1:23pm December 9, 2011

“

“Lack of motivation” is a generally misunderstood symptom of depression. It does not mean that I sit around thinking, “Oh, I’m so depressed; why bother to do shit I don’t want to do anyway.” It means not that I lack discipline, but that there is a mental disconnect between my conscious mind, which says I want or need to do X, and the part of my brain which actually initiates activity. It prevents me from doing things I would very much like to do, as well as things I need to do, rather than indicating simply a lack of interest in doing things which are not immediately rewarding.

If you want or need to go somewhere, whether somewhere you’re eagerly looking forward to going, or somewhere routine, or to the dentist for a root canal which you may be much averse to but have nevertheless decided will leave you better off in the long run, and you get in your car, turn the key in the ignition repeatedly, yet the engine sputters but does not engage, this is not an indication that you don’t really want to go anywhere. It’s an indication that something is wrong with the equipment you need to transport you there.

I am fully capable of sitting for hours, thinking periodically, “I need to pee,” then, “I really need to pee,” and eventually, “Damn, I need to pee,” before being able to jump start the part of my brain which engages with the task of getting up and walking the ten feet to the bathroom, and initiates the movement which allows me to do that.

The more complex the task, the harder it can be, because a more complex sequence of actions must be, in some sense, imagined and targeted before the actions necessary to bring them about can be initiated. Most people are unaware that this process even takes place, because in a healthy brain, it occurs swiftly and automatically. In my brain, it does not.

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Maud, There’s Good News and Bad News. And Fat News. (Shakesville) (via raphael-wolfgang, kiriamaya)

Yup. And then you add motor planning (praxis) problems on top of that and you’ve got even BIGGER problems!!!  (such as those related to Sensory Integration Dysfunction) Yeah, that pretty much describes my life right now and why my thesis proposal will not be handed in on time. :(   There are a couple of really good articles on the inertia/catatonia connection on my autism links page I recently put up if anyone’s interested. there are others as well, but am tired and experiencing amotivational state and motor issues and basically am virtually completely nonfunctional,  so yeah… they’re not there. and there’s only so many things you can put on one page. 

But anyways, What is REALLY fun (NOT!!) is getting stuck halfway through a task; literally freezing mid-way through!!  That will get you REALLY funny looks from people who don’t understand/have never seen it before! They dont’ realize you’re stuck; they think you voluntarily stop and think you can voluntarily start up againand will get all pushy about you starting again when you don’t know how to!!  Yeah, staring at a car door, or a shoe or a piece a paper or your hand and not knowing what to do knext or recognizing the object is all sorts of fun!! NOT!!  

(via autisticwolfchild) Story of my life. (via goldenheartedrose) (via tuuli) (via nicocoer)

I remember noticing how odd it was… I have a movement disorder variously described as parkinsonlike or “autistic catatonia”, that seriously impairs the link between thought and action (and thought and thought, and thought and memory, and just about everything else, it makes things that in most people are close together, become very far apart, sort of widening the gaps between things). And then when I was depressed, on top of that? There was a really obvious difference in the way the gaps were widened.

With depression, it felt like this fog – a dirty fog – was covering everything, and sort of infiltrating movement and stretching out that distance long and thin but in a really messy way. And there was a qualitative difference I’ll probably never be able to describe, but definitely a different kind of mechanism than in a regular kind of movement disorder like I have. It was more like Bilbo in the Lord of the Rings, who described himself as feeling thin and stretched like butter scraped over too much bread.

Anyway, over time I actually came to appreciate the weird sluggishness that depression caused me. I think it may even be a built in protective mechanism of the body’s. I am pretty sure it prevented me from suicide for many years. Whenever I was depressed enough to truly and completely want to die, I was too depressed to put the movements together to kill myself. What became dangerous was when medication made the movement part go away but not the depression and suicidal thoughts – then I was suicidal and fully able to attempt it, which I did. Fortunately I suck at suicide.

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