The Psychology of Procrastination - From Stuck to Started
🌱🌷The Bloom Sessions
I’m Kate, a psychotherapist helping you to foster healing, self discovery and personal growth - so you can flourish in a life you love! The Bloom Sessions offer regular self-directed therapy work for paid members to release unhelpful patterns, challenge limiting beliefs and foster healing and growth at home. Join us!
Hi friends
We are all guilty of procrastination from time to time, but sometimes it can become a terrible problem in living life as we want to. We avoid doing perfectly reasonable things, for no apparent reason. When I was studying for my dissertation many years ago, my home had never been tidier!
We often label procrastination as laziness or poor time management, but if we look closely, we find deeper processes at play.
Procrastination is not about avoiding tasks, but avoiding feelings.
Procrastination is often a coping mechanism, protecting us from challenging emotions we don’t yet understand, like fear of failure, self-doubt, shame, even grief, or long-held beliefs that we’re not good enough. It is protecting us - but it is not helpful. We are stronger than we think, and can tolerate and work through these emotions if we give ourselves the chance.
Getting to these roots is how we can change, and stop the burden of un-done tasks building up, and overwhelming us.
That’s what we are uncovering in today’s post:
Things that seem like procrastination but aren’t
Why we procrastinate
How to break free of procrastination (11 tools)
Procrastination busting exercise: Let’s make a plan!
8 Therapeutic journalling prompts.
The exercises and journalling are for paid members ready for change. Join us here if you want to do this work - you are welcome!
Things That Seem Like Procrastination But Aren’t:
Health Limitations: Not being able to do something is not procrastination. (Not asking for help is though).
Other Priorities Needing Precedence: Care of children, work, family responsibilities. (But take care here - we can create extra responsibilities as a way of procrastinating, or not set boundaries with work, partners or family, and use other ‘easier’ tasks as excuses: all procrastination in disguise).
Financial Limitations: You may have things you would like to do but you can’t right now. Like when my oven broke and I wanted to wait until I had more money to fix it, using my slow cooker instead so I could pay for necessary dental work. (But again, beware - maybe you do have enough for your task, but you spend it on wine/clothes/holidays rather than your, for example, dental treatment).
Why do we Procrastinate?
Emotional resistance: We avoid the task because it brings up discomfort, like fear of failure, fear of judgment, other strong emotions, or memories of being criticised in the past.
Perfectionism and Pressure: If it can’t be perfect, why start? If I can’t finish, what’s the point? This kind of all-or-nothing thinking can freeze us.
Difficulty Making Decisions: This may stem from childhood (an issue with self esteem or autonomy). It can prevent us getting on with things because we don’t know where to start, if we should, how or when.
Negative Self-beliefs: Beliefs like "I’m not capable" or "I always mess things up" or “I won’t finish”, often developed in our past can fuel our avoidance. I found writing my Masters dissertation years ago so challenging, and I kept putting it off.
Overwhelm and Shame: The more we delay, the worse we feel, and the harder it is to begin. We store the energy of not doing it in our minds, as we still think about it in the background. We may then draw unhelpful, unkind conclusions about ourselves, further eroding our self esteem.
If you have ADHD or suspect you do, performing tasks is even harder, since the dopamine required to meet an unpleasant task is lower than in other individuals bringing anxiety and other difficulties into the mix.
How to Break Free of Procrastination
Procrastination can feel so frustrating, but we can address it with curiosity, kindness, and small, manageable steps. As you read, hold in mind a task you want to get done, but have been putting off.
Members please read on. Readers, if you are ready to free yourself from unhelpful internal patterns and step into a truer, lighter version of you, join the membership today! You get all the Bloom Sessions - like a self-directed therapy session at home - plus 50+ exercises, 100+ posts and guided meditations. You’re worth it!