Lack of Self-Care from Shame AND Suicidal Ideation

[Cascade]

Hi Group,
I realized today that my lack of self-care doesn't only stem from learned shame about feeling gross and unworthy.  Yes, all the subconscious messages about not deserving to be cared for, cleaned, fed, exercised, etc., are all there.  And I am aware of them, which helps me stop and recognize them and combat the inner critic.  I tell myself I'll take a shower or brush my teeth because I deserve to be clean -- simply as human being -- because this is what all human being deserve.  But I'm going through the motions... or faking it till I make it... or just faking it altogether because I'm trying to follow the prescription of healing (i.e., what the experts tell us to do).

However, my lack of self-care is also a manifestation of my passive ideation about ceasing to live.  I don't really want to live this messed up life, so why should I bother with self-care?  I'm the only one who's taking care of me (I live alone), so if I stop, maybe I will just die.  What's the point of the minimal care I can provide to myself right now in this emotional flashback, when I don't have the desire to make choices that will change anything?  Who cares?  I guess the question is, "Do I care?"  That might be the root of self-care actions.  Maybe part of me is screaming:  Do you even care?  Most times, the answer is no, because I don't even want to be alive anyway.

A nice double-whammy to lay out there,
   -Cascade

[Bach]

Cascade, I relate to this.

[Papa Coco]

Cascade, I can relate also.

Motivation is simply gone for me. I sit around bored with a million things I could be doing. Including showering and vacuuming. I only wear cargo shorts and t-shirts. I look like a slob and I feel like one too. But I don't care enough to fix it.

I think of it like I'm on a sinking ship. Why would I bother to fluff the pillows on a sinking ship? If there's no lasting meaning to what I do, why do it?

This is a sign of chronic depression, but knowing that isn't helping me get past it.

I don't know how to fix this yet, but I just wanted to share that I feel what you and Bach feel all the time these days. Demotivated. You are not alone in this double-whammy. I'm in it too.

[Chart]

I find my depression horrible. I'm in it and there are a million things I just don't give a damn about at the moment. I think it's really important to not care about things that are "not important"... at least in the context of debilitating depression. I haven't changed my bedsheets in over six months. I haven't got the energy. I don't care about that. And I think that's a good thing. I think about suicide all the time. I want the pain to stop. But the pain stays even if I clean the house. I am "forced" to care about my daughter. I am responsible for her but this doesn't help my depression in the slightest even though I love her profoundly. I am also "forced" to confront my depression. I'm afraid if I don't force this I'll go through with ending everything. I don't want that. So there's something I care about. It's really hard to find things to care about while lying in a pit. I think it's a question of priorities. With depression around there's very little room for anything else.

Another thing I care about are the friends I've found on this forum. Our inner critics are not yet beaten. I need your help. And I know you are here for me. I return that support and as much more as I can.

Carolyn Spring has a great podcast on suicide. I found it absolutely brilliant.
https://youtu.be/2G2cuf3aVM8?si=1c3A7nr_1AoQcTZV

[Chart]

Cascade, I keep rereading your post. I relate soooo much. I sooo wish I could help. I truly know what you are struggling against. We all do I think. I send you hugs and support.

[Cascade]

omg, thank you, thank you, thank you, Bach, Papa Coco, and Chart.  I was so sure I've been missing something because I can't drag myself out of this depression and EF.  I was so sure I was the only one doing so poorly.  It really does help to see your replies and honesty.


Papa Coco, I wear cotton house pants and t-shirts, too.  I don't allow my legs to show in shorts, even to myself at home, because of the keratosis on my skin.  I'm trying not to pick at the sores because I know it only makes it worse.  I've been trying to focus on that self-care with exfoliating and moisturizing.  Sometimes I make it, sometimes I don't.  I'm on Day 3 in these pants and t-shirt... really need a shower today!

I thought I was the only one doing this bad.  Chart, everyday I say today will be the day I change my bed sheets.  And then I don't.  It's been so many months I've lost count.  Papa Coco, same here with vacuuming.  The cat fur is collecting into dust bunnies all over the place.  It seems my gross living conditions are an externalization of how gross I feel inside and about myself.  And yet, I don't act on my decisions or desires to change anything.  I "want to" have vacuumed floors (without "shoulding" on myself), and even that doesn't help get it done.

