Executive Function
Jan. 27th, 2021 11:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tealinThe process that connects 'I need to do this' with making your body do it is called Executive Function, and mine has fallen off a cliff. If you remember the Buffy episode where a curse is put on the house so no one can leave, and this takes the form not of an impenetrable force field or doors glued shut but just ... an inability to move towards them, that's exactly what it's like. Standing there looking at a door and thinking 'I need to go through that' but not moving a muscle to do so.
Several times this week I've caught myself just staring at a task, thinking about doing it, but seemingly unable to break through the barrier between thought and action, as if just picturing the task clearly enough will telekinetically cause it to happen. It would take ten seconds to do! Mentally rehearsing it seventeen times takes much longer! It's not even like they're complicated or energetic tasks – one was literally tying sticks into a bundle and making a stack of the bundles. But I just stood there staring at the sticks.
It's been particularly bad this week, but as I've come to peace with myself over the last few years it is definitely something that's worsened generally. I didn't have as much of a problem with it in my 20s and early 30s, when I was a complete mess internally; now my interior is better sorted but the mess has come to the surface. I think, before, my inherent executive dysfunction was bound by hoops and hoops of steely anxiety. Now that I'm unpicking the anxiety, that control is falling away. Would I go back to the anxiety? No. But I need to figure out how to get back on track, now, in a more harmonious way.
Probably it's fatigue causing it this time ... I've been multitasking far more than I wanted to this month, which always takes way more energy than beavering away on one task for days on end. There has been family drama, and emotional energy has a disproportionate exchange rate with motivational energy. And my bastard uterus is being a bastard again. But it's been distinct and significant enough a change that I'm starting to wonder if it's possible to have a depressive episode without any discernible impact on mood – I'm happy as I ever was, I just want to spend a week in bed listening to history documentaries and not have to do anything. That's a feeling I remember well from Disney days, when I'm pretty sure I was low-grade chronically depressed the whole time, with occasional flare-ups bad enough I didn't notice how down I was between. I don't want to be back there, and I've been careful since then to keep up the sort of things that keep me in a good place: nature, intellectual stimulation, being helpful, and indulging my interests, which is literally a full-time job now. But nowadays these feel more like items on the to-do list than genuine pleasures for their own sake. It's a quandary.
It's possibly the mental effects of the pandemic finally reaching me. I remember last spring, not feeling down, but noticing what a tremendous lift came after making communicative contact with another human being – even just waving, and receiving a wave, from across the street. I have been interacting with people plenty online, and even exchanging words with occasional humans in real life, and don't feel the slightest bit lonely or adrift, but maybe something is happening under the radar?
Puzzling over it here isn't getting anything seen to, so I'm going for a walk. The birds are starting to sing their spring songs and it's a sort of milky sunny day, which is the best walking weather we'll get for the next little while. Here we go. Putting my shoes on. Gonna walk out that door. Any minute now.
Several times this week I've caught myself just staring at a task, thinking about doing it, but seemingly unable to break through the barrier between thought and action, as if just picturing the task clearly enough will telekinetically cause it to happen. It would take ten seconds to do! Mentally rehearsing it seventeen times takes much longer! It's not even like they're complicated or energetic tasks – one was literally tying sticks into a bundle and making a stack of the bundles. But I just stood there staring at the sticks.
It's been particularly bad this week, but as I've come to peace with myself over the last few years it is definitely something that's worsened generally. I didn't have as much of a problem with it in my 20s and early 30s, when I was a complete mess internally; now my interior is better sorted but the mess has come to the surface. I think, before, my inherent executive dysfunction was bound by hoops and hoops of steely anxiety. Now that I'm unpicking the anxiety, that control is falling away. Would I go back to the anxiety? No. But I need to figure out how to get back on track, now, in a more harmonious way.
Probably it's fatigue causing it this time ... I've been multitasking far more than I wanted to this month, which always takes way more energy than beavering away on one task for days on end. There has been family drama, and emotional energy has a disproportionate exchange rate with motivational energy. And my bastard uterus is being a bastard again. But it's been distinct and significant enough a change that I'm starting to wonder if it's possible to have a depressive episode without any discernible impact on mood – I'm happy as I ever was, I just want to spend a week in bed listening to history documentaries and not have to do anything. That's a feeling I remember well from Disney days, when I'm pretty sure I was low-grade chronically depressed the whole time, with occasional flare-ups bad enough I didn't notice how down I was between. I don't want to be back there, and I've been careful since then to keep up the sort of things that keep me in a good place: nature, intellectual stimulation, being helpful, and indulging my interests, which is literally a full-time job now. But nowadays these feel more like items on the to-do list than genuine pleasures for their own sake. It's a quandary.
It's possibly the mental effects of the pandemic finally reaching me. I remember last spring, not feeling down, but noticing what a tremendous lift came after making communicative contact with another human being – even just waving, and receiving a wave, from across the street. I have been interacting with people plenty online, and even exchanging words with occasional humans in real life, and don't feel the slightest bit lonely or adrift, but maybe something is happening under the radar?
Puzzling over it here isn't getting anything seen to, so I'm going for a walk. The birds are starting to sing their spring songs and it's a sort of milky sunny day, which is the best walking weather we'll get for the next little while. Here we go. Putting my shoes on. Gonna walk out that door. Any minute now.
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