What was really behind my “laziness” and what I know now

“The strange paradox is that if I accept myself as I am, then I can change.” ~Carl Rogers

I remember sitting on the living room floor one night while my sons played nearby. One of them tried to build something out of Legos and became more and more frustrated every time it collapsed. I don’t even remember exactly what he said anymore, just the feeling of watching it.

Because I suddenly recognized that frustration in myself.

Not just at that moment, but for most of my life.

That feeling of wanting to do something, sometimes badly, but somehow not being able to stay grounded long enough to do it consistently.

This is what I call laziness.

A lot of people probably did.

As an adult, things at home can change quickly depending on the day. My father drank a lot at times. Sometimes there was tension before he even walked through the door. You felt it in the pit of your stomach before anything happened.

But childhood is strange. I still remember the good things.

Soccer with friends on summer evenings. Watching TV with my brother. The smell of coffee in the kitchen early in the morning before school. Ordinary moments mixed with things that probably weren’t ordinary at all.

I think it confused me for years because I didn’t feel like I was going through ‘real trauma’. I thought trauma was for other people. People who had it worse.

Meanwhile, my body was constantly reacting to stress and I didn’t even notice it.

As I got older, I started drinking myself. Later came the drugs, the chaos, the stupid decisions, the periods of feeling completely lost, and then periods when I looked perfectly fine on the outside. That was part of the confusion. Sometimes I could function extremely well under pressure. Better than many people around me.

But everyday life? Normal routines? A relaxed structure? This was often more difficult.

I was able to stay focused during times of intensity, conflict, urgency, and high stress. But folding laundry, answering emails, being emotionally present, doing small, repetitive things day after day without distraction felt somehow exhausting and I couldn’t explain it to anyone.

And frankly, I felt a great sense of shame about it.

Especially after becoming a father.

Because once you have children, you start to see yourself differently. Or maybe more clearly. I don’t know.

All I know is that there were moments when I reacted too quickly, got emotionally overwhelmed too quickly, or completely lost my motivation and got lost in my own head, and then I sat there and thought:

For years I thought the answer was discipline. Or lack of discipline.

I thought maybe I just need to try harder.

But eventually I started reading more about stress, dopamine, motivation, nervous system regulation, and how repeated experiences shape the brain over time. Not in an academic way at first. More in a desperate way, honestly. As if someone was trying to understand why life was harder than it seemed to other people.

And slowly the pieces began to connect.

No excuses. Just understanding.

I began to realize that the brain is much more adaptable to the environment than most of us realize. Especially in childhood. If stress, unpredictability, emotional tension, overstimulation or chaos are repeated enough times, the nervous system begins to organize itself around it.

You start living in the reaction before you realize it’s happening.

I think many adults call themselves lazy when what they actually experience is a nervous system that learned survival long before it learned safety.

And survival patterns don’t automatically disappear just because your life seems more stable later on.

Sometimes they follow you into relationships, into parenthood.

To work. Into motivation. To rest. Able to sit still without needing noise, stimulation, food, alcohol, rolling, conflict or distraction.

I still find myself doing this.

Especially now, in quieter moments.

What changed for me was not that I became a perfectly healed person. I honestly don’t think that’s how life works. What changed was that I learned to quit, and every struggle was turned into a character flaw.

Now I’m more curious about it.

What is this reaction? Why is my body going there so fast? What did my nervous system learn years ago that I still need today?

This shift alone has changed the way I raise my children.

Because children are constantly learning from experience. Not just from what we say to them, but from how it feels around them over and over again.

I think about this a lot now.

Not in a guilty way anymore. Rather, in a responsible way.

And maybe that’s the difference.