Procrastination & Mental Illness | What They Don't Tell You
Do you struggle with procrastination and have a mental illness? By the end of this video you'll understand why your procrastination might be protecting you.
Watch the video below, or read on for the transcript.
Yeah, you heard that right: protecting you. And have a concrete way to deal with it.
Hi. I'm Cassie Winter. For the best advice on getting unstuck, being productive, and living your best life with chronic and mental illness, subscribe to my channel and hit the bell to be notified when I publish a video every Tuesday.
So who am I to be talking about all this? Let's run through my diagnoses real quick, shall we?
I have PTSD from multiple medical traumas and also a few car accidents. Yay. 🙃
I also have Complex PTSD from childhood abuse.
And then to add insult to injury I have clinical depression and anxiety.
Too long didn't read? Been there done that. And still doing that, unfortunately...
But now it's your turn to learn from my experience so you don't have to suffer through years and years of figuring it out on your own like I did.
First off (and this is really important), if you have a mental illness and/or a history of trauma, you are not, I repeat NOT 100% in control of your behavior. Your mental illness creates symptoms, and those symptoms are often behavioral (not just experiential). So the next time you find yourself having a day where you're on the sofa all day watching Netflix, please don't beat yourself up. It's probably a symptom of your depression.
The idea that you are not 100% in control of your behavior if you have a mental illness is something that I go into greater detail in this video. So check it out later.
So the behaviors that your mental illness or trauma create - if a healthy person were to look at those behaviors they'd probably label them as lazy. They would say you are lazy. However, that would only be true if those mentally healthy people were doing those behaviors. If a mentally healthy person spent five days in a row on the sofa watching Netflix, they would be being lazy.
However it's really important to understand the distinction that for you, your behaviors that you may up until now have labeled as "lazy" are instead actually ways that you cope with things. They are coping mechanisms, coping strategies, whatever you want to call them. They are a form of coping.
And now this is super duper important: coping is what is keeping you together.
If you were to suddenly snap your fingers and magically be doing the behaviors that you want to be doing, and no longer doing any of your coping behaviors, you would likely eventually (sooner rather than later) hit a wall and ricochet backward, and start using your coping behaviors even more.
Does that sound familiar? Because I know I've done that pattern a few times: where you go forth and try and change and change and change and change and change and then, "Oh look! This change isn't sustainable! Hello sofa." And you're on the sofa for months if not years. That's what happens when you cold turkey quit your coping mechanisms.
I go into more detail about coping in this video where I talk about Steven Pressfield's wonderful book, "Turning Pro," but talk about a few things that he left out (likely through no fault of his own).
Is your mind blown? Did you just realize that what you have always deemed as "lazy" or "addictive behavior" is just a coping mechanism? Let me know down in the comments and let me know what your coping mechanism is. Anything from ice cream to...
So, now that you understand that your behaviors are not 100% under your control when you have mental illness, and a lot of your behaviors are probably also coping mechanisms, what on earth do you do about it? How do you actually go from procrastinating to taking action without creating that ricochet I talked about: where you're worse off than you were before because you overworked yourself?
Here's a few ideas for you.
Like I said before, do NOT stop your coping mechanisms. Do not! This is not about quitting something and replacing it with something else. No. We want to go, "yes, and." This is from improv comedy or just improv in general, where two improv actors will make up shenanigans. And if actor A says, "shenanigan," actor B says "yes" to said shenanigan and then ADDS to it. So it's, "yes, and." We want to think about that with our behaviors.
So if your dominant coping strategy at the moment is to sit on the sofa and watch Netflix, make sure you're getting that in every day, but ADD to it. So for example, if you want to be doing homework or writing, do both. (Not necessarily at the same time, because then neither of them get the attention they deserve or require.) But make sure you split it apart.
So let's say you tend to spend six hours watching Netflix every day. Spend just ONE of those hours doing something else, but still get five hours in Netflix. This is about AND. Don't rip the rug out from underneath you when you're trying to change your behavior. Make sure you are still using your coping strategies until you build up enough resilience that you can replace them with different coping mechanisms.
The next suggestion I have for you is: seek professional help. If you have a mental illness, and especially if you have a history of trauma and you think you likely have PTSD and or C-PTSD, I highly recommend seeking out a trauma-informed professional. I know mine has done wonders for me. But it's very difficult work and I'll probably do a video in the future about how difficult it is and how traumatizing it can be to do that work in the moment.
