depression and lack of motivation

[Eleison]

The situation at work is complex, lots of changes coming up that are really worrying me, and I have my review meeting regarding the 'reasonable adjustments' for my mental health disability this Thursday.

But the bottom line is that I'm really struggling with motivation. This is because of my depression - chronic major depression - I've had it in varying degrees of severity since I was young, although wasn't formally diagnosed and treatment started until the past 6 years. [I'm 38.] I just have no .. interest and enthusiasm about work. About life, really. But work is where it kind of shows. And it makes me really sad. I've always struggled with it - a tutor at university said "everything seems an effort for you" in a disappointed tone of voice. I just can't find any... passion. Fire. Whatever. It's hard for me to be around people. And I don't sleep great or restfully even on meds. I sleep fine-ish for the first 5 hours or so, then wake frequently from around 4am. I'm so exhausted. Therapy is going well. I'm doing the work I need to do to help me manage the long term effects of complex trauma, and how they effect the internal dynamics of my psyche and relationships with others in the present. It's important work.

Maybe the root of the lack of motivation is somewhere in when I was little, and noone really noticed me at school [well, they ignored severe bullying for a decade, so I may as well have been invisible... ] and I never got much praise. Also, lacking in confidence, I never spoke up much. I have a voice now, but it holds all that was frozen, back then. So there's a kind of 'why bother?' feeling, and 'noone praises me and values me, so I might as well not exist, not bother'. Spot the lost little girl in that. Irritable, hostile angry lost little girl. Who I work all the time to contain and minimise her 'intrusions'.

I feel so sad that I can't find any motivation, any enthusiasm. I don't know how to get it back...

[Roger Gould, M.D.]

You already have the answer in your hand, and it is right there in your therapy, and that's where you find the enthusiasm....when you are no longer responding to what they think of you and begin to think of what you want...your voice leads to your passions, and that's the fire...you are still covered over by the way your were treated then, but you seem to be coming out of it, making the distinction between then and now, and seeing that you are not helpless now as you might have been then.

[doggies3forme]

I was a little girl who everyone made fun of, I was the outsider and it happened all my life.  I still struggle today from some of those feelings.  But I will tell you what my therapist has told me.  It is not how much someone respects you, it is how much you respect yourself.  Same with love or accept, it matters how much you love and accept yourself.  I used to suffer so severely from depression but now I am doing so well I am going to discontinue therapy after about 20 years of it.  I feel happy.  I just wish I felt the confidence I would like but all of that is so hard to overcome.  But what I am saying is there is hope so just hang in there.  Also, maybe that is not the job for you. I worked somewhere 18 years and I was devastated when there were some changes and I didn't think there was life outside of this one job.  I had been there so many years, the pay was good, I felt secure.  But I am so very happy now that I started a different job.

[Eleison]

Thank you both.

The review meeting seemed to go well, in that I was heard and respected, so I feel less alone with everything. That's something pretty important...
That in itself seems to have lifted my motivation up a couple of notches. The thing is sustaining it. I need an outlet for my creativity. It is my life blood.

I'm having to learn how to respect myself, as noone ever really respected me when self respect should have been developing, when I was a child.