Overcoming Fear

Procrastination: how to cope with it?

Overcoming Procrastination

Procrastination technically refers to the avoidance of a specific task or work which needs to be accomplished. But this technical explanation doesn’t begin to capture the emotions triggered by the word. For most of us, the word "procrastination” reminds us of past experiences where we have felt guilty, lazy, inadequate, anxious, or stupid–or some combination of these. It also implies a value judgment; if you procrastinate, you are bad, and as such, you lack worth as a person.

Procrastination and Its Causes

In order to understand and solve your procrastination problems, you must carefully analyze those situations where your work is not being completed. First, determine whether the cause is poor time management; if so, you will need to learn and develop time management skills. If, however, you know how to manage your time but don’t make use of those skills, you may have a more serious problem. Many individuals cite the following reasons for avoiding work:

• Lack of Relevance – If something is neither relevant nor meaningful to you personally, it may be difficult to get motivated even to begin.
• Acceptance of Another’s Goals – If a project has been imposed or assigned to you and it is not consistent with your own interests, you may be reluctant to spend the necessary time to see it to conclusion.
• Perfectionism - Having unreachable standards will discourage you from pursuing a task. Remember, perfection is unattainable.
• Evaluation Anxiety – Since others’ responses to your work are not under your direct control, overvaluing these responses can create the kind of anxiety that will interfere with work getting accomplished.
• Ambiguity - If you are uncertain of what is expected of you, it may be difficult to get started.
• Fear of the Unknown - If you are venturing into a new realm or field, you don’t have any way of knowing how well you’ll do. Such an uncertain outcome may inhibit your desire to begin.
• Inability to Handle the Task – If through lack of training, skill, or ability you feel that you lack the personal resources to do the job, you may avoid it completely.

 

Procrastination Takes Many Forms

Once you have surmounted the emotional block by acknowledging your procrastination (guilt, anxiety, feelings of inadequacy), and after you have analyzed the underlying causes, you need to clearly specify how you procrastinate and what to do about procrastination.

Effective Planning

The larger, more involved, the project, the more difficult it is to plan effectively to carry it out. The following steps may be helpful:

• Segment the task. The entire job may seem impossible, but smaller segments may seem more manageable. Divide the task into small steps.
• Distribute the small steps reasonably within the given time frame. “Reasonably” is the key word; you must allot sufficient time for each step. Do not fool yourself by believing you can do more than is humanly possible.
• Realize that humans periodically need variety and relaxation. Intersperse rewards, relaxation, and gratification for work completed. This will help you feel less resentful of the task and the work that still needs to be done.
• Monitor your progress on the small steps. Watch for the pitfalls discussed earlier. Assess problems when they arise and do something about them quickly. Keep track of the segments and how they fit together to form the whole picture. Reassess time commitments as necessary.
• Be reasonable in your expectations of yourself. Perfectionistic or extremely strict expectations may cause you to rebel or may sabotage your progress.

Perfectionism: a Self-Defeating Mechanism

Perfectionism

• Do you feel like what you accomplish is never quite good enough?
• Do you often put off turning in papers or projects, waiting to get them just right?
• Do you feel you must give more than 100 percent on everything you do or else you will be mediocre or even a failure?

If so, rather than simply working toward success, you may in fact be trying to be perfect. Perfectionism refers to a set of self-defeating thoughts and behaviors aimed at reaching excessively high unrealistic goals. Perfectionism is often mistakenly seen in our society as desirable or even necessary for success. However, recent studies have shown that perfectionistic attitudes actually interfere with success. The desire to be perfect can both rob you of a sense of personal satisfaction and cause you to fail to achieve as much as people who have more realistic strivings.

Causes of Perfectionism

If you are a perfectionist, it is likely that you learned early in life that other people valued you because of how much you accomplished or achieved. As a result you may have learned to value yourself only on the basis of other people’s approval. Thus your self-esteem may have come to be based primarily on external standards. This can leave you vulnerable and excessively sensitive to the opinions and criticism of others. In attempting to protect yourself from such criticism, you may decide that being perfect is your only defense.