But when you're doing it with a professional that knows how to help you actually heal from the thing you are purposefully triggering (in order to heal it), wonderful things can happen. So please, if you are able, to seek out help. And if you don't have access to that right now, I recommend looking for a book on what you're going through that you can read, because there are so many wonderful books in the mental health space and the trauma space that it's a really good place to start. (And sometimes that's the best we can do. I know I spent years only able to read books until I found the right therapist for me that I could also afford. So I understand the struggle.)
Please do not give up on yourself. You deserve to heal and to recover, and to feel better.
Now the last thing I want to talk about when it comes to procrastination and mental illness is what is often the biggest hurdle between you as you are now, and the thing you want to be doing. And that is simply STARTING.
Starting is so hard, and I feel like this is the thing that most productivity and get-disciplined videos and books and everything out there in the media get wrong, because they just like, tell you what to do. But there's this big gaping chasm in between you and the doing, and you have no idea how to cross it. I want to help you cross it.
And there are lots of different ways to help you go from not doing to starting, and I want to share one with you right now, and that is using a grounding or an embodiment exercise.
It's really common when you have mental health struggles to be stuck in your head all the time. You're not necessarily fully present in the moment, let alone fully present in your body. You're caught up in the whirlwind of your thoughts - wherever they may be taking you: future, past, fantasy. Basically, long story short, you are not HERE NOW, let alone present in your body. And so using a grounding exercise can be really helpful to bring you down out of your head and back into the present moment, because if you are not present it is impossible to start something.
So the first step is to always come back to now and come back to your body. A really simple grounding exercise is the 5,4,3,2,1 exercise.
You can do this from wherever you are, and you start by looking around your environment (and it really does help to physically move to look, don't just look with your eyes). Physically look around and label, out loud, five things you see.
So I'll do this with you right now. I'm looking around. I see my lights. I see my monitor. I see my partner's desk chair. I see my cat Kayla. (You can't see her, but she's darn cute.) So that's four. Um, and I see my unicorn light, so that's five.
So then you label four things you can touch or, or feel with your skin. So right now I feel my shirt against my skin. That's one. I feel my chair underneath my butt, spinning. I feel the carpet through my socks. So that's three. What's four? What can I pick up? I can pick up my phone. So you can pick up things, right? So, pick up my phone, feel the screen, it feels nice and smooth. (It's actually kind of cool to the touch. It's warm in here that feels nice.)
Three things you can hear. Now as someone who is not attuned to hearing lots of things, this one can be hard, especially if you're in a quiet environment. So I'm going to pause. I hear the auto focus on my lens. That's one. My chair keeps squeaking (and it's driving me nuts), so that's two. And I hear the whirring of my computer, so that's three.
So then after you've done three things you can hear, you do two things you can smell. This is where it can be helpful to have things to smell.
And then the last one is one thing you can taste, and it can be helpful to have something to chew on for that. Right now I taste my lip gloss, so that's tasty.
But back through that again:
5 things you can see
4 things you can feel
3 things you can hear
2 things you can smell
1 thing you can taste
And really taking the time to look around and seek things out, and then to really be present with the noticing of them (especially when you get into touch, hear, smell, and taste) that will help you come back to the present moment, and once again be back in your body.
One really important caveat if you have a history of trauma: being present in the moment and in your body can be incredibly terrifying and maybe even triggering. So if you do this exercise and you are suddenly very not okay, please rest and recover. Don't force yourself to do anything. Just sit with yourself and let your body work through it. Maybe if you have access to someone you trust, talk to them through it. But really this is something that's really important (and this can happen with meditation practices too): if you have a history of trauma, being present can be deeply terrifying and triggering - like create an actual flashback experience. That is awful. So if you try this grounding exercise and you are triggered, please don't do it again until you've gotten some professional help for your trauma.
Okay, so that being said, one of the best things you can do (if it's safe for you to do) to get over that chasm between now and you actually taking action and doing something, is becoming present and grounding yourself in your body.
There are lots of other ways to help you start taking action, and if you're interested in learning what I consider - like this is my BEST hack for getting myself - and I've had lots of clients who have had a lot of success with this - use this technique to actually START and consistently take action towards their goals every single day. I taught a Masterclass on it. It's called Butt In Chair Time and you can get a copy of the replay for free simply by signing up here.
If you like this video, please hit the like button and Subscribe and share it with your friends. Otherwise I'll be back next week with another video. Talk to you then. Bye.
[OUTTAKES: What even was the beginning of that sentence?! Staying in bed all day, to hot chocolate - ooh I want a hot chocolate right now. I'm not going to smell my cat that would be weird! 🤣]