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You do procrastinate. What is happening is that you basically forced yourself to work when you did not want to for so long, your emotional system learned that work is pain, basically.

Think of this like a Paulov conditioning a dog to have an electric shock every time he lights a bulb. At the end the dog avoids the lightbulb at all cost, even when not lighted.

Forcing yourself to do something painful trained your brain and created a trauma with work, as simple as that. Your body wants to help you not letting you work because: 1 work is associated as painful and 2 you can avoid it on the short term, so you avoid it.

A good psychologist can help you easily solve the issue, but probably there are not good ones or are expensive for you on your current situation. A bad one could also damage you btw.

So my advice is for you start learning about psychology yourself and learn how to recover from a traumatic experience using self help info. It is not difficult, basically is facing the traumatic experience but with a good outcome or getting rid of beliefs like "work is painful" that you learned over time. And of course, making work something pleasurable or at least neutral.

Think of this as a curiosity or funny game you play, not like work to do. You could start with "Wake up productive" of Eben Pagan, "The now habit" audiobook and training to remove specific beliefs.

If you are broke you can pirate it. Then pay for it when your life is better.

Forget resolutions and to do list by now. It is making it worse as it is introducing guilt for what you should do, adding more emotional pain.

Start making your life better, independently of your job. Eat well, exercise, enjoy beautiful and cheap places, the best things in life cost nothing...if you are jobless you are lucky and could go to amazing places when people are working, specially in overworked America! Go outside, no inside, and met people.

Start being grateful and enjoying your current situation. It looks crazy but is exactly what you need. Look at it as the opportunity to learn and be a much better person in the future that what you were.

Wow. This resonates strongly.

The parts I didn't mention, like for the 4 or 5 years of madness I could see the damage going on at home. We ended up so toxic towards each other, I'd feel guilt for the staff at the business and my partner and kids. No choice was guilt free or win, so the pressure built quickly.

Looking back I wish I'd let the staff go long before I did, and shutter the business far quicker. Walking away and getting a low pressure job for a year would have been better for everyone. Doing what I was doing for the family cost me the relationship. We had a good split, the now ex came back to help when I broke and helped deal with all the outstanding business things. We still talk, though she doesn't understand what's going on with me, but neither do I, and thinks I can snap out of it.

I like your suggestions, the hacker me always wants to understand everything, so it appeals on many levels, and as you guessed medical options are a bit limited now.

Thank you.

With all the responses to my quick comment last night, and writing out my replies I've got a real lift today. I need to make progress from that. Thank you everyone.

Cognitive Behavior Therapy is exactly for this kind of problems.

I'm not sure where the original poster is, but here in my country, you can get free therapy by going to the training/university centre.

You get therapy by postgraduate trainees (but very sharp and with everything fresh), and supervised by some of the very best, unaffordable professionals :)

Here's a list in the United States (where I guess the poster lives):

http://www.academyofct.org/lowcost/

pipio21's suggestion of self-directed therapy seems to be validated :) :

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/06/19/depressed-tr...

You guessed well. :)

Thanks for the links, I wouldn't immediately have thought of universities.

I like pipio21's suggestions as they sit very well with current situation.

Thank you for this. I went through something similar and therapists told me it was simply depression, but this is a better and more thorough explanation by far.

this comment is just beautiful

Good luck, and I hope you resolve things as best they can be resolved.

This certainly sounds like depression. Some people respond well to cognitive behavioural therapy, some people really don't, and other therapies are worth exploring. It can be a long slog, and it can get worse before it gets better. I hope you can seek help, and I hope you can stick with until something works.

If you and your doctor decide that anti-depressants are worth trying, be sure to do a formal review with your doc after 6 weeks. Antidepressants are not meant for long-term use, and alone they won't fix things for you, but they may help you find something that works for you. On that note...

I'd highly recommend exercise. It's a hackneyed recommendation, but who cares. It's also been criticised for lack of significant long-term effects. But that's missing the point. Sometimes you need a healthy short-term fix, and hopefully with enough of them you can boot-strap your way to a longer-term solution. Go running, cycling, swimming, play soccer, take up boxercise, lift heavy weights, whatever works for you. Get up and out, preferably outdoors, preferably with social interaction, definitely getting sweaty and panting heavily. If you can hire a personal trainer, that might help, since you pay them to make sure you Do Not Quit. If you can join a class, even better.

