Understanding the Link Between Procrastination and Anxiety

The OCD and Anxiety Podcast by Robert James Coaching. Music.

Hello and welcome to The OCD and Anxiety Podcast where we explore how to have a more positive relationship with anxiety disorders disorders, taking back control so that you can start living the life you choose and not the one chosen by your fears. Music. Hello and welcome to episode 380. I hope that you're doing very well today.

If you are though struggling with OCD or anxiety and you would like to speak to me about that, well you can get a free session to get that you can head over to my website robertjamescoaching.com and there you can book in directly for that free session or if you prefer you can send me a message and let me know about what you're struggling with in today's podcast i'm going to be talking about the link between procrastination and anxiety this is something that i think many

of us who struggle with anxiety and ocd can relate to because so often we are putting things off you know waiting to feel just right before we take action and actually a lot of the time that can just make things worse so today we're going to be talking about that if you would like to follow and like on instagram that would be great my instagram handle is at robertjamescoachinguk also if you would like to follow on youtube

the podcast is now there as well and there we go guys i really hope that you enjoy this one if you have any questions do please let me know and off we go.

In the article how to recognize anxiety induced procrastination by alice boy's phd she argues that anxiety and procrastination go hand in hand when we feel anxious about something we'll put it off sometimes this is obvious to the person experiencing it for instance if you put off your driving test because you're scared of failure or of getting hurt while while driving or you're too nervous to ask out the person you have a crush on however the anxiety procrastination link isn't always

so clear to sufferers or observers and you know this is this is a really important thing because you know how often are we persuading ourselves that you know that we need to put this thing off and it's not obvious that actually it's about anxiety or it's about an obsession you know maybe we've been putting something off that's really.

Really important to us for a long time obviously you know that I really tend to focus a lot on acceptance commitment therapy in this podcast and you know a big part of that is focusing on our values recognizing what's truly important to us taking the time to sit down and figure that out and then trying to set goals in relation to those values and making sure that you're kind of moving towards those goals and that helps us to have the sense of momentum the sense that we're going somewhere

in life and that's really important in my experience to well-being and so obviously when we are procrastinating that can really you know cause a problem in that whole process if we're we're procrastinating important things that actually are really you know we really want to achieve what we really want to do because deep down there's a real sense of anxiety about that thing then of course it's going to be holding us back it's going to make us feel

that we're not making progress it can make us feel like our world is smaller because we're not living our life by by our values you know and this is a real a real shame and so trying to perhaps identify what are are some of those areas where you are procrastinating and maybe as the article was pointing out it will be obvious maybe there's some really obvious things where you're like straight away yep that exam i don't want to do it so i'm kind of putting it off or you know whatever.

It might be in your in your day-to-day life that you you. Know you you know it's quite obvious maybe it's even doing exposure activities that you recognize. You could do if you were able to push yourself self but you keep pushing it off you keep not wanting to do it because you know it's going to be difficult you know it's going to give you anxiety you know so those.

Are the kind of obvious things but it might be a good idea as well to try to reflect on what are some of the less obvious things that you're actually procrastinating on, now a good way to try and work this out could actually be to to kind of think about things that you're telling yourself that it's not the right time to do right now so if there are some you know a few things perhaps or one big thing that you're telling yourself now's not the right time and maybe you know maybe

it isn't the right time there may be a actual general genuine sorry reasons for that for for why it isn't the right time to do that thing but perhaps actually you've been telling yourself for a long time that it's not.

The right time to do that thing and perhaps if you were to continue with that approach you know you will continue telling yourself that in the near and long-term future and you know it may end up with you unfortunately kind of not doing that thing at all and that would obviously be a shame and be be a wasted opportunity whatever that thing might be and of course normally as i as i was pointing out earlier these things are important to us you know if they weren't we wouldn't

have anxiety about them we wouldn't be procrastinating them you know because we wouldn't really care about them so obviously these things are important to us on some level and so if we don't kind of push ourselves a little bit to lean into that discomfort and do those things it's going to frustrate us whether that's consciously or subconsciously you know so trying to identify what those things are that you're that you're putting off that you're telling yourself I can't do

that until the OCD is this much better or I can't do that until I'm in this position you know and as I was pointing out earlier okay yeah you might want to be careful with how you approach things you don't want to throw yourself into the deep end with something that's too difficult for you to manage you know.

So to be careful with with you know what you're going to do but you know if you can push yourself a little bit to take yourself out of your comfort zone a little bit and get yourself moving towards that thing even if it's just taking you know one little step each day that gets you moving towards that thing that you keep putting off you know it's going it's going to really help you to you know to start feeling a little a little bit better to start feeling like you have a little bit of momentum

in your life and that you're not being held back so much by by your fears Cheers.

Another sign that you might be procrastinating is that you're kind of telling yourself that you can't do something, that it's too difficult for you to do or maybe you could do it if you had the time but it's going to be so difficult that it's no point in getting started with it, it's going to be too hard for you.

