How to motivate myself to do horrible things

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nomral
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20 Oct 2016, 6:00 pm

I need a new way to motivate myself to do things that I find intensely painful or stressful, but there is no information that I can find that is applicable to the kinds of things I find horrible, and no one I've asked for help has answered me. These are basic "living in the Real World" skills like wearing clothes (hurts), acting "professional" at work (nerve wracking), letting doctors touch me (painful AND nerve wracking), driving (terrifying, and also a legitimately stupid thing for any human to attempt), going to the store (painful and sometimes stressful), etc.

Currently, I do all these things, and I motivate myself by stressing myself out about all the horrible things that would happen if I didn't do them. This is becoming unsustainable, especially given my endometriosis which is also driving me insane, and I may end up doing some serious damage to myself if I cannot lower my stress level. Do you know of any ways to motivate myself to do things like this without using this "if I don't do it horrible things will happen" strategy, which ends up increasing the amount of stress I endure exponentially?

Please help. I am desperate.



BeaArthur
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20 Oct 2016, 6:37 pm

I'm sorry you are having such a rough time. Do you take any medication?


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shadowtag
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20 Oct 2016, 9:13 pm

I'm sorry that you've had to endure so much, I also have a bit of experience using catastrophic thoughts in an attempt to motivate me to do something, in the end I find it only makes me sick, literally sick with worry and profits nothing.

I don't know if this might prove useful, but I find parsing unpleasant objectives into smaller sub objectives useful, say like, going to the doctor, step one get into the car, step two arrive, step three make it into the examination room, step four make it through examination process, step five exit.

The goal in such thinking is to build momentum, if I have an unpleasant task ahead of me I can divide it into smaller sub tasks, if I get a sub task done I can think, "Okay, I made it this far, let's try to keep going." then move on to the next sub task/objective that is a part of the whole, focusing on one thing at a time and if I fail the task as a whole, I can have the knowledge that I tried and seek to get further the next time, focusing on one thing at a time, taking it one day at a time, building each success upon the other and if I relapse, ok, start again where I can, focus on one thing at a time, build momentum until I can handle more.

And If you can, don't be afraid to fail, or rather, try not to let failure or the fear of failure stop you from trying, progress is progress, no matter how slow, try to take it little by little, bit by bit.

I know that is easier said than done, (boy do I know...) but try to take things one step at a time, it won't happen overnight, I hope that helps and can provide you a measure of comfort...


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beakybird
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21 Oct 2016, 5:29 pm

shadowtag wrote:
I'm sorry that you've had to endure so much, I also have a bit of experience using catastrophic thoughts in an attempt to motivate me to do something, in the end I find it only makes me sick, literally sick with worry and profits nothing.

I don't know if this might prove useful, but I find parsing unpleasant objectives into smaller sub objectives useful, say like, going to the doctor, step one get into the car, step two arrive, step three make it into the examination room, step four make it through examination process, step five exit.

The goal in such thinking is to build momentum, if I have an unpleasant task ahead of me I can divide it into smaller sub tasks, if I get a sub task done I can think, "Okay, I made it this far, let's try to keep going." then move on to the next sub task/objective that is a part of the whole, focusing on one thing at a time and if I fail the task as a whole, I can have the knowledge that I tried and seek to get further the next time, focusing on one thing at a time, taking it one day at a time, building each success upon the other and if I relapse, ok, start again where I can, focus on one thing at a time, build momentum until I can handle more.

And If you can, don't be afraid to fail, or rather, try not to let failure or the fear of failure stop you from trying, progress is progress, no matter how slow, try to take it little by little, bit by bit.

I know that is easier said than done, (boy do I know...) but try to take things one step at a time, it won't happen overnight, I hope that helps and can provide you a measure of comfort...


I think this is a good explanation. I find myself having to approach things in this way all of the time.