Sounds simplistic, and it is. There's no way anything I can say here could encapsulate the issues you're dealing with, and there are no panaceas. This is a complex problem, no doubt about that. I hope you can find a way out of it.

Good luck!

Thank you for the thoughts. I was on Prozac for some months, and they definitely took the edge off but instead of flunking I'd flunk happily. It masked some of the symptoms but didn't get to the core issue. CBT wasnt suggested and I didn't ask, though I would now.

If I'd had more motivation (that's something that's coming back, to start I could care less about anything) I think the Prozac could have helped me along.

Exercise is a good suggestion, I've dropped out of most, so asking a friend or two to join up for some running and gym is overdue. Gets me out of the house and the self-feeding guilt too.

I went through this; I took an entire year and change off. After a prolonged period of relationship and work stress, I simply had to step away. Any time I tried to do any sort of work, I'd seize, freeze-up, and become filled with an overwhelming sense of dread and hatred. So I did nothing for a very long time. Then, when I tried again, it was as you describe. I eventually got another job, one I enjoy, as money became a problem, and it took a few weeks, but eventually got into the swing of things again. I still struggle sometimes, but I take frequent single days off, and if I find myself dreading again or worrying about my performance, I remind myself that I can simply quit; it's a job, money doesn't have a strong causal relationship with happiness, and my needs are basic. The same goes for relationships. Unless either are giving you what you're putting in, quit. If you can't quit now, plan the exit. My goal now is to not get to where I was.

> overwhelming sense of dread and hatred

This. If I push there's something like a slowdown, like a movie or dream effect, and if I keep on trying I end up feeling tired too.

Thanks for the positive message, it's good to know I can get out the other side.

I've been through that; I'm on my way better, but it's slow and I'm not quite yet there.

Few things that helped me:

- SSRI - I couldn't recover from the mental pain I had constantly until I visited a doctor and got put on those medications; it didn't solve my problem, but it lowers the pain to manageable levels

- removing distractions - I unsubscribed from every newsletter I could that I didn't absolutely care about, I uninstalled or muted most of the non-urgent push notifications, etc. Not being pinged every 5 minutes lowered my stress levels and made it a bit easier to focus.

- writing - when I find it hard to go forward, I'll dump my thoughts into a text file, and then I'll keep "talking to myself" in the editor; at some point this turns into a list of "next steps" I need to take, and as I'm starting to go through them, things move forward and I feel better

- acceptance - accepting I have those issues and working with them, rather than obsessing over how broken I am, reduced my stress and makes it easier to focus

- calendar - preallocating time for various tasks I want to do, and committing to doing them without distractions (phone set to silent, mail program closed, etc.) for that period of time, regardless of the end output, again makes it easier to focus, and seeing thing moving forward makes me feel better; I stole that one from the "Deep Work" book

But yeah, I still struggle. There are days when I only honestly say I haven't done anything but read HN and respond to e-mails. But more and more, there are days when I'm productive, and I'm beginning to trust my capacity for doing work again, and this improves my self-esteem as well.

#HNPsychology

Thank you, and good luck to you!

- SSRI - I was on these for a few months near the start. I think it was the wrong timing, they masked the symptoms but didn't get to the core. My motivation was at an all time low so I flunked happily instead of just flunking. I was dropping everything and becoming a zombie. Now motivation is coming back again I think they or CBT might have helped move things along.

- distractions - I need to work on this more. I've done some, but as I'm starting to wake up a bit, I know I should do more. I need to get at least one space of the home back to cltter free and break the mental clutter too. It's too easy to feel I'm continuing the chaos of the workaholic times.

- writing - I like this. I've been doing something like this last few weeks, just into an editor file, and it's given me enough shape to know I need to be "not here".

- acceptance - Oh I am so bad at this, and rather good at obsessing how broken I am at the end of a day. I had a good head, and find it too easy to remind myself, and how stupid I'm being. Now some motivation is coming back it's probably worse - I was more like a teen with "yeah whatever" to everything six months ago.

Some good points to think on, and work on.

