Procrastination

Putting things off or not finishing are behaviors that many of us adopt to avoid uncomfortable feelings of pain, guilt, shame, anxiety or fear.  Procrastinators come in all sizes and shapes, young and old, all colors, denominations, from all walks of life and many cultures. Procrastinators are not stupid, weak, or bad. Many people think of procrastination as a horrendous condition, impossible to conquer. It is so daunting that, according to experts, we should seek to: avoid it, trick it, manage it, get around it, learn to live with it, structure it, control it, reduce it or push past it. It is possible to put an end to this behavior now.

Procrastination is not just a bad habit; it is a compulsion. My definition of compulsion is if you can’t control when you start or stop a substance or activity, you have a compulsion. Procrastination is the inability to stop stopping yourself. That is why it is so difficult to overcome. The more procrastinators delay, avoid or forget, the more guilt and shame builds up, and self-esteem suffers. Energy Psychology techniques can eliminate the underlying causes of this chronic negative behavior.

Procrastination is fueled by FEAR. Recent discoveries in brain function and chemistry provide new understanding and new ways to cope with behavioral problems. Unpleasant experiences in the past may have created specific fear reactions that are chemically coded in the brains of procrastinators. In their present lives, they have experiences that remind the brain of those old situations when parents, teachers or peers ridiculed them, authority figures punished them, etc. The brain reactivates that moment as if it was happening again. Procrastinatorsbecomes stuck in the fear state and put off beginning, working on or finishing things in order to avoid reliving their painful past.

These early life experiences lead procrastinators to make decisions that have remained in their unconscious mind ever since. False Beliefs such as, “I must be perfect or I am a failure.”“People will laugh at me if I get things wrong.” “It is dangerous to be too successful.” or “If I succeed I will always have to be the best.”become their life scripts.Most procrastinators are so used to living with these fears that constant anxiety seems a natural way of life.

Energy Psychology techniques can enable procrastinators to re-evaluate thoughts, beliefs and behaviors and heal the emotional scars of the early frightening memories that led to these False Beliefs and perpetuate this negative behavior.

 

Gloria Arenson is a Southern California based psychotherapist with a private therapy practice in Santa Barbara. She helps people to recover successfully from eating disorders, compulsive spending, anxiety, fears, phobias, PTSD, panic disorder and other problems. Gloria is a licensed hypnotherapist and is trained in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Psychosynthesis, and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). She specializes in cutting edge energy therapies such as Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT), an acupressure based therapy method, Thought Field Therapy (TFT), and Tapas Acupressure Technique (TAT).