Chart, your heartfelt posts especially helped me this morning.  Everyday is so filled with depression, just sitting or laying on the couch waiting for night to come and I just move my body to my bed.  Yesterday I just wanted to stay in bed all day, but eventually got up at about 10 AM... to go to the couch.  Eating involves preparing things that only require the most minimal of effort.  I do run the dishwasher every day, so I'll have a clean coffee pot in the morning.  Eeesh, my coffee pot gets cleaned more often than I clean myself.  How sad.  Without kids, I take care of my two cats because I love them and they deserve to be cared for and I have an obligation.  They see enough of my pain and "help" me in their own ways.

This morning I was really upset that we are all feeling this way, and so it seems we are all just faking it but will never really make it.  I thought maybe I wanted an example of someone's Healing Plan, if they've gotten to that stage, but then I realized I wouldn't be able to do anything on a plan, anyway.  I gave up on therapy after spending 2022 with a trauma-informed expert who I couldn't build trust with.  I felt betrayed and realized after psychoeducating myself recently that it was because she held out the salvation fantasy... as in, we'll just keep talking and one day I'll be past everything.  I wasn't even able to achieve stabilization after a full year with her.

I'll stop rambling.  Just wanted you all to know how helpful you've been to me in this moment, even as I was upset that we're all just going through the motions and this is all we have.  At least we have it together.
   -Cascade

[Papa Coco]

Cascade, Chart, Bach, and everyone else who is dealing with this sense of unmotivated living:

I'm very sorry this is happening to us all, but I'm very glad to be a part of the conversation. The pain is far worse when I feel like I'm the only person with the affliction.

I can blame my lack of motivation on a lot of things. The two I fall back on the most often are:

1) I was only praised for doing things for others. When I did things for myself, I was called selfish and was shamed for it. Most of my family and friends are gone now. I'm alone most of the time. I have no one looking to me to do things for them, so I'm now "a servant without a master". How can I motivate myself to do things for myself that will only label me as selfish? 

2) I have lived through so many betrayals, that anytime I feel like life is going well, a voice in the back of my head says "wait for it..." knowing that every hour of fun has to be paid for with a month of suffering. I resort to the 80/20 rule. In this case, life is 80% pain and 20% beautiful. My family only treated me with respect when they were buttering me up to do something for them. Happiness was a trap. "Make him happy so we can pull the rug out from beneath him."  If I ever got excited about anything at all, they would laugh at me like I was an idiot. Being happy, excited, or motivated just opens up a thousand old wounds of when those were very dangerous emotions to feel.

The truth, I think, is just that this unmotivated depression is what Complex PTSD does to us. It's just what it does. This is it. This is the face of residual trauma.

I took this all to my therapist yesterday. He knows me to be a man of high energy who, over the past few years have fallen into this trench of unmotivated sadness. He is well versed in Parts Therapy. He took the stance yesterday that this depressed, unmotivated person I'm presenting is not my Self, but is, in fact, one of my bigger, more active parts. He had me sit with the part in an imaginary theater. Sadly, 55 minutes, every two weeks, isn't enough time to get too deep, but he did give me something to think about today. The idea that this demotivated sad boy is one of my parts who needs me to love him is sort of a tiny flame of hope (HEAVY on the word TINY) flickering off in the darkness that I can shoot for as I try to dig myself out of this unmotivated muck.

For now, I'm just accepting that he is not all of me. He's a part in need of my help, and I'll do my best to just love him for now while I work to keep my head up.

I'll let you know how it goes as I try to process this idea.

