@Entropy I learned something recently: When people ask for help getting motivated, they tend to already feel motivation. They recognize the need to clean. They don’t like the chaos, or how hard life gets when there’s no clean clothes or plates. They often feel a lot of shame and would love to have a clean house.
This means there’s actually no problem with their motivation. Instead, it’s likely they are struggling with executive functioning, especially task-initiation. That’s a known symptom of ADHD, depression, PTSD, autism, and grief.
Imagine for a second that you get a call from the police. They tell you that a loved one has been killed.
When you hang up the phone, what will you do next? Do you call a friend? Do you cry or wail? Really imagine it.
You’re probably not doing the dishes. It’s unlikely that you’d cook a healthy meal or even remember to eat at all. In the wake of tragic loss, people struggle to feed themselves, or do other basic tasks like shower.
I can’t speak to the entire list up there, but I know how depression feels: it’s like that. There’s a very real sense of something terrible having happened. It’s all you can think about. Sometimes you cry, and sometimes you feel a sliver of hope because a friend is there or the sun is shining…but there’s always that sense of shock and doom. And unfortunately, that feeling doesn’t go away. It lasts for weeks, sometimes months or years. It’s like every morning, you get another call from the police and somebody else has died.
I really hope you never feel like that, and I have no idea if @KRD even does. I just think it’s important to remember that things like cleaning can be very hard, and it’s okay to need help with that. Sometimes, it really is impossible to just get up and do it. You wouldn’t fault a paraplegic for being unable to stand. But their legs are usually perfectly healthy. The problem is only in the brain.