I'm going to take the liberty of rearranging several things you said. To me they seem to make better sense in this order. I'd like to know how this way of presenting what you said fits your experience (or doesn't):
Quote:
Originally Posted by onmyway
I want to ask him to leave... But he says he's 'not feeling well' so i feel bad about asking him to go elsewhere..
...i know this is a trigger for me and as the day goes on i will only feel angrier and angrier watching him laze around. (not to mention, it doesn't help MY motivation!)
Right now he's curled up in fetal position on the couch and i feel like kicking him.
i have this emptiness.... I am feeling horribly unmotivated... want to curl up and sleep the day away
this 'emptiness' tends to turn to anger for me anyway. I already feel it coming. And the anger leads to .. bad things. I do not hurt others, but myself? yes.
I have been taught so many coping skills but right now they seem like a whole lot more effort to perform than i have in me.
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It sounds to me as if there are some things you want and/or need to do -- set clear boundaries and renegotiate your arrangement with your ex, for instance. You also
don't feel ready to do all this, for whatever reason. Just guessing here: you think the confrontation with your ex will trigger you more than letting him stay?
(Let sleeping exes lie? 
) He knows how to push your buttons so you'll regret saying anything? You'd like to prove you're the good guy here and he's taking advantage of you? Many more guesses available on request, fwiw.
I noticed that in another thread you wrote:
Quote:
Originally Posted by onmyway
What i seem to be struggling with a lot lately is that people call me manipulative, selfish, constantly point out that in a particular situation what/how i see it is not how it was meant, or accusing me of verbally attacking them....
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If you were to tell your ex that you'd changed your mind, the arrangement wasn't working for you, and he needed to leave sooner than planned, do you expect that
he'd call you manipulative and/or selfish? Would you call
yourself that? Have enough other people called you that, so that you're taking this opportunity to prove you're not, you're not!, you're not!!
even if it kills you?
If, in order to avoid a confrontation with him, you were to come up with some subtler way to make him not feel like staying, might that get someone (him? you? others?) to think of you as "manipulative"?
(Perhaps getting a bit off topic here?) I've long been interested in dialectics and looking for a good example of one. It seems to me that you've just presented me with one so here I am, taking full advantage!
If what you're experiencing is...
- "I don't want him staying in my house," but
- "I don't want to ask him to leave."
...then that's a conflict for you or (my preferred term) a dialectic. Whichever side of the dialectic you hold onto, the other side bites you in the butt so (it seems) you lose either way and you have good reason for feeling bad about it. I believe the usual expression is, "Why me?"
For me, in situations like that, the only way out is through. I'd start with one ridiculously small change in the statement of the problem: take out the "but".
"I don't want him staying in my house and I don't want to ask him to leave."
For me, that helps me to stop bouncing back and forth between two triggery alternatives and
just be with both of them. Let the
(or whatever comes up for you) be there for however long it is and just notice it. For me, as I hang out with both sides of the problem and just let them be there, I may notice them changing. Eventually (sooner, if I'm in practice; later, if this is very new to me) I notice (a.) that I don't feel the same about my two (or more) options and (b.) that I have a choice. At that point I may decide (borrowing your example here) to go ahead and have the talk with my ex because I'd rather get it over with; or else, to let him stay and work around him, not because I have to but because I'm
choosing to.
DBT (which we mentioned in that other thread) is called
dialectical behavior therapy because it's about teaching clients to deal with dialectics like the above. I believe that the general idea behind it is known in some circles as "mindfulness".
