#schoolanswer

Hey! I’m not sure if you mean motivated academically or otherwise, so some of these tips might not always be applicable in every situation.

Write things down! I feel more accountable to get things done if I compile them into a list. For bigger tasks, you might also consider charting your progress over time so you can keep track of how much you are getting done.

Sometimes setting major goals right off the bat can see overwhelming and might actually hurt your motivation in the long run. If this is something you struggle with, consider breaking down one large goal into multiple small goals and taking each task step by step. (E.g., Instead of trying to motivate yourself to write your entire essay, try making your first goal to finish your introduction, then set another goal to finish the middle, etc.)

Avoid comparing yourself to others. It’s easy to become caught up in the cycle of upward comparison, but this can quickly get out of hand and hurt our motivation more than it helps it. If getting motivated to get out of bed was your goal for the day and you did it, you should celebrate that! 

Be aware of your urges to quit or give up. It’s equally important to acknowledge when you’re experiencing feelings that hinder your motivation. Instead of succumbing to these thoughts or beating yourself up about having them, acknowledge them and develop a plan about what to do beforehand (e.g., “When I feel like giving up, I will talk to person XYZ who is aware of the situation”; “When I’m lacking motivation to do what I wrote down for today, I will pick two things from my list and see how I feel once I do those.”) 

Lastly, reward yourself when you accomplish something! :) 

This resources might also help:

Tips for Getting Motivated

Weekly Time Management Exercise

7 Module Overcoming Procrastination*

Hey. 

I’m sorry to hear that you’ve having a rough time, but I’m glad you reached out to us to vent. Sometimes getting things off your chest can help. We all have bad days and may need to take a step back from everything, and that’s okay. Rest, and come back refreshed. You’ll be okay. 

Remember that if you are ever in a crisis that we have a Crisis Support page(link) that lists multiple different counseling resources (including online messaging or email) for various countries. We have a Self-Help page(link) if you are ready to tackle something but aren’t sure how. Finally, we have a small Seeking Treatment section on our Information page(link), as well as some useful information about therapy and other information in our Answers Directory(link).

(2) in my current state of living i feel like the military is the only way to go, or am i too… worthless, even for a last-resort route? i dont assume you to have answers but maybe someone else might?

Hey there. I am Australian and don’t know a lot about the US military, but I have an American friend who has a lot of family members in the military, and so I asked her for some input. This is what she had to say:

Okay, so they do do a health screen before you can enlist for both health and mental illnesses. I am not sure what passes and what doesn’t. My first piece of advice though is to figure out for sure why you would be joining. Are you doing it just because it seems like a last option and your family are pressuring you into it?

If so, do you actually want to go into the military? True, there are a lot of benefits, such as schooling and pay, and it’s also a great stepping stone for getting into a lot of great careers. But there’s a lot of crap too. Sometimes it’s a struggle to get the schooling that you want because of budget cuts or other stupid reasons, and you have to take classes you don’t like, because they’re the only ones that fall into the list of accepted courses. 

You can pursue your career, but you can’t always take the classes that you might want to. I had siblings on both ends of the spectrum and it can get pretty ugly sometimes. It’s a two sided coin just like any other job. 

Second piece of advice, you should talk with your doctor/therapist/whoever you see for your illnesses and have them go through whether they think that it would be a viable career option for you. 

Third, before you get into any of it, take some time to find other viable career options so that you know going in that the military isn’t the only thing you have left, and so if you can’t enlist you are already prepared with some other options. 

Fourth, what branch do you want to get into? Different branches may have different requirements to meet. The lifestyle will be different and future benefits will also be just a little bit different. 

Fifth, last, and probably most important, only look into the military if it is something you genuinely wants to do. Not because it’s a last option, not because your family is pressuring you. Do it only if you really want to do it. If that’s the case, then look into it and see what you can do, and if you can do it.

And don’t get me wrong, there are some really great benefits. There’s good pay and school benefits, career experience and training. There’s a whole plethora of things that goes into it. I’ve got two brothers who have turned it into their career of choice and they are very happy. I have two others who didn’t mind being in the military but are happy to be done with it. It really depends on the person. 

Also there are the after-effects of being on active duty that you have to think about, such as being away from family and friends for extended periods of time, as well as PTSD and other illnesses that happen in extreme situations, moving to active base assignments, officers positions, and the yearly testing/checkups to be considered acceptable for active duty. 

