New Devilry

I wanted help with my attention problems. Work has been hell and it feels like I have to put in twice the effort everyone else does just to keep up. Always has. But it's gotten even harder the more I move up. My psychiatrist says it seems like I'm anxious and we should treat that first. If it fixes the attention issues then good, if it doesn't then we'll see about an ADHD diagnosis.

I got an anxiety spike for the first few days and then very quickly, crashed. I remember lying in bed in the morning before work and feeling bone tired, being grumpy as hell that I had to get up and go to the office because what even was the point. That was not usually the emotion I had in the morning. The emotion I used to have in the morning was more cajoling, more people-pleasing more: "if I'm not at work people will think I'm lazy", "the work won't get done", "juuuust fucking go to the office". Very strange to have all that silenced because apparently all that's left over is "I hate this and don't want to do it"

After work I got home and immediately lay on the couch on reddit for a few hours. I didn't feel guilty. I just let myself sit there. I still don't feel bad about it. This has gone on for weeks now. I wrote this to a friend who asked about it: "It both feels like the engine that drove me to do anything is broken and I'm just kind of drifting...but also the engine wasn't an engine it was just something terrible I had been sprinting away from to try to escape and now I can rest" So I've been resting. It really does feel like a relief, if a bit of a baffling one. My body and brain were in fear for so many years so I'm giving myself this. I'm letting the house go, letting the dishes go, letting all the preparation I used to be driven to do fall by the wayside. I just...don't want to do it. And I guess that's okay for a little while. I mean ideally I'd be better about feeding myself and drinking water and doing my laundry but I'm doing what I can without the fear engine. I can barely work tbh, but I'm doing it.

I don't feel the same internal pressure to produce, to excel, to get ahead as I used to. It was not a pleasant pressure, and it was not entirely intrinsic to myself. I guess it was some kind of anxiety? There was always an element of fear of failure to what drove me. Why did I push myself? Why do I now feel like I'm not?....Now I simply don't feel the same need to do the things I used to feel the need to push myself to do (cleaning, dishes, leaving the house...sometimes work). I used to have this sense of there not being enough time all the time. I don't think that's gone but maybe it's a lot less prominent now. There will be time...later. Or I'll just deal with the things that don't get done. Later.