To find my very comfortable life completely overwhelming?

[Kingcatnight]

For some reason over the past couple of years I seem to be finding my perfectly normal, "nice", not-remotely-difficult life to be completely and utterly overwhelming.

I have zero motivation and appetite for anything that doesn't provide instant gratification and fun when I wake up in the morning and I'm really struggling to tick anything off my list or fully apply myself to my job. There just always seems to be something else that gets in way that makes day-to-day-living feel like an endless slog of chores and misery.

Shopping needs doing
Things need throwing out of fridge
Garden needs weeding
Have to pay window cleaner
Got a parking ticket that I need to appeal
Forgot to buy salt for water softener
Or have plenty of salt for water softener but can't seem to find motivation to top it up...
Car needs servicing
Need to order new bank card
Garage needs clearing out
Must remember to book plumber to fix outside tap
Need to buy paint so we can repaint spare room (and then bloody paint it too)
XYZ form needs filling in but the printer's out of ink so need to sort that first
Dogs need walking/taking to vet
Forget dad's birthday

etc etc

The list is endless and new things seem to get added to it every day. It's just incessant.

In amongst all of this I am supposedly meant to find time to perform the job I'm actually paid to do to a high standard, pay my bills and feed myself. Basic functions performed, I then need to find time to exercise, respond to texts from friends/family and try to be a half-decent daughter/sister/niece etc.

I won't even start on the vague dreams I have about one day perhaps having the emotional capacity and headspace to learn french or play the violin.

I literally feel like just living and ticking off these tedious day-to-day tasks is a full-time job in itself. I don't understand how I'm supposed to fit anything else in around it. I really struggle to carry on with the rest of life while my to-do list grows increasingly longer and so my work suffers, because I have the luxury of WFH and I can't seem to motivate myself to focus on work when so many other things need doing. At the end of each day I go to bed feeling as though I've barely achieved anything and have underperformed in every area of my life.

On the rare evenings where I do find myself sitting down I'm so drained and low about it all that I end up mindlessly watching trash TV or youtube and then go to bed even more annoyed at myself for having achieved nothing of value.

I don't understand why I find this all so hard? Other people don't make it look this hard...am I just too sensitive and an incompetent under-achiever? Am I depressed? Surely there's more to life than this?

Yes I know they help some people. That wasn’t my question .

Yeah, you sound depressed. And also very much how I feel when trying to fend off an approaching depression.
keep doing the fun stuff, in fact, do more of it! It’ll help lift your mood a little, and also you can use it as a reward to drag yourself through the rest (I’ll just appeal this parking ticket and take the bins out then I’ll reward myself with X)
You need to set small goals, which you are… but you also need to reward yourself for reaching them rather than feeling guilty for only managing 1/ 2/ 3/ 28 of them .

Yep yep yep yep…. I get you 100%

I’m slowly coming to think I might have ADHD. Or just that I get bored quickly at the same time as getting overwhelmed easily.

I don’t know what to suggest.

Routine helps me, as does running religiously for 45 mins every other day. Small, achievable tasks that can be ticked off in Google Keep.

This is a really interesting point. I keep all my stuff in my head. I don't have a to do list at work either maybe this is the issue...

OP, I don't know what to say except that I feel exactly the same. Relatively speaking I have a "big" job, it eats up all my headspace. When the working day is done often even the prospect of cooking feels overwhelming. I end up not having ordered the right food.

I'm also quite digital. E.g. on Sunday I took down the Christmas decorations, read the meters (involves moving furniture and crawling), put up a complicated piece of art work I had made, cleared out the fridge ready for a new one to come and then sorted the new one out, returned two parcels, found and ordered a washing machine, rang the bank and sorted out an issue with a credit card.

Each individual thing isn't that big but they just seem overwhelming and the prospect of dealing with them for the rest of my life is just exhausting. I'm really debating going part time at work but I'm pretty aware it might impact my career progression. My mum has asked me if it's depression but I am quite happy having a nice dinner with my friends etc, so I didn't feel like it could be that.

I have already outsourced some stuff - I have a cleaner, and a gardener which TBF means I don't actually live in squalor which I could easily do. I use a set of shopping lists in my grocery app so even if I can't engage brain I can just pick a week and it will put a set of dinners on and another list for breakfasts and lunches. Those do help me but it hasn't got rid of the feeling of horror.

I don’t know if this helps at all - it probably sounds a bit random, but honestly it links.

I suffered with chronic pain for years, and discovered the curable app and the mindbody approach to healing, and it’s honestly changed my life and how I deal with things. A lot of it, along with pain science and brain retraining, focuses on our emotional world and excavating repressed emotions, and inner child work. I then found Nicole Sachs podcast and her journaling work, and it’s eye opening! Inner child work has helped me immensely with stuff like this. We have the adult us who has to navigate all this shit, but gosh, sometimes my inner five year old is just stamping her feet raging about how utterly shit it is and how I just don’t want to do it! Just allowing that voice to be heard has been so helpful in getting my life back, and getting out of pain (but also just helping me cope better with the day to day). Nicole has a great podcast “the cure for chronic pain” where she talks about this kind of thing a lot.

might not be for you of course, but I wanted to mention it incase it helped ❤️ you’re definitely not alone in how you’re feeling

I couldn’t live without my daily written down to do list. I would literally forget all the things I need to do, and they aren’t trivial - things like, get child to swimming, go to doctors, book car service etc.

