Burned out and depressed.

Una, I read this in the process of checking posts this morning and I keep thinking about it. I wonder if you'd mind expanding on it a little for me? That is, how did you finally get free of it?

I ask because I feel very much this way all the time, though I'm not sure my parents did anything deliberately to keep me on the treadmill. My mother after my dad died, maybe.

But for sure whatever I do is never CLOSE to enough. While I'm trying to do something a little voice keeps telling me, "you can't do it. you'll never finish." And when I've completed a task, do you think I hear "Attagirl?" Absolutely not. Before I finish one task I'm already being presented with another set of tasks, with the accompanying goad that I "won't be able to do it."

Well, that wasn't a very brief message, was it? Guess I got on a roll. Actually, maybe I should have posted it as a notification... Don't know.... thanks...

Hey mopey. Im not free of it. I read a lot of stuff on motivation and procrastination. There is a new book out on procrastination recently reviewed in the nytimes. One main thing it said that i identified with is about learned helplessness.

Unfortunately i had that insight long ago in therapy. How do you unlearn learned helplessness??! You never hear about rats eager to go back onto the electrified floor or whatever! Or non- electrified floor. Once you convince them its wired, you dont unconvince them. I may be smarter than a rat, but dont we have the same lizard brain part? Idk.

If i ever get it resolved, pc will be the first to know!

I hope you find a way to overcome feeling that way.

Luna, absolutely learned helplessness. I think that's why I feel as if I'm moving through molasses every time I try to do something. It's like I'm fighting through this thick solid wall of learned helplessness to get a fr....ing chore finished!

Maybe I'll look up the book on procrastination, and I thank you for the reference, but to tell you the truth over the years I've spent too much time reading about how to overcome procrastination and how to achieve efficiency and organization, and too little time doing anything about them. LOL.

But I do try. I do make efforts, and every day I try to get at least a few things done.

What I do for my bf, I used to do professionally. I worked for 8 years in my 30s as a private nurse. Clients were very pleased with me. My responsibilities then were more limited. Typically, these people I cared for had domestic help. I didn't have to clean the house or cook. They had housekeepers and cooks and secretaries. Plus they had nurses round the clock. I worked my shift, then handed the caregiving over to my relief. For 5 years, I've had no one relieving me. When the home attendant is here I can sleep or go out for a few hours. It's never long enough to feel really refreshed.

I'm not exhausted today, like I was yesterday. Now I'm going to work on the kitchen. This evening, I'll visit him at the nursing home. I'm not going to be defensive. If he complains about the facility, I'll hear him out and refrain from discussing it much. He's there now, and he's staying there for awhile. I'll do the kitchen and drop accumulated laundry off at the wash-and-fold.

Even if I just get a few things done daily, it will add up. Then the apartment won't be in chaos. Also, I can sleep at night without disturbance. I will feel better day by day. Then I can see what I need to do next.

Thank you all for supporting me. Two relatives called me this morning, which I appreciate. One was a sister I rarely hear from. She was nice and the call was heart-warming.

My plan: spend most of the day catching up on what I need to do. Visit him evenings. Then sleep. I have a lot at home to catch up on. It will take days and days. Meanwhile, he will stay put. When he insists on coming home, I'll say "Not yet." and I'll stick to that.

If I get mixed up and start wanting to "rescue" him, I'll wait and explore that impulse here in my thread. The "rescuing" is a bad habit.

Mopey, i hear ya on the "spend more time doing, less time 'researching'!".

To both - success really does build upon success. I used to be thrilled if i got one thing done a day. Now im doing 2 or 3 on the regular, and the house is starting to show it. Im no fly-lady yet, but we're getting there.

"Even if I just get a few things done daily, it will add up. Then the apartment won't be in chaos. Also, I can sleep at night without disturbance. I will feel better day by day. Then I can see what I need to do next.

