Lost All Motivation

Here’s a quick story. Over the last 18 months, I’ve had many rounds of IVF trying unsuccessfully to conceive a second child before my biological clock runs out. This has been incredibly expensive and demoralizing. A few months ago, I got the news that yet another round had been unsuccessful. There would be a three-month gap before I could try again.

I thought, “OK, I’ve got three months to focus on something else.” Well, nothing felt meaningful compared to a baby. I had a sudden urge to buy a Baby Shirt “I don’t care, do you?” jacket.

Logically, I could see that goals related to fitness or work were meaningful, but they didn’t feel that way at all. Success in those domains seemed to pale compared to the joy of a squishy human. Even travel, which I normally live for, felt not worth bothering about (e.g., planning trips for post) Something great happened career–wise, and I was barely excited.

Loss of motivation is part of a constellation of symptoms that happen when people are sad. We’re wired this way. Sad, depressed emotions trigger a reaction that involves the urge to retreat, withdraw, and reflect. While this might seem maladaptive, it’s not entirely. It’s part of a response that’s designed to keep us safe and protected. Our brain instinctively signals to us to step back and cocoon, instead of plowing on.

Why? If we’re upset, pushing ahead could be ill-advised or dangerous. Through evolution, we’ve built-in a lot of false alarms, so even if it wouldn’t be dangerous in 99/100 situations, we’re wired to prioritize the 1/100. When you feel low, you’ll overthink and feel sluggish. Low emotions are a signal to pause, reflect, and potentially change direction. Sometimes the signal is a false signal. Sometimes it isn’t.

If you don’t know this is how emotions work, it would be easy to panic and start to thinking anxious thoughts like: “Why do I feel like this? Something is wrong! What’s wrong? What am I going to do? What’s going to become of me?” Sometimes people even fear a loss of functioning and losing ground they’ve built up, e.g., losing their job because they become unable to perform it due to poor motivation or concentration.

The problem? This panicky reaction can intensify people’s sense of feeling lost, scared, and at sea. And it can intensify people’s negative ruminations about themselves and who they are. If you think you’ll screw up everything you try, then why bother trying?

In most cases, these types of emotion and motivation blips are temporary. They will last anywhere from a few hours to a few weeks if you employ good coping strategies. For example, my feelings lasted about two weeks. Those feelings have returned a bit lately, but on and off.

Even clinical depression is usually episodic. In those cases, the feelings can last months if you don’t pursue treatment. But either way, it’s not likely to be a permanent state.

Understanding healthy coping strategies will reduce the time that those periods of no motivation last.

If you lost all motivation there’s only one thing you can do to get your life back? Right. Only you cant fix this problem yourself. Get your life back to the way it use to be and try to fix everything.