A number of the following negative feelings, thoughts, and beliefs may be associated with perfectionism:

• Fear of failure. Perfectionists often equate failure to achieve their goals with a lack of personal worth or value.
• Fear of making mistakes. Perfectionists often equate mistakes with failure. In orienting their lives around avoiding mistakes, perfectionists miss opportunities to learn and grow.
• Fear of disapproval. If they let others see their flaws, perfectionists often fear that they will no longer be accepted. Trying to be perfect is a way of trying to protect themselves from criticism, rejection, and disapproval.
• All-or-none thinking. Perfectionists frequently believe that they are worthless if their accomplishments are not perfect. Perfectionists have difficulty seeing situations in perspective. For example, a straight “A” student who receives a “B” might believe, “I am a total failure.”
• Overemphasis on “shoulds.” Perfectionists’ lives are often structured by an endless list of “shoulds” that serve as rigid rules for how their lives must be led. With such an overemphasis on shoulds, perfectionists rarely take into account their own wants and desires.
• Believing that others are easily successful. Perfectionists tend to perceive others as achieving success with a minimum of effort, few errors, emotional stress, and maximum self-confidence. At the same time, perfectionists view their own efforts as unending and forever inadequate.

The Vicious Cycle of Perfectionism

Perfectionistic attitudes set in motion a vicious cycle. First, perfectionists set unreachable goals. Second, they fail to meet these goals because the goals were impossible to begin with. Failure to reach them was thus inevitable. Third, the constant pressure to achieve perfection and the inevitable chronic failure reduce productivity and effectiveness. Fourth, this cycle leads perfectionists to be self-critical and self-blaming which results in lower self-esteem. It may also lead to anxiety and depression.

At this point perfectionists may give up completely on their goals and set different goals thinking, “This time if only I try harder I will succeed.” Such thinking sets the entire cycle in motion again. This vicious cycle can be illustrated by looking at a way in which perfectionists often deal with interpersonal relationships. Perfectionists tend to anticipate or fear disapproval and rejection from those around them. Given such fear, perfectionists may react defensively to criticism and in doing so frustrate and alienate others.

 Without realizing it, perfectionists may also apply their unrealistically high standards to others, becoming critical and demanding of them. Furthermore, perfectionists may avoid letting others see their mistakes, not realizing that self-disclosure allows others to perceive them as more human and thus more likeable. Because of this vicious cycle perfectionists often have difficulty being close to people and therefore have less than satisfactory interpersonal relationships.

Healthy Striving

Healthy goal setting and striving are quite different from the self-defeating process of perfectionism. Healthy strivers tend to set goals based on their own wants and desires rather than primarily in response to external expectations. Their goals are usually just one step beyond what they have already accomplished. In other words, their goals are realistic, internal, and potentially attainable. Healthy strivers take pleasure in the process of pursuing the task at hand rather than focusing only on the end result. When they experience disapproval or failure, their reactions are generally limited to specific situations rather than generalized to their entire self-worth.

What to do About Perfectionism

The first step in changing from perfectionistic attitudes to healthy striving is to realize that perfectionism is undesirable. Perfection is an illusion that is unattainable. The next step is to challenge the self-defeating thoughts and behaviors that fuel perfectionism. Some of the following strategies may help:

• Set realistic and reachable goals based on your own wants and needs and what you have accomplished in the past. This will enable you to achieve and also will lead to a greater sense of self-esteem.
• Set subsequent goals in a sequential manner. As you reach a goal, set your next goal one level beyond your present level of accomplishment.
• Experiment with your standards for success. Choose any activity and instead of aiming for 100 percent, try for 90 percent, 80 percent, or even 60 percent success. This will help you to realize that the world does not end when you are not perfect.
• Focus on the process of doing an activity not just on the end result. Evaluate your success not only in terms of what you accomplished but also in terms of how much you enjoyed the task. Recognize that there can be value in the process of pursuing a goal.
• Use feelings of anxiety and depression as opportunities to ask yourself, “Have I set up impossible expectations for myself in this situation?”
• Confront the fears that may be behind your perfectionism by asking yourself, “What am I afraid of? What is the worst thing that could happen?”
• Recognize that many positive things can only be learned by making mistakes. When you make a mistake ask,
• “What can I learn from this experience?” More specifically, think of a recent mistake you have made and list all the things you can learn from it.
• Avoid all-or-none thinking in relation to your goals. Learn to discriminate the tasks you want to give high priority to from those tasks that are less important to you. On less important tasks, choose to put forth less effort. Once you have tried these suggestions, you are likely to realize that perfectionism is not a helpful or necessary influence in your life. There are alternative ways to think that are more beneficial. Not only are you likely to achieve more without your perfectionism, but you will feel better about yourself in the process.