So, the tl;dr version is: There are a lot of benefits and you can make a good career out of it, but it can also be really terrible. It’s going to depend on you as a person. But if it’s not something that you genuinely want to do, you’re probably going to have a bad time of it regardless. You also need to consider the impact that active duty would have on your mental health, and whether or not it is worth it.

There are other options. You can attend a community college, a trade school, a work experience programme. If you have a therapist, you can ask them to help you find other means of training and employment. You may also be able to find a programme that helps people with disabilities find education and employment. Have a look around for programmes that exist in your area.

You are not worthless. You are a person and you are living right now. That gives you worth. Your worth doesn’t reside in your ability to have a job or be “useful”. You are worthy because you are here now, you exist, and you are living despite all the things that make living hard. You have worth because you are a person.

Whatever you end up doing, know that it does not prove or negate your worth. Your worth already exists inside you.

Hi. 

We have some resources on our Answers Directory(link) page and our Self-Help(link) pages that may help you. Here are resources I recommend, but I also suggest that you read through the pages yourself to see if anything stands out for you:

What are some ways to help with procrastination? 

Avoidance Hierarchy Worksheet*

Overcoming Avoidance Worksheet*

Developing Self-Discipline. 

I recommend writing a list (on paper or mentally) of all the things you need to do. List them in order of importance or deadline. Start with one that is at the top of that list. What you’re gonna do is break that task down into multiple little tasks. 

So, if you need to send a professor an email, your first goal might be to make sure you have their email address, perhaps double check with class mates just in case (skip if you know it’s correct though, this is just an example). Your second task might be collecting any information you need to include in the email. Third, writing the email. Fourth, proof-reading. Fifth, sending. 

The sixth, and best step, would be the reward. Whenever you plan a task, include an appropriate reward. So going to Disney land would not be appropriate for sending an email, but eating chocolate or watching a TV show guilt-free could be!

You don’t have to do all of the tasks at once either. You might get up to writing the email one day, but leave the proof-reading and sending for tomorrow, but if you do this you have to allocate a time or deadline for it or you will continue to avoid it. 24 hours is reasonable for an email. I recommend not breaking between steps that you can do continuously because personally, knowing I’m going to have to do something makes it worse, but it may be different for you. It might help you calm your nerves. Be responsible and choose which is best for you to help you complete you tasks. 

(Pt.2) just thinking about doing so is enough to make me want to die bc oh god what if i upset her though???? That would be THE BAD. And i really don’t know what to do and these past two weeks in general have been absolute hell

Hey there. That’s a terrible situation to be in. I’m sorry you’re having to deal with this.

I don’t have any experience myself of living in a college dorm (I am assuming this is where you live, please tell me if this is incorrect), but as I understand, there should be someone in charge of the dorm who you can talk to about this situation. They may be able to move you to another room, or talk with your roommate about appropriate behaviour.

Another course of action could be to have a neutral person act as something like a liaison between you and your roommate, if you’re afraid that you won’t be able to confront her. This person could even sit with you when you talk to your roommate, and can jump in if you panic or if she gets angry.

Unfortunately, unless you confront her and let her know that her behaviour is inappropriate, it’s unlikely that she will change how she treats you. Of course, if you do confront her and she doesn’t change, that is not your fault. But you won’t know if you don’t tell her that the way she treats you isn’t okay.

It may also be useful to talk to a professional about your anxiety around conflict, as they may be able to help you work towards being more confident and assertive.

I hope this is helpful to you, and I hope your living situation improves soon!

(2) absolutely ZERO idea of what to do. Even though I took courses to enter the school, I was hoping to not get in so I could be forced to seek guidance and chose something else. I entered, and after feeling the absolute worst and trying my best to avoid my mom’s comments about my health and emotional state in general (I threw up several times-which is a first even though I stressed out quite a bunch back in hs), I decided to finally open up about it. I had never felt more humiliated in my ©

(3) but I am sort of happy I actually talked about it (even though I could have done it SO MUCH earlier). Now, I don’t know where to start looking? I don’t really like anything in particular, and even though I get good grades, it’s bc I study very hard, since I feel I’m sort of mediocre at everything. Sorry if this is long and kinda pointless? Idk if you have something that could help at being sincere with whatever person I chose to look for help? Sorry for the rant and congrats on the blog! :)

Hey. 

