How indecisiveness makes me avoid doing things

I groaned when my new therapist brought up the subject of scheduling.

“I know, I know, I know, I know,” I said.

What do I know? I know that for someone like me — someone with a freelance, stay-at-home, (non)mom life, everyday is a challenge if I don’t have definite events or tasks scheduled. 

But the joke is that as well as I do when I get up and out, I dread having a fixed appointment! I also have a very hard time sticking to any schedule I make. 

I know, so self defeating, right? Still, it is what is: I almost always have resistance to doing set things, yet I almost always feel better after I’ve done the thing.

The therapist surprised me by saying she saw this a lot: people having a hard time overcoming resistance and meeting their obligations. 

“So, a part of you dreads getting ready to go out, ” she said.

“Yup.”

DECIDING BEFOREHAND LESSENS RESISTANCE

I have a few strategies that help me get up and going when I have an appointment I don’t want to go to.

I’m sure that for me some of the resistance involves trying to avoid decision-making. These decisions usually involve small things that I’m hardly conscious of: things that need to be settled before I can get to my appointment in good shape. 

If I don’t plan ahead and decide how I’m going to handle each part of what’s involved, I’ll have to do everything at the last minute. Or worse, be unprepared and have a hectic time getting ready and a day spent eating snickers.

Here are some of the things that women, especially, might need to decide in advance to lessen their resistance to meeting their obligations.

What are you going to wear? (If I’m really on my game, I decide what I’m wearing the day before, clean the clothes, and – if it’s an early morning appointment — I’ll even set the clothes out, underwear and all.)

If you have to do something you want to do after the scheduled appointment, should you take different clothes with you, change on the road, or come back home first?  Decide how this is going to go.

What are you going to do about food? If you’re trying to eat a certain way, or save money on eating out, you need to decide what and where you’re going to eat. If you want to take food with you, buy what you need the day before and plan time to make it.

Do you need to wash your hair the day before?

If you’re driving, do you have gas?

Until all these issues are decided and prepared, your resistance to doing the thing you have scheduled is going to hang on you.

These undecided details are like an invisible ball of  resistance that’s so strong for some of us (especially those of us with ADHD). 

As geeky as it sounds, making decisions before hand and prepping all I’ll need the next day really helps me not dread doing what I have scheduled to do.