Inner self: Let's be kind to ourselves?

It’s bad enough feeling stressed, anxious or depressed. But what worsens those feelings of pain is that we can’t just accept what it going on inside our minds. We have to criticize ourselves for being afraid, angry, jealous and so on. That’s what really brings us down: the inner critic.


But that’s usually not the end of the story. We start to feel that we should’ve known they weren’t happy; that it’s something we did wrong, and it’s solely our responsibility. We should’ve done this to prevent their leaving, and that to find a quick replacement.

We come down hard on ourselves and cannot possibly forgive that we can’t read other people’s minds, or potentially made a mistake. It’s unacceptable that we’re human, and humans can’t always know.

What’s needed in order to silence the self-critical voices in out head is unconditional positive regard.  We need to look at ourselves with unconditional positive regard and say to ourselves “Don’t worry so much”... or “what I did or said at that time was right, so I will accept my reality and now just move on” simple... Nobody is perfect!!

The same way we don't like when people are critical towards us, let's not accept too mcuh criticism from ourselves towards ourselves... If we can leave ourselves alone, our whole self-image will improve. We cut out stress and fear, we sleep better, have better relationships and so on.


If you are a forgiving person, start with yourself. Give yourself a break. You’ll feel better in no time.

Are becoming more and more stressed? Daily Mail article addresses the subject, with a reported 7% rise in admissions to hospital with stress related conditions.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2201469/Hospital-admissions-stress-jump-7-just-year--men-treated-women.html

Defence mechanisms

In Freud’s model of personality, the EGO is the aspect of personality that deals with reality whilst having to cope with the conflicting demands of the ID and the SUPEREGO and when the EGO cannot cope with the demands of our desires, the constraints of reality and our own moral standards generates anxiety and stress.

In order to cope with the negative elements of anxiety and stress, the EGO develops ‘defence mechanisms’, which help us to repress or conceal this anxious libido. These ‘defence mechanisms’ can be healthy or adaptive, that is, allowing us to function normally. For instance, by trying to rid all the stress from work by doing a dangerous sport such as rock climbing for instance, which is called Sublimation where a person transforms an unacceptable impulse into a socially acceptable one. On the other hand, a ‘defence’ can be unhealthy by interfering with our day-to-day lives.

In the film Sucker Punch, Baby Doll chose to Suppress (not Repress) her memories. Because Baby Doll was under such enormous amounts of stress, she created the "fantasy world" as a way to cope with the harshness of her traumatic reality: her stepfather killed her little brother (there are also elements of sexual abuse towards Baby Doll). 

As a result of this highly stressful and emotionally impactful situation her psyche uses another defence mechanism: she dissociates herself from the horrible realities of her life and toggles between reality and fantasy world where she creates this “James Bond” world where the “Wise Man” supports her with his advice. Essentially, she used fantasies to cope with the horrible things that she was experiencing whilst inside the mental asylum.

Madam Vera Gorski uses Hypnotherapy techniques such as Visualisation as a possible therapeutic cure for her depression and help her learn new behaviours where she is given positive advices and coping tools “weapons” which come from the “Wise Man”, an archetype (please see my previous blog for a full explanation) who helps her to boost her self-esteem and overcome the “monsters” of her life. 

Another interesting way of depicting her coping mechanisms is the fact the she sacrificed herself at the end. This parallels her being lobotomized in the real world upon which she had no control whatsoever. 

Of course, every story has always two sides... let us play the devil's advocate now... maybe she suffered from Schizophrenia... because of this, she was delusional and as a result she actually killed her little brother... her stepfather found the asylum to be the best place for her to be...

Now the question remains… was she trying to cope with reality… or was she Schizophrenic?

What do you think?