[Chart]

Thank you for your kind words cascade. I'm really really touched that my post was positive for you. I'm so of dark thoughts these days I spent the whole day imagining what an egotistical egocentric buffoon I am for what I wrote. I feel like I'm "false". That I present something that is not really the true me. Anyway that's another subject. You mentioned "healing plan" and that made me think of my decision two(?) weeks ago to start meditating. It came about in reaction to my SI seeming to get worse. At a very specific instant I had a voice in my head say, "Meditate or die." Wow did that really hit me square in the guts. Ten years ago I did a 10-day Vipassana meditation initiation. It was one of the hardest experiences of my life. But I came out of it "understanding" how meditation could actually bring about profound healing. But of course after I absolutely wasn't able to continue meditating. No discipline and just too hard. I've done it VERY sporadicly over the years, but always giving up after three or four days. But this time I've got a bit more incentive. This time I've nothing to lose. The pain of each waking moment is actually worse than the thought or act of actually meditating. Will I stick with it? Can I maintain and sustain the habit? I've not a frickin clue. But if it means giving up every other little thing I'm "supposed" to do on a daily basis OR just meditate for one hour... well, the housework can get as bad as it likes... I don't believe housework or showers or fashionable pants heals a traumatized amygdala (it might even make it worse But the Buddhists just might be on to something and like you I've kinda done my cycle with therapists, emdr, hypnotherapy, antidepressants, alcohol, porn-distraction, eating crap... did I leave anything out?
One day at a time meditating... one hour, I mostly make it. Evenings are easier for me. And please, I'm not saying "do this". Almost on the contrary. After I'm faithful to the practice for five years I might say do it, but for now I'm just relating my healing plan.
Healing plan: Meditation (and damn-near nothing else)

[Bach]

I "should" myself constantly about these self-care things.  Obviously, that doesn't help.  I have a fantasy about being a clean, tidy person in an orderly house.  It feels impossible, though it feels like it "should" be possible.  Like, what's really so hard about it bathing, doing laundry, preparing food, throwing away the junk mail?  I "should", I "should", I "should".  Here I am, buried under a pile of "should".

With that said, I washed my bedding yesterday.  It felt like a major triumph!

[Chart]

PapaCoco, we posted at almost the exact same moment! Happy to have news from you... and sad you too are struggling. I want to say how much I too struggle with the idea of self-love. I hope I understood your post correctly. Self-love is a concept I try and try but I don't seem to ever "feel" much of anything. I know it's important, maybe terribly important, I try, I go over it in my head, I tell other people how important it is... but me I just still don't get it. Again it's like I'm missing the very foundations of self-love... and it's winter, the ground is frozen and I've no shovel or pick-axe... how'm I gonna dig a two-foot trench around my inner child's boundless bleeding heart? The problem too with cptsd is there're multiple fires. The time I start to diminish one, a couple others start raging in a sudden upsurge. Again, I come back to Cascade's idea of not caring. There're so many things that ARE important, but cptsd just doesn't let us the energy or power to deal with them. It is deeply deeply frustrating. I empathize with you PapaCoco, profoundly.

[Chart]

Bravo for the bedsheets Bach! But please, don't "should" yourself to death. We do what we can, and quite a lot can be just "let go of". And all in good conscience.

[Cascade]

What camaraderie! 

Thanks so much, everyone, for helping me laugh a little out loud and cry a little inside.  I'm feeling overwhelmed by all that's happening on these boards today, so I need to refrain right now from feeling obligated to comment in detail.  Know that you're in my heart and thoughts.
   -Cascade

P.S.  Part of the overwhelm is also the looming deadline for U.S. income taxes to be filed by the 15th.  On Monday, "I'll do them today and get them out of the way."  Nope, didn't happen.  On Tuesday, "I'll get them done today."  Nope.  Ugh.  I'll make it one of these days.

[Blueberry]

Cascade, no you are definitely not alone in this! Basic self-care is mostly really difficult for me. Some of it has to do with an intense and deep feeling of "Why bother?"

[Bach]

My therapist says that the reason I have so much trouble doing things for myself is that I feel that I don't deserve to be comfortable and taken care of. I don't doubt her but I also don't really understand what that means or what to do about it. I can list reasons to support the idea that I do deserve care and comfort and love, and I can't list any that support the idea that I don't so why don't I believe it? How can I convince myself?

Yesterday someone told me I need to have more compassion for myself. There's another pithy bit of incomprehensible self-help. And here I am still wondering why I can't get the hang of simply being a person, and why I have to be here at all.

[Chart]

Hey Bach, yeah I hear you. My reason and logic say one thing but my emotions are just not in line. My ex-girlfriend used to pedantically tell me I needed to love myself. She wasn't wrong, it's just how do I feel something I just don't feel?