One of the ways my anxiety and depression manifest themselves is an inability to clean. And once my house becomes a mess, the mess makes me too anxious to start cleaning it.
I think it’s a metaphor for the mess that’s constantly taking place in my head. I have learned coping mechanisms that I plan to try eventually but would love to hear about any that have worked for you.
Share them with me!
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Sara: [00:00:00] Welcome back to Why Am I Anxious Today? The podcast that kind of sort of really doesn’t at all answer the question. I hate getting the most about my anxiety. So when my anxiety and depression get to a certain point, they keep me from being able to clean. So I just can’t really keep my house clean. It doesn’t get like dirty, it just gets messy.
Unless you count dirty dishes, then it does get dirty , but my anxiety and depression when it gets to a point I just can’t clean my house. But then on top of that, I get anxious about how messy my house is and I can’t clean my house because I’m too busy thinking about how messy it is. So I’m getting more anxious about how messy my house is, but my anxiety is the reason that my house is messy.
And it just compounds on itself, which is really fun. Please tell me [00:01:00] somebody else has this. Please tell me I’m not making this up or I’m not inventing this because it is awful. I don’t enjoy it at all. I would love to have a clean house right now, but all I can think about is how messy it is and that is going to be a lot to clean and that’s just too much for me right now, so it’s just gonna stay this way.
I’ve heard of ways to cope with this. If anyone else deals with this, I’ve heard things that work are like specifically focusing on one area. So maybe you only make your bed, you only. Do the dishes. Doing things one at a time is supposed to help. I’ll be honest, I haven’t tried this yet, so I, maybe that’s what I’m gonna do today, , but that’s, that’s what I’m dealing with right now.
It’s not fun. When I lived in an apartment, I actually used to have a friend of mine who would come and help me clean because she just knew that I couldn’t do it myself. And that was always very nice of her. I’ve had neighbors come over and just sit on my couch and read or do something. So that I [00:02:00] feel like I need to clean because I hate that they’re sitting in a messy house with me.
So that’s helped. I kind of call it my little cleaning accountability partner. They don’t have to help me. They just have to exist in my space, but I’m working on ways to cope with it. If you have any suggestions, I’m happy to hear ’em. And if you can relate and have a similar experience, I’d love to hear it.
Let me know on my website. Why am i anxious podcast.com and I’ll talk to you tomorrow from hopefully a clean house.
