Hey Sean,
I'm not that much older than you and I understand and used to feel a similar way, putting pressure on myself and just basically knowing what needed to be done, but never actually doing it.
So I'm 25 and last year I had another pretty bad bout of depression. For me, the biggest mindset changer was to let myself be sad, and let myself feel useless.
Okay. Let me explain that because it's kind of counter-intuitive.
It's my way of explaining acceptance and validation of feelings.
I couldn't ever get my head around those ideas, but I could get my head around the idea that if I am sad, I can be sad. I can sit and mope and cry and be sad. And that was because something made me sad. Just as something later could make me feel happy.
So if I felt useless, I could feel useless and sit around and not do anything.
And once I was done feeling useless, I could get up and be useful. Because just as feeling sad didn't resign me to being sad forever, feeling useless doesn't resign me to being useless forever.
If you're feeling down, it's important to let yourself feel down, but we need to do so in a healthy way.
We don't need to fuel the useless feeling - it's doing a good enough job - but let yourself say, "no I won't do my assignment now, but I will ask for an extension and do it tomorrow." This is okay because you aren't ready to do it. It's just important not to then continue that and say, "I'll never get it done," because that is fueling the sadness, not just accepting it.
You've done well for coming here and opening up. It can be really hard to admit to feeling sorry for yourself and feelings of laziness and procrastination, but we can see you're trying to find a solution and that's awesome.
James
