Full Promises

[Guest]

You're certainly motivated to talk about having next to no motivation, whew!

 

[bear] More motivated to talk about how you're not motivated than motivated to not talk about not being motivated, that's a surprising amount of motivation. You must want the result of not being motivated more than talking about how you aren't motivated to get that result. So you have that 'infinite motivation' to self-sustain the historically founded but still not impossible to solve motivation issue, but that's really more of an argument for yourself than me. I wonder why you don't know as fact what we do after switching for all those years, even though we learned it from you. If you truly believe it's systemic, but yet, it's in infinite amount for certain things by your own admission. That's still not a lack, that's an overabundance, but in worthless categories. Of course that's my problem too. But what I do is stubbornly prevent myself from doing those things I want to do until all things I don't want to do are done first. There's only so much time before staring out the window is a viable alternative to actually doing something. If even that is too entertaining, then it also gets taken away. Then it's staring at the floor. Sleep is allowed (naps too), eating isn't. Eventually you're going to have to do that thing that you were supposed to do or you'll die. Nothing is going to keep a bear from his food, so the thing gets done concurrent with eating.

 

[bear] It's then not about motivation when self-preservation or abject boredom kicks in. Stubbornness is something a bear has in spades. It has to be my deal though, my head mates get sweet-talked out of forcing me to comply.

 

[bear] Now it's your turn to say, "but we'll choose abject boredom," and that's yet another thing that though might be historically founded is definitely changeable.

[Tewi]

My motivation of doing things for the rest of the system's sake is motivation, but it's not that "effort" I was talking about. Motivation is what motivates you, and mine is stronger than anyone else's in this system by far. That said, motivation doesn't always do what it should for us, due to whatever this motivation disorder we have is. As I said with the threat of Lumi's mom being taken to jail if he kept missing school in 6th or 7th grade, that should be all the motivation in the world you need. But it was only enough for about a week or so if that.

 

When something's really important, I can force myself to do it for our sakes. But when it comes to things that, while supposedly good for us, are even the slightest bit wishy-washy, it gets far more difficult. If it's not incredibly clear exactly how beneficial the result will be, it can take a lot of mental convincing/coaxing, or not get done at all. And unfortunately, this accounts for the majority of things in life.

 

I have plenty of motivation, while the others' motivations vary, but regardless of who's fronting the "motivation" required for simple tasks is immense. The effort required to do laundry for a normal person is (this is a metaphor, not a direct comparison) like walking up a set of stairs where to us it's like climbing a mountain. Not Mount Everest, but a small mountain nonetheless. So our motivation has to be far stronger than a normal person's before we can act.

 

Though something I haven't mentioned, the one form of motivation that unfortunately works in our life is (I forget the actual term, but) "negative motivation". I mean, it works a little, at least enough to get us to do things. We can barely ever do things because we want to do them or because we should, but consequences guilt us into doing them a lot more efficiently. Suffice to say, having to live like that is awful and stressful. With our current NEET lifestyle it doesn't come into play too often, but it does sometimes (or actually very often, for much smaller tasks). Showering and laundry are motivated mostly by our not wanting to smell bad - the fight to shower more often on purpose (not utilizing the consequence of not showering as motivation) has been a long one, and recently we scheduled days in the week to shower to help with that. Having an expectation to already be doing something is a slight motivation boost, but it still takes some effort.

 

No, I'm not interested in setting up more "consequences" in our life to motivate us to do things, it feels terrible and is very stressful. Living a life like that is what caused Lumi's depression in high school, before he learned more positive thinking and ways to cope with stuff. Scheduling has always been on my mind personally, and might eventually be the only answer we can come up with. It's not a true answer to the problem though and so is a little stressful for the others, so I'm easing into it (we've started with scheduling showers for example).

