Depression / Mental Health / Recovery

WHERE’S MY MOTIVATION?

For much of my life, I was driven and busy and energetic and doing shit all the time. I didn’t sleep. I ate a lot. All my spare time filled up with mothering or wifeing or friending or working or volunteering. It was a fairly typical life for someone in their thirties and forties.

THEN I IMPLODED AND EVERYTHING CHANGED

By the time I was 50, I was a different person. I was diagnosed with major depression, generalised anxiety disorder and bulimia nervosa. A few years later I was diagnosed with Bipolar II Disorder. I also had chronic and debilitating Restless Legs Syndrome and insomnia. I was just a patchwork of labels.

Depression in particular is a great motivation killer. When the world is dark and hidden behind a veil it is so incredibly difficult to want to do anything. At its worst depression makes it almost impossible to brush your teeth, take a shower, get out of bed or leave the house. It makes you want to stop existing altogether because life is just too difficult. The world becomes very, very small and there is no energy left to feel motivated with anything other than sheer survival. Depression is being in constant survival mode.

I struggled with severe depression for five years before I succumbed to a suicide attempt. That was a very dark time in my life but it was also a turning point. It was during my nine-week hospital stay that I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and treated for insomnia. The combination of mood-stabilising medications and regular sleep became a life changer. Over the course of twelve months, I became more and more well.

I REMAIN EXTREMELY MENTALLY WELL AND STABLE TO THIS DAY

But one of the prices I have paid for such a dark period of my life is a complete lack of motivation. Someone asked me yesterday what I feel passionate about and I can answer with absolute sincerity, I don’t feel passionate about anything at all.

There are things I like to do. There are people I adore. I have projects and wishlists. But I’m not passionate about anything. I feel like I’m marking time.

I have of course googled extensively on the subjects of procrastination and motivation, but I have no answers. I do have some theories though.

Having spent the first fifty years of my life in a state of heightened arousal with high energy levels, then spectacularly crashed through the floor to the exact opposite, I feel I am now doing all the resting I should have been doing for all those decades. I can sit in a chair and read now. Nanna naps are a thing in my life. I have learned to say no quite readily and very frequently. My world is smaller but only because I choose for it to be that way. I am doing all the quiet time that I didn’t do for my entire life.

Then there is also the reality of medications. Mood stabilisers do exactly what they say – they stabilise moods. So while I have occasional lows they are mild. And while I have bursts of bounciness I never dissolve into hypomania. I am fairly stable, which may sound like a good thing, but I also feel fairly flat as a result of all that stableness. I have tried going off my medications but in all honesty, that did not go swimmingly well. I am however on a greatly reduced dose. Pharmaceutically I also take two RLS medications every night plus a dedicated sleeping pill. Both my mood stabilisers have a slightly sedating effect. I believe the overall sum total of my medications is that I’m more chilled than I used to be. Which is nice and all that jazz, but not motivating. Combine that with nightly sleep of around five hours (give or take a few here and there) I do not have much in the way of energy levels. I am incredibly easily fatigued.

THE FINAL NAIL IN MY MOTIVATION COFFIN IS AGE

I am 57 years old now. To some of you that may be ancient. To others, I’m a spring chicken. It doesn’t really matter, age is age and there’s no arguing with it. There’s also no doubting that by the time 50 comes around and slaps us in the arse, we are starting to notice the passage of time. I feel like 50 is definitely middle age – not old. But with that aging middle age comes deteriorating eyesight, creaky knees, middle-age spread, an awful lot of farting and decreasing energy levels. It is quite simply a fact of life.

It is true that aging is a privilege not everyone gets to experience. And a great many positives come with age as well. We take less shit from people. There’s increasing confidence and acceptance in who we intrinsically are. There is more clarity about what we want from life. And for a great many of us, there is more material comfort than there was 25 years ago. But for me at least, motivation decreases as the years pass by.

Each day I lie in bed thinking about the things it would be good to get done and then on the days I’m not working (which is five out of seven) I lie in bed a bit longer and dream about sleeping and feel the shadows of guilt overcoming me for not being productive. Being productive was always a massive motivating factor when I was young – I felt shameful if I wasn’t contributing something to somebody somewhere. Now I just let the guilt settle around me then toddle around thinking about things I should do, but don’t do them.

I CONFESS, I DO NOT LIKE LOW MOTIVATION

Accomplishing things brings satisfaction and if at the end of the day all I have done is have a shower and unstack the dishwasher I don’t feel any great sense of being a purposeful person. I have spent the past couple of years sitting around waiting for motivation to hit me but I think a little reality check would suggest that isn’t going to happen soon. For all the reasons I mentioned before. The most motivating thing in my life is other people. If someone suggests a coffee, I’ll probably go. If someone will meet me at the gym, I’ll turn up and do a workout. I have joined writing groups and created a walking group. But in the spirit of full disclosure I will admit, my days are fairly lazy. Over time I hope to start building some small, simple routines, but for now my life is quiet and not very productive but peaceful and very contented.

Maybe one day I’ll have great swathes of motivation crash into me and I’ll fulfill all my wishlist desires. But maybe not. And that is okay. Maybe I’ll be like this for the rest of my days and I won’t get much done but I’ll be peaceful and content. And that is okay. I am practising, as always, my DBT radical acceptance of where I am now, but putting in place little nuggets that may change things for the better in the future. Stay tuned. I will let you know what happens.