The Link Between PTSD Hypervigilance and Procrastination
There are many reasons why people procrastinate, but the one I'm talking about today, maybe it's the answer you've been looking for.
Watch the video below, or read on for the full transcript.
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The reason why I do what I do is to help people stop procrastinating and wasting their time so they can finally start living their lives, so let's get started.
In order to understand this type of procrastination, first we need to talk about hypervigilance, which is a symptom of trauma, PTSD, and C-PTSD. According to Pete Walker from his book, "Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving," "As a traumatized child, your over-aroused sympathetic nervous system also drives you to become increasingly hypervigilant. Hypervigilance is a fixation on looking for danger that comes from excessive exposure to real danger. In an effort to recognize, predict, and avoid danger, hypervigilance is ingrained in your approach to being in the world. Hypervigilance narrows your attention into an incessant on-guard scanning of the people around you. It also frequently projects you into the future, imagining danger in upcoming social events. Moreover, hypervigilance typically devolves into intense performance anxiety on every level of self-expression."
From my experience, hypervigilance is often an unconscious behavior. It's easy to not be consciously aware that you're being hypervigilant. Instead, you simply feel anxious, overstimulated, foggy, and exhausted. Because in order to be hypervigilant, two main things happen: one, all of your senses are alert and constantly looking for signs of danger; and two, your mind and body are constantly ready to respond to signs of danger.
When in a state of hypervigilance, your body is constantly spending energy and brain power toward maintaining that alertness and readiness - energy and brainpower that you would likely prefer to spend elsewhere. What's worse is that if you have a history of trauma and experience hypervigilance, your nervous system likely views relatively safe experiences as threats and responds by throwing you into sympathetic arousal, AKA fight, flight, fawn, freeze.
To learn even more about that topic in particular, check out this post on the polyvagal theory.
Here are some examples. Door closes loudly? Danger! Your partner walks up to you from behind without you noticing until they speak or touch you? Danger! Your parent changes their tone ever so slightly? Danger! Neighbor walking around loudly in the apartment above you? Danger! Side note: this particular one might remind you of a childhood where hearing your parents' footsteps approaching meant bad news.
It becomes an endless cycle of ricocheting between hypervigilance and sympathetic arousal with no sense of true felt safety in sight. It can be detrimental.
Comment below and tell me if you experience hypervigilance, and if so, how it specifically affects you.
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So what does all of this have to do with procrastination? Let me ask you this: if you were doing the thing you've been procrastinating on, would you be able to respond effectively or fast enough to sudden danger in order to keep yourself safe? Or would it be safer for you to just keep procrastinating? (AKA you're procrastinating and doing nothing because subconsciously, you believe you need to be ready for anything.)
I want you to sit with that for a second.
Like I mentioned earlier, hypervigilance takes a lot of energy and brainpower. It often means we have to sacrifice what we want and/or need to do in order to be ready to protect ourselves. If somehow we're able to stop procrastinating and get started, we're then unable to focus because our energy is still being directed toward hypervigilance, instead of the task at hand.
Is this the sole cause behind everyone's procrastination? Of course not. There are so many things that can cause procrastination and resistance, and they vary widely from person to person and circumstance to circumstance. But could it be one of the reasons behind your procrastination? Definitely, and I bet if you're still watching this, it likely is.
So what do you do about it? The first step is awareness. Don't try to change your behavior, instead, take a week or two and observe your behavior. Notice if and when you're being hypervigilant. Then (or if you already know you experience hypervigilance), take a couple weeks to see if your hypervigilance ever overlaps with your procrastination.
If you discover you experience hypervigilance and/or your hypervigilance overlaps with your procrastination, the next step is to get help. Some options include: researching trauma (I did a whole video on my favorite trauma books if you wanna check that out next), seeing a trauma-trained or trauma-informed therapist, or getting help from a trauma-informed life coach such as myself.
There you have it, the hidden link between hypervigilance and procrastination. If as you're looking into ways to get yourself personalized help with your hypervigilance and you want a secret weapon to battle your procrastination, I highly recommend checking out my free masterclass where I teach you three mindset shifts and one simple three-step process to help you get procrastination to the curb.
All you have to do to get access is go to this link and sign up.
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