That sounds like a mix of two things:

1. The working routine you build up in the elongated crunch period simply isn't compatible with not having a hard deadline or seven. I get this myself after years of burning the candle at both ends and it is taking quite some time to beat it out of myself. The problem is that my work ethic has for years been fuelled by deadline fear, and those short times when the pressure came off a little I enjoyed the opportunity to procrastinate. Somewhere along the line that became normal but flipped: I find it hard to not procrastinate until there is some deadline pressure. This makes starting new personal projects almost impossible (well, not quite, I have ideas and make notes, sometimes even get around to trying a PoC, but staring proper implementation is the difficult point).

2. Common, garden variety, depression. This is seen a lot in circumstances you describe. It can be very difficult to sort due to how much the causes and effects can vary from person to person. Don't expect doctors to be able to help long term as the problem is often not really medical, apart from extreme cases where you might be given something truly mind altering most of what a doctor will prescribe is simply intended to prop you up a bit while you work on the problem. From personal experience of a very bad year or so in my life (over 15 years ago now, heck I'm getting old!): I found talking to a councillor and select friends/family were key.

I recognise the first very strongly. Somewhere I got to a similar flip and procrastinate everything no matter how simple until it is "house is on fire" urgent.

You're probably right about depression, I was on Prozac a while but while I was still in the down spiral. It seemed to make me a happy flake, mask some symptoms but the downward direction and apathy remained. Now I feel a bit of motivation again I think they might help, or maybe CBT.

I had one brush with depression some years ago, and it felt different, but that was a much cleaner cause and effect. A short spell of SSRIs and I was able to break out quite easily.

Thanks!

You sound depressed. Have you seen a therapist? If you haven't yet, it would probably be worth a try. Good luck.

I have been in this boat (as far as I can judge from your story--I wouldn't tell anyone "I know how you feel"), in February it'll have been 10 years. Overworked myself during university (which took way longer than it should have, but everyone kept telling me "oh I feel like that sometimes too"--never did I realize they didnt have to deal with it every minute, every day). When the student loan ran out (back then very generous in NL), I got a coding job, two days a week (trying to finish my study, except I was mainly recovering most of the week), after two months something snapped, I couldn't read the code on the screen anymore, scared the shit out of me (been coding since I was 9). Completely broke down.

I have tried so many things (therapy, meds, alternative therapy, physical checkup, coaching). No solutions. Anti-depressants make it more bearable, but they also seem to suck motivation (and have side-effects) so I use them on and off (for longer periods of course otherwise they don't make sense), recently I've been in a bad place so I'm back on again (which works but it's no progress either).

I wish I had some solid advice to give you. Your story is in fact the first time I hear something quite as similar to my experience (cause it's not quite like a burnout, is it?), except I never got myself to work the hours your post suggests you did, instead using--I dunno--intellect to make up for it, which just leads to perfectionism and pushed me over the edge just as well[0]. Except I wasn't aware I was asking too much of myself.

Going to re-read this thread tomorrow, maybe some of the replies have some good advice that I haven't tried yet (or might be worth to re-try). Never stop fighting, life's too amazing, even if you can't live it like all the other people.

Currently I'm doing the best I can, volunteering at several youth-centres, teaching kids as much computer / computational science I have learned, trying to put my education and knowledge to the best use as possible (also, turns out that teaching and working with kids is a passion of mine I never discovered in comp.sci). Even though I only have the energy to do it 12h/wk, I know I'm doing something amazing for these kids who will remember me when they're old. I also realize I'm super lucky to live in the Netherlands, in the US I'd be on the streets (this resonates http://www.iquilezles.org/blog/?p=2659 ), and possibly a dead junkie.

I wish you the best of luck and to somehow some day find happiness. If there's anything you like like to talk about, my email's in my profile.

I've been where you are now. You need to graduate from hacker news to the redpill subreddit my friend

I recommend spending your time on your new interests, instead of trying to force yourself to do what "you should be doing". Spirituality and getting unstuck by wasting 6 months building a fun project for my favorite game helped me out of it.

>You need to graduate from hacker news to the redpill subreddit my friend

Do you recommend this to solve sexual frustration? Honest question; it seems that's the interest of that subreddit.