I know this doesn’t sound like an exceptional feet for most people but for me, right now, its a huge deal. I have always had, and dealt with, anxiety and recently my mother passed away. Motivation has always been a struggle for me (It’s part of my ADHD’s personality).
When my mom came home from the hospital on Hospice my brother and I moved in to help take care of her. During a period of two and a half months the only time I went home (my apartment) I stayed for maybe 2 hours. I was helping my dad and grandma clean up and organize different spaces in their houses so I was consistently coming back to my apartment with different things to be donated, for me to keep, and items to go through and return eventually.
Meaning for the past three months I came home and dumped everything into different spaces of my little two bedroom apartment. So today as I sat on the couch feeling overwhelmed with all the shtuff (my clean version of shit and its shit and stuff combined) I have to clean, put away, organize, bring back, and donate. I started to feel that all to common sensation of ” this is all to much” “there is no way I’m going to get this done in one day” “why did I let it get this bad” “I’m such a lazy person for not getting it done yet” (another lovely ADHD trait) “I’m living in filth” and the list goes on and on.
I was so stressed and anxious I started hyperventilating. My Fiancé, who is working from home right now (got to love Covid), noticed and started to help me go through different breathing exercises I have practiced before. I am still, and probably will always be, learning how to control my breathing when I get into these states of mind but I was thankful he was here to help me snap out of it a bit quicker.
Once I was calm again I made a plan. Usually I make lists but I knew today if I made a list it would make me feel overwhelmed all over again. So instead I made a plan, I was going to focus on one task at a time. I wrote it down, It is so important to write our your thought process to help refocus any negative thoughts.
So I first picked a room, the kitchen. “Wow, the kitchen is a disaster.” but that’s ok. The first thing I have to do is get the dishes out of the way so I can clean the counters but in order to get the dishes out of the way I have to empty the sink (the dishes were over flowing) and in order to empty the sink I have to empty the dishwasher, “I hate putting forks and knives away”. Ok….. there is my starting point. step one, the only thing I was going to focus on was putting forks and knives away. I broke down my thought process from cleaning the whole apartment, to cleaning one room, to cleaning one appliance, to putting the clean forks and knives away.
I kept making a plan of action, “Put dishes away, put dirty dishes from sink into dishwasher, put dirty dishes from counter into dishwasher, put dirty dishes from surrounding rooms into dishwasher, clean dishes that cant fit into dishwasher, put miscellaneous items on counter into proper spaces, wipe down counters….” the list goes on, until I found a point where I didn’t know what I would want to do next.
I started and realized, once you get out of the anxious loop of nonstop negative thoughts you can get into a momentum and get things done. I ended up cleaning two rooms! My kitchen and living room. When I felt stuck I referred back to my plan and did the next item on the list. I felt so productive and happy for cleaning and making my space mine again!