Hi everyone.
When I try to follow a schedule to eat, clean my room and do my homework, it feels good at the beginning, but as time goes on, it just doesn’t feel good anymore.
I’m not even sure if I even feel trully happy about doing all of my responsibilities.
It doesn’t feel as if a burden has been lifted of my shoulder.
It doesn’t feel as if I were “refreshed” or more energetic after I do all of these.
I started slowly like my therapist recommended: I did a schedule to eat 3 times a day. It started rocky but then I manage to do it… but only for a while. Eating just didn’t feel good either.
Every single time I finally clean my room, I don’t feel any good: it just feels as though I wasted time because I don’t feel any better.
Doing math homework is fun, philosophy to, but I don’t like any of the other subjects I actually need to do homework for.
I know it might seem childish to only do things that feel good but I hate not being able to feel anything at all, especially when I do things that are supposed to help me but don’t make me feel anybetter afterwards.
Has someone here went through anything similar? What do you do then, if so?
Edit: I have read all of your replies so far, but I don’t know how to respond properly to them. All I can think of is to say thank you! I will try to change things (although slowly) today using your tips.
If you’ve trained your brain to think that certain things are “rewarding”, like social media, then it can take a LONG time to retrain otherwise. Addictive behaviors were designed to be addictive, in order to entrap people for the sake of selling their user stats to advertising platforms. And corporations such as Reddit, Twitter, YouTube and Facebook, plus whole entire industries of like gaming, magazines, cheap easy-to-write novels and so on, aren’t going to change their ways just b/c it is literally hurting people - they have needs too! (their CEO would really like to buy a brand-new jet every year, one presumes)
Sometimes you gotta do something even if it is not fun, for a LONG while, before it starts to be rewarding. Other times it does not even need doing, and it can be rewarding then to take a break and NOT do it (the trap there being when to resume it?). Still other times you can find a way to MAKE it fun - like listening to music while cleaning? Yet still other times, the advice to do it is actually wrong to begin with, and you are better off not to - like iirc it is actually healthier to leave your bed exposed to the air when you wake up to allow it to dry and kill any tiny mites (they are impossible to eradicate completely, sorry if you don’t want to think about it but they literally live on your skin and on all surfaces on planet earth, it’s totally normal), rather than cover it up. Of course, some thing you simply MUST do or else face the consequences… fun or not, like keep your job, which provides money, which then you can spend on things that you enjoy. But what consequences are there to not vacuuming often, really? Maybe if built-up dust makes you sneeze? In that case, you would vacuum not b/c you enjoy it but b/c it helps you not suffer those symptoms later. Thinking through each such task and taking ownership of it, deciding whether you want to or not, and at what frequency, can be really enjoyable, b/c it is quite empowering.
In the meantime, I would say it is most important to be kind to yourself - it (life) is a process, and you gotta get through it, one day at a time. Also, when all else fails it may help to try to keep hold of just ONE thing - like brushing your teeth before bed, or even just flossing and skipping the rest - and if you can do that, that at least gives you a long-term satisfaction that it is SOMETHING, rather than nothing. And then find something that you can enjoy - like if you don’t enjoy running on a treadmill, yet you want to exercise somehow, then maybe try a sport, perhaps playing with a friend? Piece by piece you can put those activities together to build up to something that you will be proud of, though you can never totally eliminate pain - it just does not work that way.