Avoidance

Over the last few years, I've been struggling more and more with my ability to motivate myself to do unpleasant, but necessary tasks.  The conversation in my brain goes something like this:

Me 1: Hey, I feel obligated to do some undesirable chore today because I need to work and get off my butt and stay active and be motivated.  I won't become motivated by doing nothing!

Me 2: Umm, but that's silly.  I hurt.  And, I have sooooo many chores to do that I'll never be able to finish them all.   I'm discouraged and I don't want to do anything because dealing with pain every moment of every day is an undesirable chore on its own.  Why should I have to do other stuff on top of just managing my pain?

And then, because I feel guilty and know I need to do something, I 'try' to do what I can, and typically struggle through it only after much effort.  I end almost every day disappointed with the amount of chores I've done, and am then even more discouraged the next day when the process starts all over again.  

I've been working with my psychologist to try to understand why I was, what I though to be, amazingly unmotivated and lazy.  Well, turns out this is probably something called avoidance.  It's a common problem in people with PTSD.  Though mine didn't at first make sense to me because it isn't directly related to the shooting and trauma I went through.  Why would I try to avoid doing paperwork and calling people?  

With the help of the cognitive processing therapy exercises that my psychologist has been helping me through, I've come to have a somewhat deeper understanding of what exactly is going on.  When I was in college, after my injury, I was convinced that once I finished my degree, my pain would be gone.   Not only that, but I'd be back to work and wouldn't have to deal with all varieties of insurance people questioning me.  Everything would be back how it was before I got shot. But then, when my pain wasn't gone and I couldn't work, my world started to crumble.  My pain was (and is) a nightmare and I was allowing it to run my life.  So, I started to avoid almost everything that was even somewhat unpleasant (because I already had enough of that with my pain alone).  But, then I realized that I was starting to avoid living my life.  I had to change.

Now, I'm trying to just limit myself very strictly with what I do.  I make small goals, and take small steps.  I do not want to over-do it and make myself hurt even more than usual.  I make stretching and exercising a priority.  I'm trying to avoid pain in a healthy positive way rather than through the weird emotional motivational self-defeating stuff that was going on before.  

Who knows if any of this will stick in the long run, but at least for now, I'm feeling a lot better about myself and a lot more motivated to try to accomplish things.