I feel unable to move forward in my life…

Hello,

First, I want to acknowledge it sounds very painful where you're at. It sounds like suffering to some degree where it feels painful where you are at in life and unaccepting of the situation. I can offer a few ideas for you to help get out of the paralysis you may be experiencing.

The first idea is talking about avoidance and how the cycle can keep you miserable. A way to view this is like a horror movie. Often times the monster in a horror movie is most scary when there's the unknown build up of it vs. if you were to see the monster consistently. There is likely a benefit to shutting down in bed at least in the short term and often can make things more difficult or scary to do later on. 

To help with this you have to start with avoiding avoiding. It's a straight forward method of acknowledging you're avoiding and giving yourself specifics about how. It could be I'm not looking at my bank account, following up with a text, laying in bed, etc. The important piece is you need to accept or acknowledge this and do anything to break it. One way is often to keep your phone or laptop away from the bed, even at night so you have to get up in the morning. 

Another option is to have one to-do as a way to accomplish something. I may strongly consider the idea of making your bed as a to-do / increasing mastery in an area of life that will likely help you out of bed.

All these ideas focus on what's called behavior rehearsal or getting ourselves moving in some way again. Often times, I'll make sure I brush my teeth and make the bed as wins for the day. If I can do at least that, that can be a start then I can transition to other things.

My last piece I'll add to this is to find a way to break down a project or to-do item to the smallest of steps to make it doable. An example might be texting a friend back. It might be holding my phone and looking at the message for a minute. Think of what I might say. Write it out. Correct any language or grammar. Send the message. I might take something that is considered "simple" and break it down to a place that makes it feel doable. That will help make the overwhelmed piece feel doable and doing one thing in the moment and building off that can help.

I wish you the best of luck on a few ideas here. I know there's a lot more to this and if you need additional help, feel free to reach out here.

Best Regards,

Mitchell Daas, MA, LPCC