Hi, so I’ve been wandering this all my life, but how do others get the energy to finish and do things?
My ADHD/Autistic brain has trouble getting the simplest of chores done, simply due to me not being able to start or continue past a mental block.
I’ve been taking meds for my depression, and it seems to have helped but… If anyone has some tricks they’ve used to get by, please let me know.
Thank you in advance for the help!
I use my phone as the second half of my brain. Lots and lots of scheduled reminders. Which is not going to work for everyone, but it works for me.
Honestly I (AuDHD) tend to leave things until the last possible minute and then panic-crunch to do the thing out of a fear of disappointing whoever the thing is for. The problem of course is if the thing doesn’t have a hard deadline or person who needs it done then I can put it off indefinitely.
For hard things, that I don’t like doing, this is quite an issue for me. I really have to do it now, or have a strict schedule for when I would do it. If I delay something till tomorrow, well, then it can probably also be done the day after that … So generally I just try to avoid delaying things that don’t need to be delayed.
As others on this thread have said, ADHD medication at the proper doses can be a real life changer for motivation on these tasks that feel totally walled off.
SSRIs and other antidepressants are super helpful for keeping you out of those deep dark days, but I didn’t find it helped me much with motivation alone. Once I found the right SSRI and the right stimulant medication (Prozac and vyvanse for me), I started finding it a lot easier to just get chores done when I thought of them. If it’s something I can’t do right now (like groceries), I just write it down in my Reminders lists so that I’m not scrambling when I go out to get groceries. The apple reminders app is basically my second brain, and I always write down stuff I gotta do that I’m prone to forget about in there.
Thank you, I’ll ask my psychiatrist about it! Maybe I need stronger medication.