Thank you very much for reading the story. I am very glad you enjoyed it and that it connected with you. Also, Welcome to lesswrong.
I am sorry you have these problems—being stuck in a bad loop. It sounds very hard. I am afraid that when it comes to finding a way out I am just a random person on the internet, so any advice you have already got from friends, family or the counselors is likely to be as good or (more likely) better than anything I say.
That said, a thing that helps me is when I “try to do X” I find it helps to intentionally set the bar low. eg. “I will wash at least one of those dishes”. This gives me little excuse not to at least do the one. Sometimes once I have started I keep going and do more, but their is no pressure. The sense of forward momentum in games (leveling up or similar) makes them addictive for me. If you feel the same then maybe trying to get that same sense of momentum in real life tasks would help. (eg. trying one of those app games that scores you for walking around—at least if you got addicted to that you would get some sun, air and exercise). It sounds like you have already tried huge exertions of effort directly against this problem, I have zero knowledge, but maybe (like with a riptide) a trick might be to not to push directly against but to move sideways—an example would be that you feel that “doing x” will require a huge expenditure of energy/motivation, so do “y” instead, where y is some other useful thing.
Best of luck with everything. I hope you get it all sorted out soon. I am sure it won’t always feel like “life is pain”.
Thank you very much for reading the story. I am very glad you enjoyed it and that it connected with you. Also, Welcome to lesswrong.
I am sorry you have these problems—being stuck in a bad loop. It sounds very hard. I am afraid that when it comes to finding a way out I am just a random person on the internet, so any advice you have already got from friends, family or the counselors is likely to be as good or (more likely) better than anything I say.
That said, a thing that helps me is when I “try to do X” I find it helps to intentionally set the bar low. eg. “I will wash at least one of those dishes”. This gives me little excuse not to at least do the one. Sometimes once I have started I keep going and do more, but their is no pressure. The sense of forward momentum in games (leveling up or similar) makes them addictive for me. If you feel the same then maybe trying to get that same sense of momentum in real life tasks would help. (eg. trying one of those app games that scores you for walking around—at least if you got addicted to that you would get some sun, air and exercise). It sounds like you have already tried huge exertions of effort directly against this problem, I have zero knowledge, but maybe (like with a riptide) a trick might be to not to push directly against but to move sideways—an example would be that you feel that “doing x” will require a huge expenditure of energy/motivation, so do “y” instead, where y is some other useful thing.
Best of luck with everything. I hope you get it all sorted out soon. I am sure it won’t always feel like “life is pain”.