I have a list that has tick boxes set up on my phone. As I get the jobs done I tick them and they disappear off my list.

I agree here from experience

God this is so familiar. The overwhelm, the disbelief that everyone else seems to be able to just get on with it. The procrastination. People mentioning ADHD, is there any basic resources you’d recommend which explain the symptoms in adult women?
Mine definitely has a lot of resentment mixed in as well, that I don’t feel the load is shared fairly at all.

You have just described me ! Have had two days free and have a list of small very doable jobs that I just cannot get motivated to do .
Have literally walked the dog twice today ,eaten crap copious amounts of food ,laid on sofa watching rubbish TV and achieved absolutely nothing
List for me
Pay credit card bill
Empty bins in bedrooms etc,
Sort out fridge
Look for birthday presents for husband and son
Sort out washing…not much
Get a few things from supermarket
Absolutely nothing arduous and just think I am mentally drained and need a kick up the arse ! Feel guilty because millions of people have it so tough .
Have now gone to bed !

I was also going to suggest peri-menopause. I’ve been feeling increasingly like this and have got HRT patches but not started them yet. I don’t think I’m depressed because I can get stuff done if I’m in the mood or really put my mind to it and I get pleasure out of doing things I enjoy. I think part of it is from having all the time in the world during lockdown and then trying to go back to living life at full pelt, and also I live on my own so there’s no one else to share the burden.

Perhaps you don’t want to do those things because they are all extremely boring. You know what you want to do. You want to do what you want - play the violin or whatever. I don’t think you are depressed, just bored.

Nothing helpful to add except I feel extremely similar.

I relate to this - going into the office and actually interacting with people and having a dividing line between work and home improved things massively.

wfh great but in small doses, especially if you’re an extrovert.

I could have written this and so could many of my friends - we
are all in our early 40s - peri menopausal! Like
someone else said it’s like
suddenly there is no RAM left to store all these minor things and they become overwhelming.
I even dread making phone calls now! Life
admin is ridiculous and the more kids you have the worse it is - I feel like I’m a PA for them and me. My husband deals with most financial stuff or I think I’d go under with the thought of doing all that too! I like what others have said regarding don’t sweat the small stuff - I don’t stress over any of it but I do find it all a bit overwhelming at times.

I feel exactly the same too, it’s so draining. I feel worse at this time of year.

I often wonder about ADHD as I’m pretty certain I’m not depressed.

What doesn’t help me is that I don’t really have many ‘hobbies’ (apart from exercise and walking which keep me slightly on track). I would love to have something to ‘do’ as an escape but instead I just find myself mindlessly scrolling on my phone a lot of the time and then hating myself for it.

Be very careful before you start thinking you might be ‘clinically depressed’ or have ADHD.

Given the sheer number of people on MN (never mind the rest of the world) who feel like this, they can’t all have depression or ADHD.

I would recommend the book ‘Lost Connections’ by Johann Hari. He talks about why we’re all really ‘depressed’, the reality of anti-depressants and what we can do about how we feel.

I’d also thoroughly recommend the Thrive programme. It’s a training course for catching and dealing with negative thoughts. It changed my life - no exaggeration.

This is exactly what Caitlin Moran describes in more than a woman. Check it out and you will be unable to stop nodding. No idea what the solution is I'm afraid. Feels never-ending.

I can relate to this. You sound overwhelmed by the "shoulds". As if you can't relax or enjoy life until all the jobs are done.

I am trying to learn to be content with imperfection. The weeding will never be done (the weeds keep growing!). The house will never stay tidy. Washing will always need to be done again. I want to sort things and have them stay sorted but that isn't how life works.

Mindfulness (non judgemental acceptance of how things are in the moment) helps a bit.

Following the total minutae of life is soul destroying

I’m just like you, OP. I do have ADHD, which has manifested itself in a life of ignoring the mundane because I can’t get my head into gear, but seeking adventure to prove to myself that I’m alive (and also, being outdoors helps my mood). I constantly challenge myself to do bigger things, and say yes to experiences, but it takes a monumental effort to get a card and post it, or sort out bills and correspondence.

It sounds to me like a tick list of life. Adult life is 80% slog. You just have to make the other 20% count!

You know there are a lot of people on MN and the estimate is that 1 to 2 in every hundred people have ADHD, depression is even more common, so no I don't think it's true that "everyone who says they have it on MN can't have ADHD or be depressed". Obviously people can say whatever they want on the internet but these aren't crazily high numbers suggesting it. Plus lots of people suggested other causes of this kind of feeling.

People also tend to click on a thread title that resonates with them. Somebody who isn't particularly overwhelmed by life and doesn't feel so together that they feel they could offer advice to somebody who is overwhelmed is less likely to click on this thread compared to those two groups of people.

Those saying burnout - yes, but what's the solution?! Usually the advice is to stop. But with two kids you can't just stop. And we can't all quit work as there are bills to pay to keep a roof over the kids' heads and food on the table - a bonus if we can afford to keep the house warm as well!