Productivity Suffers

I am bipolar and suffer from PTSD, ADD, OCD, an eating disorder and a sleeping disorder.  I believe most of my symptoms are a direct result of childhood trauma.  I never was good at keeping in touch until social media came around.  I was too busy trying to get my head together and figure out what in the world was wrong with me.  It has taken much too long to do all that and now that I can think and see clearly, it feels like time is running out.  

Now I am doing much better with communication. Several forever friends, with whom I had previously lost touch, have been restored to me via Facebook. 

I struggle with procrastination just as most people and I beat myself up over it.  The guilt is overwhelming and it leaves me completely incapacitated. Depression is always good for that. The worse I feel, the less I get done and the worse I feel.  It is a vicious cycle.  

I am a perfectionist and I feel if I can't do it perfectly, then there is no point in trying to do it at all. This comes from childhood as well because nothing I did was ever satisfactory in my parents' eyes.  That type of thinking is very self-defeating.   I get sidetracked and distracted too, when I start on one thing and end up off somewhere doing something else. This is part of Attention Deficit Disorder.  I have learned to break it into baby steps and try to celebrate the feeling of accomplishment because it is a big motivator.  

Our biggest organization problem is that we have too much stuff and our house is big enough to lose things in. I remember being a tiny little girl and constantly cleaning out my drawers and closets and trying to organize everything but with parents who had no skills in organization at all, and weren't capable of guidance, I did not know what I was doing and I really struggled with it for years. 

It took me two years to get all the boxes unpacked after we moved. Then a few years later, I experienced another traumatic setback when I lost my job.  I was unable to deal with the pain of putting away the things that came from my office.  The boxes remained unopened for another year or more. 

At least once every two years, I deep clean all the closets, but I still can’t stay on top of it by myself.  I struggle fanatically to be organized but my husband has NO organizational skills at all. There were things in some of those closets I had forgotten we even had until one of my slash and burn episodes.

I like to take time off work in December and one of the things I schedule for that time is deep cleaning.  This is about to commence, beginning tomorrow.