Lack Of Motivation

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Does it affect any of You? I just feel so tired... I feel so purposeless... I don't know what to do with myself... I would like to go out somewhere - but I'm so powerless... I can't find any activity which could occupy my mind or make me just a bit happier... I'm just going with the flow. I feel like I don't live; I'm only vegetating... It's just so terrible, terrible feeling of emptiness...

I know that feeling, it's probably due to depression. Can you seek help from a professional, it's helped me out a bit?

a professional could be useful

I am lacking motivation right now.

I often lack motivation - usually it's after an extended period of busyness/social interaction/general being-in-the-world (not in the Heideggerian sense [it was Heidegger who said that, wasn't it? Or was it Kant?], just in the everyday sense). I need to sit in my own world and do nothing externally for a while. But I get the impression that this is not the lack of motivation that you are experiencing... I've experienced that too, I think it's probably some kind of depression.

Professional? And what should I tell him/her? I don't trust them so-called professionals, because they don't relly give a damn about us "mentals"... They only ask tough questions and tery to convince You that You are imagining things and that You are exaggereating... (so it happened to me before, that is why I don't trust specialists anymore)

It seems you've had a bad experience with 'professionals', but if they have treated you that way then they are not doing their job properly and you should look elsewhere rather than simply giving up.

I suffer from clinical depression myself and have been belittled by certain professionals, but my current doctor is excellent. I would advise you to see your doctor (or ask to change doctors/see another if that particular one is not listening or is not taking your concerns seriously).

Lack of motivation and feeling useless/empty/without purpose is definitely a common sign of a depressive illness and is most likely very treatable, either with medication, therapy/counselling, CBT, diet etc or a mixture of approaches.

Good luck!

Yup I know that feeling, there's this website that helped me called 43things . com. Basically you get to choose a lot of life goals, from tiny things to huge achievements, then write down your progress acheiving it, it feels so good when you get to put it in your 'im done' list. You can also use it to set reminders and deadlines.

I also recommend scedules, and list of tasks, I find it helps to know that you've at least acheived something in a day. Now i'm mostly motivated, except for when I really really don't want to do any more work.

I have what you have, in a less severe way. I feel like the thing I do all day, attendig school, is totally useless, like I could just as well count bottles in a factory. I know often more on a subject than the teacher does, I understand it easier than my classmates, so I have to listen to a lot of explanation I don't need. I sit there for hours, with NO RESULT AT ALL! I'm really frustrated by this. Sometimes i get an anger attack or meltdown over this. No one helps me to get rid of this feeling I have for years now. It's so useless, I can't explain how far it goes.

I have special interests breeding in me like rats. When I was younger, it was one or two things. Every time I go back to university, I pick up a couple more. Now there are quite a few, and I revisit special interests and now they are starting to cross-fertilize and interbreed. Like my interest in world cuisines and physical conditioning combining in nutritional science and medicinal foods. Or engineering combining with social behavior, for software engineering approaches to cognitive behavior skills development.

I'm writing, too, this year, day in and day out, to develop verbal skills for reasons that are as yet unclear to me. I think it is to be more self-protective against verbal bullies and Machiavellian sociopaths, but then at times it appears that the scope of my writing is far beyond that which is necessary to be a defensive b***h.

I'm at my special interests from when I get up in the morning to when I get too tired to stay up at night, reading papers and listening to courses online, writing, etc. I'm furiously at it, some weeks.

Look back, when I was very, very young, like pre-teen and teen, I only had one special interest: science fiction, but I was very into it day in and day out. Now, I probably still spend the same amount of time, but on several special interests.

Yet I know that I have no specific reason for doing these things. I am just driven to do them.