Motivating Yourself to Be Productive Every Day

As in- that's how you get up and DO something instead of sitting and just staring st your laundry basket for 15 minutes and then picking up your phone. The prefrontal cortex and dopamine work together to convince you the "reward" of the completed task at the end of the Motivation Bridge is worth it. Then dopamine is used to trigger your muscles to operate so that you *get up* and do it.

Well yeah. "Motivation" is quite literally operated via dopamine

Yeah, I mean maybe I got a tad bit more motivation from it than I do from my prozac, but that's expected, lol.

Ohhhh yeah. If Adderall made you feel *focused and calm* you have a dopamine/norepinephrine regulation issue for sure. You almost certainly have ADHD, welcome to the tribe ✊

I do think I have undiagnosed ADD, so does my therapist. The substance abuse listed was only for marijuana. I dont have my medical card yet but I have been approved. Over the past couple years I've been googling and talking a lot about ADHD as I seem to have more and more symptoms related to it. Also anxiety, depression, PTSD. And when I did take adderall, I was able to calm down and get shit done. Everything didn't feel so overwhelming, I actually felt like I could conquer the task at hand and more! I just cant afford the test to diagnose me. I hate that everything is all about money in the psychiatric and medical field. Big pharma. 😥 but thank you all for your advice, I'm glad even from the little I wrote it's that obvious that I may suffer from ADD, so I feel a little less crazy.

Find something worth waking up for or getting excited for. Im a non paid intern in the medical field in between rotations and like to do Instacart. I have driving anxiety but it helps me.

Oh, and if you do, tell Cerebral I sent you 😉 They basically saved my life.

Re: above response, 100% accurate, well-said. I am in exactly that situation (adhd-asd + ptsd & prior various SUD) and had an issue with adderall when I was a teen. I mentioned this to my therapist and a friend, and they both suggested Vyvanse as it's processed in the gut so can't be abused (but costs like $211/14 and many insurance don't cover it fully) and you just need your prescriber to run pre-auth. In my experience, aside from the first day and then at titration— feeling warm, sweaty, and with a bit more energy and focus than I was used to in any recent years—I never felt anything close to being high on stimulants previously. Nothing like it. This is exactly what my brain has been crying for, for over 20 years. I would tell a much younger me: don't be like me and avoid asking from the fear of just another drug experience. Finding the right molecule is completely different. Hug your brain. Keep looking, there's something out there that will bring you back to clarity.

Have you checked out adhd before? If it sounds like something you might have, go to a psychiatrist, get it diagnosed, and get meds, they can be super helpful and I noticed substance abuse listed in your list, unmedicated adhd often can lead to substance abuse disorder, like over half the people in jail or something around that actually have undiagnosed unmedicated adhd, it’s actually really sad. The medication is stimulants though so it may be something you want to avoid if you have actual addict behavior centered around something similar, in which case I’d suggest joining a lot of social media support groups for it as they are great for finding hacks to make your brain work better for you if you want to avoid the medication route.

By growing up under control freaks 😅. Now I get anxiety from loss of control, so my motivation to get out of bed or get up and do the things—aside from exogenous stimulants for my adhd—is by telling myself that I can't let the lazy version of me win (and complicate everything for Future Me). That I have to beat what's been done to me, not become what my narcissists cast a mold of. That productivity is anti-anxiety medication, and getting up and moving is the prescription. That laying in bed and wishing things away is literally never going to do anything positive, and that I feel less alive as a human *being* than a human *doing*, so get up and *ing LIVE! And that anything less is submitting to my PTSD/abuse.

I barely get my butt out to get my kid from school. Then im right back in it. I eat in bed, i live in bed. Its embarrassing but its comfortable

I honestly don't. 🥴