 

Mmm, people coming at this from their own non-impaired perspectives is kind of annoying. If you think that once we've gotten used to showering on a schedule it'll be easier, you're still in the wrong perspective. We've been doing it for a while now and it hasn't gotten any easier than when we started - the scheduling just adds a faint hint of "guilt" (negative motivation) to the idea of skipping it, whereas it's easier to be so-and-so without. I know that for a normal person with normal motivation it should work differently. We're not normal. Simple tasks require a lot of effort, and things that require a lot of effort are very stressful to think ourselves into doing. The actual tasks aren't usually too hard once we're started - it's a motivation disorder, after all, not some sort of physical impairment - but don't be the umpteenth person to suggest we "just do it". It doesn't help.

[Guest]

Just do... wait, let me finish reading... oh. Nevermind.

[YukariTelepath]

There are a couple things that helped me with motivation issues. One thing would be to make the thing you want to work on into a go-to activity. For example, since I started tulpamancy, I check the forums and discord regularly, and it keeps the subject on my mind, which makes it easier to force regularly. I would like to make "reading French" a go-to activity, but it hasn't happened yet... I could imagine perhaps, turning daydreaming/wonderlanding/visualization into a go-to activity. I think the key is that it's both pleasant and easy. So easy that it fits into your normal activities. I spend a lot of time at my computer so I usually force at my computer too (lately).

 

Another thing, was accountability, a buddy-system. For a time, my sister and I agreed to work out at a certain time and check in with each other before and after workouts. And it worked really well--normally it takes a lot of effort to make myself work out and I'd often blow it off, but with the expectation that I needed to message my sister... I couldn't tell her I didn't work out and I couldn't lie to her about it either. So I just did the workout. I actually thought about starting a visualization club on the forums for people who want to work on that skill so we could work on things together. I'm not sure how many people are around who would be interested in that. And the last thing, I guess would be understanding the circumstances where I can get things done. For me, that would be a hard deadline. A fuzzy deadline can easily be ignored, but I will always meet a hard deadline. The trick is making fuzzy deadlines into hard deadlines and avoiding burnout. And there are circumstances that decrease my chances of getting things done. If I look at social media, I'll end up with some executive dysfunction for a while, so really I'll just do better if I cut it out as much as I can and keep it from being a go-to activity.

 

Actually there's a last last thing, and it's really tough. Which is a healthy lifestyle with healthy eating and exercise. Seriously, eating sugary foods makes me more lethargic. And lethargy is the same as not being able to make myself do the things I need/want to do. I'm sure you guys have thought through your issues a lot, but I hope this is even a little helpful.

[Tewi]

We recently discovered (and it may sound silly) that jumping jacks are basically the best exercise we could ever have found. While we've been doing a series of stretches pretty consistently for some years now, the only thing we tended to do that raised our heartbeat (so, cardio) was dancing, which tends to take us being in the mood to do so. Just over a week ago (so who was that, Lucilyn?) Lucilyn or I randomly decided to do jumping jacks and realized it gets our heart beating with basically zero effort, and can be done at any time as often or inoften* as you want. So that's a nice addition to our life.

 

Anyways, that's all pretty normal motivation advice. Which is fine, but all of that feels like a band-aid to me (I know, it gets results) because there's still quite a bit of "fight" we have to put up that does cause some stress even when in one way or another forcing ourselves to do things.

 

Another idea I came up with before falling asleep last night, thanks to some thoughts I had while writing those textwalls, is something along the lines of trying to get our brain used to doing the things that it thinks are effort. I guess, it's hard to put into words. It would basically entail at least a week or two (if it doesn't work at all, that's about how long we would make it) of purposely doing things that came to mind but were thought of as "too much effort", directly opposing the brain's claims of those things being difficult. Expected result, we burn out the same way we do with literally all long-term endeavors (school, any particular lucid/dreaming technique, etc.) in 1-2 weeks. Optimal result, we dampen how strong those thoughts/feelings of "too much effort" are, at least in the areas we frequently opposed them.

 

The automatic thoughts of certain things being "too much effort; do not do" are something I'm incredibly familiar with, but Lumi was too (despite considering them more natural and far less invasive than I did immediately after learning to switch). He's got the gift of being introspective after all. Without that we'd be hopeless. Anyways, they really wear you down. Even for me, doing 4 or so classes' worth of schoolwork for two straight weeks feels like having to mentally push in every direction at once all the time - much, much harder than fighting on a single front of telling the brain "Don't care, showering anyways".

