My intention is to jump directly into the shower as soon as I get up every morning. There are tons of reasons that this makes sense for me:
I feel more awake, positive, and productive after showering
It avoids bathroom scheduling conflicts later
I actually enjoy being in the shower
Yet for some reason, I find this very difficult. I have no problem getting up when my alarm goes off; but as soon as I get up I feel a strong akratic aversion to getting in the shower. This makes no sense on its face, and I really don’t understand where this aversion comes from.
This was my first week back at work after vacation, and I decided to re-commit to showering first thing. On Monday I immediately got up and got in the shower - success! On Tuesday I laid in bed for ten minutes until I finally forced myself to get in the shower. This morning I simply got up and did other (largely unproductive) stuff and finally took a shower an hour later.
I don’t really need advice on how to use Beeminder to make myself shower. I can think of various ways to do that; I’m just afraid that the aversion is so strong that I will only derail/weasel and it won’t help, unless I figure out some other psychological insights or tricks to go along with it.
I’m posting this partly just to make myself say it all out loud, and partly in the hope that someone may have a question/perspective/insight that helps me figure out what’s going on in my own brain.
My thoughts are anywhere but the present moment when I shower first thing in the morning. I’m thinking about the day, and the shower happens on autopilot. I barely clock what’s going on. Do you have anything that can engage you like that?
I used to play music to sing to. I put my phone in a plastic bag.
I can relate. I think I’ve read (but can’t find a source – maybe a therapist told this to me) that shower-aversion can be caused by a sensory sensitivity to the transition between dry/wet, even though the state of being in the shower feels totally fine once you’re in it. I’m not yet sure of the implications of this. As one idea, here’s some potential self-talk using the ideas of radical acceptance and opposite action from Dialectical Behavior Therapy: “I accept the reality that my brain doesn’t like the transition between dry and wet. Anticipating the transition is making me feel uncomfortable, and thus I’m avoiding it. However, the transition will be really quick (instantaneous!). Therefore, I’ll choose the opposite action (as opposed to my default action) out of kindness to myself, since it will make that discomfort go away.”
Thanks all! The social pressure of having posted this did make me get right in the shower this morning, though that’s not a long-term solution of course…
@theospears Interesting question, thanks! I am not totally sure that I can accurately answer this question by just imagining it — my imagined future self just gets into the shower happily. But I think I would have no problem just going into the bathroom, getting into the shower, and leaving again without turning the water on, but I would balk at standing there for as long as I would shower.
Hmm, perhaps it has more to do with the time that the shower will take. I anticipate the shower as a boring chore and would rather go do other, more immediately gratifying things? I am not 100% convinced but this seems plausible. Though I think insufficient sleep may sometimes compound the issue as well. In any case, if this is true, perhaps it will help to spend time focusing in advance on the pleasurable/gratifying aspects of getting in the shower, so my brain will think about those things rather than how much time the overall task will take.
@alltom I think maybe part of the problem is I have too many things to think about and I’d rather be thinking about them elsewhere rather than in the shower… music would be a good idea but I don’t want to wake up my wife.
@brittany1243 I don’t think there is a sensory sensitivity involved in my case… I actually enjoy the physical sensation of getting into + being in the shower, which is part of the reason I am having trouble understanding why I don’t want to do it. But the ideas of radical acceptance and opposite action sound potentially really helpful, I will give that more thought and see if I can come up with a formulation that works for me.
This morning, when I got up I thought about how good it was going to feel to get in the shower, and used some self-talk along the lines of “I can’t wait to get in the shower”. This seems to have helped! We’ll see how well it sticks.
As Theo suggests, you might break it down. Hammertime calls this “aversion factoring”. Find the exact sticking point, and then focus on mitigating that. (Or decide it’s valid, and take a shower some other time.) investigate!! It’s interesting, right?
