Hi Katie,

I had a hard time responding to your post because your difficulties are so similar to mine, and I'm in a bit of a down spiral with the same things myself in a new job I just started last week. There are important evaluations looming that require immediate activity, and I'm also hiding from an error I made and possibly stepped on someone's toes.

I have had the exact same paralysis/inertia/torpor in response to tasks most needing doing. I experience the same inability to engage - and just can't, as if a giant boulder stands between me and the task, blocking me. It's insane. I went through 20 weeks of CBT for it and it was wholly unsuccessful. My stomach sinks, my mind blanks, my brain becomes wrapped in cotton. Sometimes I hear the word T - o - r - p - o - r playing as if in slow-mo in my brain while processes wind to a stop. I have experienced this since high school and it's most significant when there is a direct assignment due, and the more important the assignment the more intense the inability to launch. The stakes have to be at a critical tipping point of total failure (partial failure already sustained) before any gears will shift into place AT ALL.

Like you, I'm pretty active in getting a job and then once it's secured I plummet. I'm struggling with it right now. This minute.

So I want to share the few things that have helped me at times.
1. Moving my body and focusing on the fact that my limbs are moving

2. Attempting to remember and recapture my initial feeling and enthusiasm about wanting/taking-on the task, when I was full of ideas and telling myself how this time would be different because I would....(fill in).

3. More recently - - acknowledging that I was hurt (in my case, not sure yours) and that the hurt resulted in an injury. I needed to acknowledge I'm not like everyone else. I have a sort of disability because I was hurt. It changed my brain in ways that make things difficult for me, that cause me to shut down when anything even hints at overwhelming me.

And I own that the prospect of my own agency, my potential to act, in and of it's self overwhelms me. Maybe it's because my abuse informed me that my own agency was not real. (i.e. if I can't act to protect my own body, something that basic, well then really what can I do?) Maybe it's because I'm afraid of what my own agency would have been. (Would I hurt? Kill? Myself? Someone else? Was I complicit? Was that my agency?). Or maybe my hippocampus or limbic system were messed up as a kid.

So for me it is important to realize I have to first just STOP and give myself a break. Given not only what happened to me, but HOW I experienced what happened to me - I'm a miracle. It's a gosh darn (clean version) miracle that I'm sitting here and that I haven't completely dragged every person near me into the vortex that is me. SO that's something, at least. I've just gotta take 1 minute to give myself a little credit for that.

For me that helps to take the pressure off and reduce the intense panic.

4. I contemplate my worst case scenario. I imagine it. Okay then. I won't likely die, so what will I have? So I imagine I am homeless, I'm forced to live in a shelter, I'm forced to apply for every sort of public help, people are disappointed in me, I've failed. Sometimes I imagine I've become a beggar of sorts, selling little scrolled poems for change at the subway... So what would I have? Well first of all the pressure would be off in a way. Second the world wouldn't end. I'd still be myself. Likely people I know would still love me - some anyway. I'd still have a capacity for love. I'd still be able to walk, to laugh, to make a plan.

So anyway, imagining this makes me realize my worst case catastrophe isn't really all that bad. So I don't really HAVE to do the task at hand, it's more a case of being the more preferable of options.

5. here's what I'm going to try tonight. I'm just going to do SOMETHING. I'm just going to sit there with my bullcrap stuff together and force something out on the paper, even if it is utter nonsense, a bunch of: b-b-b'' b' bb ''b 'b b' b'.... (that's a bunch of stuttering letter 'b' sounds).

I'll let you know how it works out. If nothing else, you can know I am just as screwed up as you are. So maybe we can be friends of sorts in that.

Oh, then there are small things I sometimes remember that help. Associations. One is Karl Jung. In his autobiography (Memories, Dreams, Reflections) he talks about being a somewhat weak-constitutioned 10 or 11 year old. He was afraid to go to school. He was afraid to work. He would actually faint over the homework. Get a nosebleed. He was withdrawn from school (maybe, not sure) and whatever it was he somehow realized he had to tackle this thing. So he took on the task at hand and fainted. When he resumed consciousness, he went at it again, and again... He finally overcame the "spells" by sheer force. Anyway he's CARL JUNG after all - going through the same darn thing as you! Who know's why. But pushing through the fear worked. He was able to defeat it that way. So maybe you can too. If I think of any other nuggets, I'll let you know.

Also, prozac is currently curbing it a bit.

This was long, sorry, I hope it's worth the time to read. One never knows - you may be quite different from me. But I thought it was worth a try.