[tropsis]

I had the exact same symptoms for many years. I would be able to do leisure activities, but not productive ones. My mind would go blank when trying to explain something. I had little or no initiative.

Initially I thought I suffered from "procrastistination", I tried all methods to fight it to no avail. Then I considered "burn out", "existential crisis", or weariness of work, but that was not the case at all. I started going to psychiatrists, initially they considered "depression", but I did not have a low mood. Finally, one of them figured out that I had "avolition" which can be considered disorder of volition or a disorder of diminished motivation.

After a meditation retreat I had a psychotic break, so finally the end diagnosis was "negative symptoms of schizophrenia" (here "negative symptoms" means those involving the absence of something common to most people). It is possible to have "deficit schizophrenia" without positive symptoms (delusions, hallucinations, etc). However, most psychiatrist are not aware of this, and tend to classify the "disorders of volition" under depression, because that is what they are most familiar with, and because when you have avolition it makes you depressed to not be able to accomplish anything at all. I have tried several meds and I only had a minor improvement with cariprazine, but it caused me unmanageable insomnia, so I had to quit it.

[beaker52]

I can relate to a lot of what you just said, including the meditation retreat. I feel compelled to ask: have you ever felt like you’re just playing a game with yourself with all your problems? Like sometimes it feels like I’ve got all these problems that I can’t escape and I’m desperately trying to improve myself, but sometimes I can’t shake this feeling that I’m choosing to have these problems somehow and for some reason - as if there’re two of me, the experiencer and the designer. Some might say “ahah look, it’s just schizophrenia”, but I think there’s more to it than that. For me, it feels like I’m having an awakening. But when I look at my productivity it looks like I’m falling asleep.

[tropsis]

Indeed, for many years I felt I was in control of what was happening to me, but that is of course an illusion. During my psychotic episode my sense of agency was disrupted, and it could be that the sense of agency is disrupted without having a psychotic episode. In the end free will is an illusion that manifests itself in different ways in each person. However, it is important to be grounded and have solid measures of mental health like productivity. Not all people are able to recognize that there is something wrong with them (anosognosia), however the metrics indicate if there is objectively something wrong.