amused. The fact that something so minor affected me at all (even if it was just a little bit) makes me scared to even open my work social media accounts, forget actually working or talking to people. What will happen when a major insult or harsh criticism is thrown my way? Am I going to totally embarrass myself? Am I going to have another nervous breakdown, but this time on my work accounts? Will I cry in front of people? I’m scared – and no, I’m not just hormonal, I’ve noticed I’ve been a little more sensitive for a while.
I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I don’t even know how to conclude this because my brain is already writing a post I have open behind this one and it’s pretty annoying. I’m stuck in bed, and I don’t know why, bye.
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