Thank you all for supporting me. Two relatives called me this morning, which I appreciate. One was a sister I rarely hear from. She was nice and the call was heart-warming.

My plan: spend most of the day catching up on what I need to do. Visit him evenings. Then sleep. I have a lot at home to catch up on. It will take days and days. Meanwhile, he will stay put. When he insists on coming home, I'll say "Not yet." and I'll stick to that."

Good plan!!!!! Smart woman!
It's tough fighting your way out of total exhaustion. I'm glad that relatives and his family are on your side too.

This morning I found myself feeling the best I've felt in ages. When I visited him last night, we kind of got into it. I was showing him things on social media . . . facebook messages from his far away family and acquaintances. He said "You waste too much time with that kind of stuf. I' ll bet you're getting nothing done. That apartment is probably a mess."

I told him he constantly demoralized me, and I said good night and left. That felt like a relief . . . to walk away from his constantly negative appraisals of whatever I'm doing.

Actually I pleased with how much order I restored at home. Today I feel very good that I'm on my way to being organized again. I set up my "pill minder box" with meds I take, which mean I won't be skipping my thyroid med and various other prescriptions that I need to be compliant with. A friend called me This morn and we made a dinner date for next weekend. It felt so good to be able to plan a thing like that. I am getting into a very much improved state of mind. I don't like to blame others for my tendency to get disorganized under stress, but I have to say it seems so much easier to focus and attend to things without this man constantly nudging me and constantly needing my attention. I feel so much better now. Meanwhile he's doing quite well at the nursing home.

Rose, please, who doesnt get disorganized under stress??? I wouldn’t have lasted 3 minutes with this person you have been devoting your life force to.

It does my heart good to see you recovering and feeling better.

I brought clean clothes into him after doing laundry. Outside of the laundromat I locked my keys in trunk if my car. Took me almost 2 hours to get help to get into my car. People at the insurance co. which is supposed to provide "roadside assist" were not as helpful as they might have been.

So I got to the n. home late. The place pretty much is a dump. For nursing homes to be run by chains, like cheap motels doesn't work. I put him to bed and came home.

It's sad he has to be there at all. I have to have this time. To some extent he's there reaping the fruit of what he sowed over the years. He's lucky he has me at all. I'm telling myself that it's not my obligation to protect a man from the consequences of how he has insisted on living.

I want to straighten out my tangled environment and my mixed up, neglected affairs. I qualify for a valuable benefit in my community that subsidizes my healthcare expenses. I haven't completed the paperwork I was supposed to do to keep this benefit, and I've got a collection agency calling me about medical bills that could have been completely taken care of. That's me neglecting an important responsibility pertaining to my own affairs, while I keep myself immersed in maintaining a high standard of healthcare for my friend. I tell myself I should be doing both. But I'm perpetually behind in what needs to be done, like I just can't keep up with all of it . . . but I blame myself for just not using my time wisely and goofing off exactly as my bf accuses me of.

It's hard for me to have a daily schedule. I've had pretty severe sleep issues all my life. I never know what time, or even if, I'm going to go to sleep at night. That makes planning hard. Amitriptyline helps a lot. But not as much as it used to. Aging has brought a new wrinkle, where, even if I'm lucky enough to fall asleep at an appropriate hour, I wake up in the middle of the night a lot. Ritalin in the morning is supposed to help prevent my days and nights from getting mixed up. One of the best habits one can have is a recurring daily routine that one sticks to. Within that structure you can plan the use of time and energy. I can't plan when I'm going to sleep. But with some self-discipline I should be able to improve.

I'm plenty aware that I don't have to make myself so responsible for this man's wellbeing. I've failed in life, on a number of fronts. I suppose he represents success to me. Looking after him is the one thing I've done pretty successfully. A sister of mine told me long, long ago that I should have a kid, if I was wanting someone to look after.) That way, she said, I could instill my own values in the person I looked after.

Wrote thus last night, but posted this morning.

