I did that with cooking. We get a weekly meal box from a local caterer that takes care of dinner for the week. Costs a little more than groceries but way less than eating out, even at cheap places. The place we use also does a lot of food justice work, so I get to feel really good about not cooking.

I DO love that for you! Taking things off your plate that cause distress can give you space to work on things without the pressure.

EXACTLY! I also like it because it separates the situation, the problem, and the feelings I have about it. I can deal with a mess OR disordered thinking OR I can process my emotions but I can't do all 3 at once. And the process of separating usually helps me process the emotions.

☹️ I don't love that. And, for whatever value the word of an internet rando is worth, your worthiness has absolutely nothing to do with your cleaning skills. NOTHING. And I, a random internet person, could obviously never be wrong.

I personally like a redirect: WHY is the mess bad? If the answer is 'because i should _____' or 'because shame' then the problem isn't the mess, the problem is distorted thinking.

ANYWAY sorry for the rant I have a lot of feelings about shame apparently 😅 but like.... you're not alone in feeling like you do. The struggle to deal with it is very real, and very relatable.

Speaking just for myself as someone who was steeped in a lot of shame as a kid, separating myself as a living being from any moral value of anything I do or don't do has been a huge undertaking and also a massively important building block of making my life exponentially better.

When you believe that your very existence is probably shameful, it doesn't exactly encourage you to be open or have a community -- it encourages you to withdraw to avoid rejection and even more shame. Abusive relationships work very similarly; shame becomes another tool to isolate a victim.

I think most parents use shame to varying degrees, because it communicates and enforces/encourages pro-social behavior and it's pretty effective at that. The problem is that when caregivers rely too much on shame, kids internalize it and believe that they are *fundamentally shameful at their core.*

YESSSSSSS that book completely changed my perspective and helped a LOT with the shame of not doing things 'right.'

..and then immediately follow that up with a plan that involves using someone else to help with task initiation and establishing a reward. Impossible Phone Call? If your friend comes over and dials the phone for you you can't escape now, the phone is ringing!Afterwards you celebrate by hanging out.

In my experience the best way to do the Impossible Task is to forcibly evict shame from the equation, usually by telling the least judgemental person or animal you know that you have an Impossible Task that you're really embarrassed about.

They only become more impossible over time as the embarrassment compounds into shame and the consequences of not completing it balloon (either in reality or just in your own mind). By then you don't think you can ask for help, so it just gets bigger and more impossible.

Tater. Tot. Chaatdish.
www.worthypause.com/blog/2018/3/...

In Icelandic we have 'Ókind' for monster. But the translation is un-sheep. So everything not a sheep is dangerous.

I feel like it mostly works because basically everybody has had that experience, so it makes the inefficiency and inaccuracy angle much more tangible regardless of the specific use case or interests of the Powerful Person in question.

It's not exactly a one-liner but I think you can use the analogy of an email inbox. A well-managed inbox is a wealth of high-quality information that can be quickly and accurately accessed for any number of uses. Relying on search in a poorly-managed email is basically pointless.