Stuck in a rut.

[Shunneddune]

Hi everyone, I've been giving advice about keeping yourself distracted and staying busy.? But today I just don't feel like doing a thing. My psychiatric np should come see me this week and seem to be ruminate about my medication and what I want done...sometimes I focus too much on meds...I just feel so miserable

[012703060610]

I struggle with medication anxiety. I too focus on it with both my psychiatrist and therapist. We just made some sweeping changes and I haven't really slept since. I have to run everything past my rheumatologist which makes things even more challenging. I hate the issues with controlled meds. I get massive anxiety as a few pharmacies have blown me up. I used to travel for work a full week at a time all over the country.....so I often needed meds sooner to keep up. On one trip I got stuck for an extended period of time due to weather....and I landed in ER due to being on Klonopin at the time. They refused the meds and sent me away. Since that happened, I am constantly worried it will happen again.

I'm struggling today as well with keeping my mind busy. I keep trying to watch movies and then ventured into YouTube to watch old music videos. That was a good distraction and a reminder of some of my favorite years of my life. You are such a great contributor to this site and I always appreciate your commentary. Holler if you need anything or any support!

[Hidden]

Sometimes, after days of being productive we can feel a little burnt out. Relaxing for most people seems like a great thing to look forward to but for people who struggle with negative thoughts and emotions, it may be scary to realise you don't know how to keep occupied with the day. It is one of my fears due to my negative thoughts that if I don't have anything planned or feel like being productive, I may just ruminate and put myself down all day.

Movies are a great idea in passing time and escaping reality for a while. Equally books can offer that experience too. Movies and TV shouldn't be something we always turn to when feeling down though, otherwise it becomes a bad habit and we will be doing it too much. This is because we would train the brain that this is the way to seek the reward of feeling better every time we feel bad.

During this time however, you could do some journaling and write the tasks you want to complete tomorrow after a nice break today. Every morning I have set up this daily task planner on a whiteboard which is constructed in a way to make me do certain things. I must write how I will practice Mindfulness and for me that is mostly meditating in the morning. I then need to write how I will exercise, what I will read, what lesson to do to learn a language, how to help family and a random person at least once every day, tasks that will make the day productive, commitments I need to maintain and finally how can I make money or work on a method that will earn me money in the future. These are my fundamental tasks each day and I will write extra ones if I have additional things to work on like for university in my case.

If you decide to try this out, I hope it helps you and of course you can cater this daily planner to your interests, as well as what you want to work on.

[designguy in reply to Hidden]

Great reply, I can totally relate to your situation, glad you found what works for you.

[Jeff1943]

Nothing wrong with having a duvet day occasionally!

[WastedDays]

I’m not feeling very motivated today myself either. I slept in and struggled getting myself out of bed this morning. I just got out of a 28 day residential treatment program for my depression and I’m struggling with the “fog” again today. I struggle with being self critical and worry that I’m falling back. I feel extremely lazy, but I’m having my wife remind me that I deserve a break. I’ve done a lot of mental self care work on myself in the last 28 days and I know it takes time to make changes, but I’m just not feeling today either. I keep reminding my self to have compassion towards myself as much as I would for a loved one. I ask if I would be as critical to that loved one for taking a day or weekend off as I would be to myself and of course I wouldn’t. That helps change my negative thinking.

[PuzzleArt in reply to WastedDays]

I don't expect myself to put on toe shoes and balance perfectly, so why do I expect to get a perfect balance between being too passive vs. being too aggressive. I felt it necessary to be assertive with certain people last Thursday. (The details would be too long, and boring even for me) But the effort caused me to have to rest all day Friday, and half or more of Saturday and Sunday. I am somewhat better today.

[Shunneddune]

Thanks for all the understanding and advice from all you.

[Wakeboarder24]

taking a day off is okay. It’s actually called the sabbath in Christianity.

[PuzzleArt in reply to Wakeboarder24]

I need at least one day a week off from stressful activities. Also, I try to include, on that day, not trying to think too hard about "improving" myself or about a need to make "progress".

[designguy]

I know it's hard to go from feeling productive and then not doing anything because we feel like we have to be productive al the time, but try to be kind to yourself and let yourself take a break to recharge and rest and remind yourself you are ok just as you are.

[leftbehind]

I do not take any antidepressants anymore because I find them terribly demotivating and cause me not to have interest in anything, which is depressing in itself. Instead I'm really working on what I am thinking in my mind and usually I am thinking depressing thoughts so that would be cognitive therapy and what I do is say the thing I'm thinking out loud to myself and then I realize the background I'm having a depressing self-destroying thoughts that I'm having. So my motto is "talk to yourself out loud so you know what you're thinking"!