 

That said, a single directed effort for a short amount of time (we've worked a fair stand for 12 hours a day, two weeks straight twice in the past and it goes fine - said fairs lasted two weeks. If they lasted longer...), with the temporary motivation that gives us, could maybe be enough to at least see if this concept has merit. It's quite a long shot considering we've been combating these thoughts for over 10 years, but it's far more ideal a solution to me than simply forcing the rest of my system to adhere to scheduling, which again only really works because of the small "negative motivation" we get from not wanting to fail to do something we were supposed to do.

 

Not going to do that right this instant or anything, still thinking about the idea, but I figured I'd write about it here as an example of my preferred sort of solution (and why scheduling/guilt-tactics feel like a "band-aid" in comparison).

 

 

*Just found out "inoften" is not a word and only has 9,000 results on Google, with "unoften" being defunct and having only 130,000 results. Mandela effect strikes again.

[Srn347]

We recently discovered (and it may sound silly) that jumping jacks are basically the best exercise we could ever have found. It gets our heart beating with basically zero effort, and can be done at any time as often or inoften* as you want.

You know, I've actually thought the same thing as well for quite a while (still do), I just had no idea anyone else did as well. Yep, it's a pretty efficient exercise alright.

[Luminesce]

"Good" news that's technically neutral news and "bad" news that's really expected news.

 

Expected news, our working on motivation issues didn't amount to much, and the longer-term part kind of swamped our attempts too, because I'm sure not motivated to keep up what Tewi or Reisen were doing. So not much has changed on the motivation front, other than still showering on a set schedule which works fine in this specific case.

 

"Good" news that could also be called neutral news - I found a new word that's going to be very important in our life. Ie, this word perfectly describes my life since 6th grade. Though it could be considered good news in the sense that at some point I'm going to bring this up with a therapist and hopefully be diagnosed with something considered significant enough to warrant some kind of help, preferably financial-related (at least allowing me to be considered a "dependent") so I'm not just a drain on my family, though if some medication or whatnot that wasn't prescribed to me when I had "atypical depression" is deemed potentially beneficial, I'll take that too.

 

Couple things about avolition - first, it's most often seen as a symptom of schizophrenia so those articles mention schizophrenia a lot, which obviously I don't have, though the wikipedia article mentions it can be related to other things or even a "primary disturbance" of its own. Second, yes I am incredibly sure that this term applies to me. When I was a lot younger I had some terms like "Schizoid" I thought might apply to me, but they didn't quite match in every way. This one does. This is the first time I've ever seen an established phenomenon describe exactly me and what I deal with.

 

Which again, doesn't mean much on its own and would be more of a neutral, except whenever I can get an appointment I'm going to bring this up with a therapist, now with an established phenomenon to point at instead of just saying "No, I'm not depressed, I just don't have motivation. No, I don't have mood swings/bipolar disorder, I just don't have motivation" etc.

 

So that's nice.

[Jackdaw]

Good to hear the schedule is working for you. Even though your plan to increase your motivation wasn't as effective as you'd like, it's still great that you try.

 

Congratulations for finding a word that fits you as well. It can certainly be a good source of hope when you are dealing with something such as this, and we wish the best for you.

[Lucilyn]

so Lumi just fronted for a month straight and I was like "man that felt like a long time to not front" but then I saw before that he had been not fronting for 2 months and a few days straight, lol

 

what a weird life, where it's weirder for our host to be fronting for a month than for him to be switched out for 2 months

[Luminesce]

A month straight, huh? I've been fronting for nearly 2 months straight now, lol. But that's because I've been working on my life a lot. And actually, as opposed to in the past, me being the only one fronting has not meant my tulpas have been inactive. The opposite actually, I've been focusing a ton on actually spending time with them and keeping them all active, so this is the most active they've all been overall in a looong time. Though, you guys aren't seeing it, so you'll have to take my word for it. I've had Lucilyn imposed with me all day, and Flandre all day yesterday, and the weeks before I've been both visualizing and imposing all of them from time to time multiple times a day, which is pretty dang good for our standards.