I upped amitriptyline from 50 mg to 75 mg. That knocked me out. Slept like a log.

I'll work on straightening out the apartment. I'll fill a large, manilla envelope with what I need to get that subsidy for healthcare expenses.

Wish I wasn't so slow.

Nice to wake up and not have to immediately start caregiving.

Rose, a t once told me if i wanted something to take care of, to get a cat (not a man)!

((((((((((( Rose ))))))))))))

No, it isn't. And the decision is completely your own, but if you start feeling sorry and guilty that he's there in the nursing home - which, let's face it, are never little pieces of heaven - and you decide to return to things as they were, you will be right back where you were, facing a breakdown of your own.

It's hard. We finally put my mother in a nursing home - albeit the best, closest, most expensive one we could find - and she did nothing but complain, and criticism, and b---ch. I felt guilty the entire time, but every time I considered the alternative, which was having her live with us, I knew I had to stick with my decision.

And part of this, a big part, was not just the level of care she would have needed, but the, shall we say, complete lack of sympathetic bonding between her, my husband, and myself. If she had been a different person I wouldn't have hesitated. And of course even then if a person reaches a need for a certain level of care that only a hospital can provide, then that decision would have to be reached as well. But we would have taken her in for as long as we could had there been love and understanding between the 3 of us.

Take care and please do keep in touch.

OOPS! I think I'm late with this. I believe I missed some posts. Will go back and review.

That's okay, Mopey. I figured out that you were responding to post #90 above.

I can dismiss guilt readily because I've already provided a lot to him. Back in 2014 I arranged a meeting for his daughter, a VA nurse and myself. That nurse said she was surprised he hadn't already "been placed" in a nursing home. That was 5 years ago. He had been a candidate for "placement" a couple years before that, like 2012. His dementia made him unable to drive starting in 2011. So he's already gotten a gift from me of that many years of avoiding a nursing home. That's a pretty big gift that many men don't get even from their wives, who usually would be too old to do what I do. (I am 18 years younger than he is.)

I do feel sorry for him. I feel sorry for the other residents in this place whom I pass by in the hallways, as I walk to his room. He is confined to a private room because he has an infection and is on isolation protocol, so he doesn't behold the dismal sight of these poor souls scattered in the hallways. I'm okay with him being there for awhile, but I don't think I could leave him there.

So the big question is: how do I take him home eventually and not go back to what wasn't working out? I worked for a span of years in a nearby nursing home that was a good facility. It was non-profit. If it still existed, I'ld be pushing him through the door of the place for permanent placement. It's gone.

For now I have this interval of respite. I'm glad of it. But it will run out. What's next will be the big question.

Cross that bridge when you come to it, rose.

First, wait until the infection clears and he is moved out of isolation. He was very sick when he entered the hospital.

Also I'd say to try and make the most of the time you have while he's in there and focus on that. Throw your energy into that while you can. Who knows? While you're focusing on getting your own life squared away, at least you'll feel better and more in control, and who knows? Something may turn up or your brain will be working in the background on the whole matter of your bf, and other possibilities may arise. (((((HUGS)))))

Yes, I must not waste this time. I've done nothing so far this morning, just waiting for an intestinal problem to settle down. I should be able to get going pretty soon.

It is so very true that often we have more options than we think we have. Being in a productive mode of behavior does, I believe, make us more receptive to inspiration about what alternatives we might arrange.

Sometimes I'm not sure whether it's better to get more hours of attendant service, or to have less and more time to have the place just to my bf and myself. Over the Christmas to New Years holiday interval, his attendant called out sick and tired. I got more accomplished with her out of the apartment than I had been managing with her in it.

Yes, it seems to me that much earlier on, you described a time where even though the attendant was present, you couldn’t seem to relax and let go of the situation enough to doze off and get some sleep. You said that you continued tense and nervous about things even when she was there. Maybe you recall.