Good for you for opening up to your Mum. I can imagine how hard it was. It was really brave of you to do that. Letting it out is always a big relief in the end.

I recommend asking a guidance or career counselor if they have a test for you to take to help you get started. I am not sure what they’re called and the name probably varies place-to-place anyway, but basically, this test will examine your strengths, what motivates you, your learning style etc and it will point you in the direction of areas of industry that may be good for you. My sister and I took one a while ago and she got caring for people or animals and I got engineering, IT and science. 

From there you can research any of the suggestions that sound appealing to you. You should search for things like “Types of jobs in (engineering)”, “A Day In The Life Of ___”, “What’s it like to be a ___”, etc. 

Remember that this is work, it’s not play. It’s great if you have a passion that you can make a career out of it, but most people don’t and that’s totally fine. You should look for something that engages you and that you enjoy, but you don’t have to be bursting at the seams with joy for it. You have time outside of work to find things that make you feel that way too. 

You can probably find these kinds of tests online too, but it would be more beneficial for you to be able to talk about it and explore different options with someone who is trained to point you in the right direction, if that option is available to you. 

If this still doesn’t help you decide, you can sign up with a temporary job agency and ask for one-off or short-term jobs so that you can, in a way, “trial” different areas of industry first hand and see what you enjoy and what you don’t. You can also do this through volunteering- which will have more options. Sometimes knowing what you don’t want is just as valuable as knowing what you do want. A good agency may even have the test I was talking about above too. 

Hi there. I’m sorry you’re dealing with this, it really makes studying a struggle!

AvPD often comes along with a fear that you won’t be good enough, that if you ever make a mistake you’ll “prove” that you really are useless and don’t deserve to be here. So, it seems likely that this could be a part of AvPD.

However, this way of thinking and behaving is not unique to AvPD. This is something that people with other disorders such as anxiety and depression also struggle with. 

It is especially common among people who, as children and teenagers, were often praised for being smart and expected to always maintain high grades. As a result, they became terrified of failing, because they learnt that “being smart” was an inherent quality, and if they couldn’t keep “being smart” then there was something wrong with them, or they learnt that they weren’t worth anything if they couldn’t keep “being smart”.

And so, not studying becomes a coping mechanism for that. Because if you study and end up failing or not doing well, then you’ve failed at “being smart” and therefore have lost the inherent quality that you’ve learnt makes you have worth. But if you don’t study and then do badly, well, you didn’t try to do well in the first place, so it doesn’t “prove” anything about your worth. Your failure came from your own inaction rather than your inability to “be smart”.

So actually, I can very much see that being a contributing factor to someone developing AvPD. So if you have AvPD, it is likely that this is a part of it. But it is not something that only people with AvPD experience.

It sucks to have to deal with this, and I wish I could tell you that getting over it is easy. But it takes a concerted effort to move away from seeing “being smart” as an inherent quality and seeing grades as a measure of your worth. It’s learning to see grades simply as a number or letter used to quantify your teachers’ judgement of your work, rather than a judgement on you. It’s learning to say, “I have done the best job I could right now, and that is good enough.”

It’s hard, and I’m still working on it. But it is possible! Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) may be something that you’d find helpful for beginning to change the way you think about studying. You can check out our DBT tag here, and our self help tag here.

I have also found writing down my negative thoughts in a journal, and then going through each of them and actively refuting them and providing evidence for why the thoughts are wrong to be helpful in changing the way I think about things.

If you have the means to, it also may be helpful to talk this through with a therapist who can help you work on more personalised strategies for working through your fear of failure.

I hope this helps! Please feel free to message us again if you have any more questions.

If you’re talking about high school, I think it’s because high school administrations tend to not take the mental health of teenagers seriously. They leave it in the hands of the parents and don’t treat mental illness as a disability. I think they try to chock it up to ‘teen angst’, but there’s big difference between hormonal mood swings and pathological symptoms. But even if it was just a part of development, I don’t see how that makes it invalid.

You could try to speak to your doctor or parents about vouching for you to your school about accommodating your mental illness. You could also try going to a school counselor yourself and have them vouch for you to other faculty. I did this while I was in high school, and it was really helpful.

If you’re talking about university, I have no idea why they wouldn’t be accommodating your mental illness. They’re legally obligated to. I would try to write a letter to some form of administration, or your professor, to find out what’s going on and why you are being mishandled by your teachers.