Or maybe you're persuading yourself that you just don't have the skills or the talent to do that thing you'd love to do it but you really keep persuading yourself that that you can't and it almost becomes the kind of self-fulfilling prophecy where you know because you've kind of talked yourself out of it so much you know you're not able to do it and you know this can be even a little bit harder than the previous one we just mentioned because there's this

kind of big self self-doubt as well as the anxiety that's coming up and you know this is very much related to to limiting beliefs a few weeks ago I was talking about learning how to juggle that was something that I convinced myself that I that I couldn't do you know and recently I've kind of forced myself to learn how to do it and there was lots of moments that came up along the way with.

That where I was you know I was feeling like this is really difficult and I'm just going to give up I I can't do it but I had to kind of keep you know focusing and trying again and trying it in different ways and eventually I kind of figured it out and and I could do it and I think it comes it comes to comes back to the same kind of thing when we're trying to you know to to push ourselves a little bit to to again get out of our comfort zones and to recognize this thing

is important to me I'm telling myself a negative story about it that I can't do it perhaps if I just tried the first step try the first thing with it maybe then I can actually make some progress with it it may not be perfect but you know if you take one step and you start to feel a bit better about it a bit more confident you know then then of course you you really start to feel that maybe you can do this now of course there is also you know as we're kind of talking about this you may just

be thinking about doing exposure activities and there is a big correlation between what I'm talking about no and exposure work and so you know if there's things that you're telling yourself you can't do in relation to your obsessions of course it's all about just breaking it down into smaller steps trying to you know do something very easy to begin with proves yourself that you can do that move on to the next thing and little by little we start

proving to ourselves that we can do a lot more than we've been telling ourselves.

Another reason we might procrastinate is actually perfectionism where and this is kind of a, maladaptive perfectionism not all perfectionism perfectionism is bad of course there's there's really good elements to it you know wanting to to kind of get a project done to your the best of your abilities is is a really good thing to to have but it can move into maladaptive perfectionism where we feel that you know we don't even want to get started

with something because the the The thing that we want to do, the project that we have in mind, it seems so big, so difficult. There could be so many things that we potentially get wrong with it that we think, well, I might as well just not get started. It's going to be too difficult. And again, it comes back to breaking it down and looking at those little steps. Now, it might even be sometimes that you're anxious about something that you've done many.

Many times before that actually you're very good at, you've been successful at in the past, but you're feeling anxious about it maybe because you have been successful in that thing in the past you kind of you know don't want to be doing it in case you're not successful this time and so you're kind of procrastinating doing that thing because you know you don't want to make a mistake the previous times you did it you did it really well you did it close to perfect you

know and you don't want to maybe do it again and not do it quite so well and yet another telltale sign that you're potentially procrastinating because of anxiety is that you're blaming other people for you kind of not taking action you're actually you know you're focused on if only this person would help me or if only this person wasn't acting like this or doing this or you know blaming other people you know for for kind of getting in the way or stopping us from taking action

that we need to take you know it's just another kind of excuse that we come up with because actually deep down we're just feeling very anxious we're feeling uncomfortable and as we know with with problems like OCD and anxiety so often the issue is that we don't want to feel difficult emotions we don't want to allow the discomfort to come up the idea of getting something wrong the idea of failure The idea of negative judgment from other people.

All of these things can feel really uncomfortable in the body. And people with OCD and anxiety, generally speaking, and this obviously includes myself, we tend to be very good, I think, at kind of dealing.

Deflecting those difficult emotions through different approaches often that can actually be you know the the process of obsessing and compulsing because that kind of stops you in a way from feeling at least in the short term the difficult emotions it might be procrastination you know in a way procrastination can almost become a compulsion in itself you know it's it's so sneaky the way in which we we kind of have all of these strategies to not allow ourselves to feel and

you know a really big part of getting over these problems is really getting in touch with that ability that we all have to to get more in touch with our bodies and our emotions to be able to sit with the difficult sensations in the body without pushing them away and actually learn that That, you know, they're not going to hurt us.

That they are uncomfortable, but actually we can learn to allow them to be there. We can even learn to slightly become kind of curious about them, to become a bit more interested in them. Because when we can do that, well, that's the beginnings of acceptance. And, you know, acceptance, it really does change everything when it comes to anxiety.

It really does allow us to have a completely different experience of of anxiety and other difficult emotions so there we go guys i really hope that you found that one helpful if you have any questions at all about anything that i've spoken about today do please let me know and i will see you next time just a quick reminder that if you want to get a free session all you need to to do to get that is to head over to my website www.robertjamescoaching.com and there you can leave me a message and we

can arrange the free session and now just a quick reminder of my disclaimer any information that you view on my website instagram page facebook group or anywhere else online or any information that you listen to on the podcast is for informational purposes only and is not intended to be a substitute for actual medical or mental health advice from a doctor, psychologist or any other medical or mental health provider. Music.