My MD has almost gone...but I can't get over the finish line

[Elizabeth Moore]

I realise my title may not make much sense, so I shall explain: I now very rarely feel unable to control my daydreams in the daytime, possibly because I'm at uni now and have to work to achieve my goals. However, I can only control them by physically going through the motions of getting things done to force my brain to snap back to the present. However, I can't do this when I wake up in the morning. To get anything done (eat breakfast, catch a train, study), I have to get up, but to get up I have to stop daydreaming, and to stop daydreaming I have to do things...so it's a bit of a catch-22, really. I think it also requires energy for me to resist my daydreams, which I don't have in the mornings as I'm a poor sleeper. Does anyone have any tips on how to squash daydreams in the morning/ effective ways of getting out of bed?

This is genuinely starting to wreck my life now. My grades are slipping, I miss lectures and social activities, do things I promised I'd do, miss meals, the list goes on and on. It's leaving me feeling hopeless and anxious a lot of the time now.

[Auryn]

You might try putting your alarm clock farther away from your bed, so you have to get out of bed to turn it off. At least that way, you're physically out of bed.

I also find I am the most easily sucked into daydreams just after waking up, and just before going to sleep. There's something about that hazy, not-quite-asleep-not-quite-awake place.

[Emma]

I have the same problem.  What has worked for me in the past is putting the alarm clock far away from the bed but very near the bathroom.  Then you have to get out of bed to turn it off, and it doesn't take nearly as much will power to immediately step into the shower.  Once the shower starts, my day falls into place.  It's the getting into the shower that is tricky.

Another thing that works is having someone depend on me to do something.  I don't know what your own daily grind is like, but at times in my life when I had to carpool with someone else or take someone else to work/school or cook someone breakfast or meet someone at the gym, I find that I can resist the daydream.  If it's just me or my life or my work or my responsibilities, then yes, I let it wreck me somehow, too.  My house is not set up nowadays in such a way that I can do the alarm clock by the shower trick, so really I need others to depend on me for me to get up.  If you are a student, see if you can start some sort of morning routine with a buddy- maybe you meet someone to go jogging or meditate or something every morning, or just for coffee- then you can't stay in bed because someone is waiting for you.