 

So anyways, I dunno if any of you were expecting an end-of-the-year post from us or not, but you should because we like to evaluate our life and general goings-on, planning for the new year. Obviously the forum was down from christmas to new years though, and then I got sick after my birthday until today, so I didn't feel like writing anything lol. But yeah, mostly wanted to update you guys on how we're doing.

 

So I wasn't reaaally going to mention it, but I think it would be good to throw a positive experience with therapists into the mix since I've seen a lot of negative views on them here. My brother (who has a lot more problems than me and thinks pretty differently from myself) has been seeing a certain therapist for a while, and I started seeing him recently with the intent to get a diagnosis on my motivation disorder (it's "Avolition" honestly), since our family's going to need some financial help soon and me being relatively unable to work with the govt considering be able-bodied is just a drain on us. And while I probably am getting a diagnosis (therapist thinks "Dysthymia with lack of motivation as the main symptom" is the best well-recognized diagnosis, and while I clearly have reduced-emotion compared to normal people and am fine with that diagnosis, my lack of many strong emotions has never bothered me - and this motivation thing absolutely has), the therapist has kind of surprised me by - gasp - actually trying to help me become a functioning person, namely for my long-term well-being if not for immediate circumstances.

 

And honestly, he's been pretty awesome about it. Or maybe that's biased of me to say, because him and I think on exactly the same wavelength. One of the first things he recommended - simply tackling things that gave me the feeling of "doNotWantToDo" head on for a while to try and lessen the strength of that feeling, is something I had come up with and attempted myself one month prior. Though he recommended I practice it slower but more persistently on lesser DoNotWants, things that I "Just kind of don't want to do" instead of my more drastic version (that didn't really work). And among many other things, we've basically just worked really well together. 

Now, I've been very into self-help/personal development/philosophy for a decade now, so seeing a therapist has been less what you might normally consider therapy, and more like having someone to bounce my own ideas off of, who's trained and professionally qualified to give responses and suggestions, unlike myself lol. But I keep bringing up things I've tried and he keeps saying they're actually things therapists recommend, so it's nice to hear I've been doing well for myself. But rather than "He can't help me in any way I can't already help myself", it's again more like we're working together to speed up or better-inform what I already had in mind.

 

Anyways, not saying it's going to "fix my motivation issues", but it's certainly not been a negative experience. So I just wanted to emphasize, now with my own experience, that therapists can be completely different from one individual to the next, and one might just not click with you while another would. I mean, I sure wasn't expecting my brother's therapist to click with me better than he probably does with my brother. But I'm thinking, maybe he's just that good and he's good at clicking with lots of people or something.

 

 

Aaaanyways, tulpa stuff. Well, I've just been spending a lot more time with them. My focus for the last few months has been on fixing my motivation problems (to any extent at all), and that continues to today. Spending more time with my tulpas is one of many motivators for working on my motivation. Technically my goal for this year is to really commit to lucid dreaming - but I'm taking it slow, since Tewi and I decided our long-term motivation issues were the biggest roadblock to achieving lucid dreaming. In that sense, I'd say I'm making good progress. But for now, it's just spending more time with my tulpas (doing imposition and visualization - mostly in ~mindspace but also rarely even in the wonderland - far more often than we used to) and working on dealing with or outright ignoring the feeling of not wanting to do things that require effort.

 

 

Oh, and for the record, my thing for last year was establishing a few habits to do on a regular basis, ~scheduled (on a window of time for each), and indefinite. Daily jumping jacks (on average, 150 a day, but sometimes more), brushing my teeth before bed, and showering on specific days of the week were the main things. And y'know what, I'm part of the apparently-8%-of-people who actually kept to my "new year's resolutions" last year, because I kept doing those things right to the very last day (and yes, to today too). It doesn't sound like much, but it was a big deal to me, especially big in that I was able to keep them up.

 

And it not sounding like much is actually part of what makes new years' resolutions doable, apparently. Veritasium only just put out this video now, but a lot of the things he lists turned out to actually be things that have worked for me, so I highly recommend this video-

 

Edited January 7, 2020 by Luminesce