this has been happening to me too and it's been the top obstacle to me getting anything done for a long time and i uh

may have just fixed it two days ago with something inspired by the alexander technique stuff i've been seeing on the TL https://twitter.com/xuenay/status/1265768705587400704

concretely, the problem i've been running into is having multiple needs or intentions active - e.g. need to shower, need to pee, need to eat, need to drink - and being "deadlocked" such that i can't pick one and just act on it without expending a lot of effort

instead stuck narrowing my awareness to a book or website i'm reading or w/e, dissociating from my body and trying to ignore hunger, thirst, etc.

this is a habit from grad school for avoiding negative emotions and bodyfeels but it still activates even when i feel mostly fine

here's what i've been playing with: bringing every "active" intention into awareness, imagining at the proprioceptive level how my body would have to move in space to act on each one. i've tried this 4 times now and every time one of the intentions becomes effortless to act on

e.g. i was trying to get out of bed this morning. the "active" intentions i had to bring into awareness were:

go to bathroom
respond to text
take notes on laptop

at this point it was *almost* effortless to go to bathroom

eat

*completely* effortless to go to bathroom

it's worked like that every time so far: it becomes effortless to break the tie only when *all* of my active intentions are brought into awareness

even though the last intention i bring into awareness is never the one that gets picked!

got excited enough by this that i finally got around to reading @reasonisfun's recent AT post. these excerpts are relevant - i am expanding awareness to include the physical space where my body would go - but i'm not setting any new intentions

https://twitter.com/reasonisfun/status/1265698981750935565?s=20

interesting to compare and contrast with @xuenay's experience here. for me there is something about... trusting a "bigger" part of me than my conscious decision-making to know what to do when https://twitter.com/xuenay/status/1267008790290935810?s=20

btw i expect if i'd tried this years ago, or if i tried it on more "serious" decisions / intentions, i'd run into flinch responses where bringing into awareness the possibility of doing various things would trigger a lot of shame. that's why i stopped being aware of those things

i've talked a lot about emotional processing here on twitter but i haven't talked at all about converting the output of that processing into action, mostly because i haven't felt personally ready to do that. i am juuust about getting into action now and boy it's a doozy

watching my attention narrow while i'm on twitter. currently ignoring that i'm still hungry and need to poop and wanted to do other stuff today and my body's in a position that stresses out my lower back. which was fine for a few tweets but let's break the tie again...

tie feels mostly broken but some of the intentions i brought into awareness were accompanied by sadness, which i expected. time to poop tho bye