Often I end up closing the list and immediately turning to self-soothing. And because there’s no way to know in advance if a task on the list will give me anxiety, this often results in my list being not just unusable but unreadable, preventing me from doing or even remembering the non-anxiety tasks on the same list.
I had the same problem with my email. It sucks but just keep exposing yourself to it so it becomes less daunting. Maybe have it somewhere constantly visible or in your routine? Either way, I hope you over come it and you can do it!
I went another way with email… I aggressively archive everything that isn’t fucking important when I see it - if I’m in a mood to read about the latest factorio dev diary when I see it I’ll read it but I don’t hang on to emails that I might want later.
Shit like bills and legal stuff is the only thing I let sit around.
Two things I learned from therapy that have helped me:
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Journal anything that’s upsetting you. Just writing something out can help you figure out what exactly you’re anxious about, because for me anyway it was almost never “ordering groceries” or something similar, but things from my past that were making me anxious about the task
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The most uncomfortable part is starting. If you do something for 5 minutes that’s usually enough to overcome the stress/anxiety of starting, and if it isn’t then you can come back to it and try again later
Are you on any medication? That makes a big difference for my anxiety.
I would say fuck to-do lists but I need them to remind me to hate on them… btw you may want to look into PDA.
I love PDA! I kiss my wife any and everywhere. I don’t need a reminder for that.
love your enthusiasm for your wife ☺️ but they probably meant pathological demand avoidance (PDA)
Don’t look at the list when anxious ;)
What I mean is I set up text to speech to read items scheduled on my todo list.
So if stuck on couch, I hear the todo read out loud.
This is 95% effective medicated, 10-60% unmedicated.
The other thing I found is the overwhelm comes from so many things.
Experiment with only letting 1, 3, 5 etc items be visible at a time. I sometimes go as far as saying top 3 are must do, 12 or however many remaining are optional.
Also also play your favorite video game sound like Mario coin when a todo is completed.
