Laziness & Procrastination: Am I Lazy or Just Traumatized?
“I am just
so lazy, why can’t I get up and do anything? Why do I keep scrolling on my
phone endlessly while I know I have to do stuff? What’s wrong with me? Why does
it take so much effort to do a simple task? I am an adult now, I should better
act like it!” Thoughts like this pop up daily inside of me. For as long as I
could remember, procrastination and laziness has become a part of me. I would
make a to-do list for the next day, feel motivated but then end up doing
NOTHING. The feeling of being overwhelmed would take over, and I would end up
distracting myself with anything else that would give me a false sense of
relief. After years of not knowing that these coping mechanisms might be linked
to the trauma I had experienced in childhood, I found that it is possible for
trauma and procrastination to work hand in hand. I started to dive deeper.
A contradiction all together
Do you ever feel a hint of motivation and have a million ideas that you want to work on but when you start to actually take action, you can’t do anything? A train of thoughts come rushing in and you forget all together what you were even thinking about in the first place. The thoughts say: “Maybe my ideas were ridiculous” or “I am not capable of doing this, I am simply not intelligent enough” and so on. Self-blame shows up to the party and voila, you feel done with everything and distract yourself.
When this is pattern is daily on repeat, exhaustion and depression creeps in. The consequence of repeating this subconscious pattern is a fatigued brain, ending up with waking up with only 5% energy in the morning instead of the full 100% and we end up being tired before starting something. The traumatized brain is overworked, overdone, overstimulated, overactive and simply stressed. Subconsciously it is still living in the past of when the trauma happened. We tell ourselves we are lazy while we romanticize about things in the future, goals to achieve, places to go, things to do,… and this damages our self-image and belief in ourselves. This already sets you up to be tired after doing a simple task like getting dressed, so instead we sit on the couch and scroll away at our phone. With doing this, we are in a constant state of fight-flight-freeze. Fighting against the thoughts by running (flight) towards a distraction, which might feel safe in the short-term but has long term effects of not getting anything done at all (freeze). Facing bad thoughts, the need of wanting to be somewhere else gets higher and higher and dissociation shows up.
However, there’s a difference between laziness derived from depression or from trauma. Often, depressed people don’t feel the motivation to get anything done, while trauma and anxiety can give you that initial spark of motivation, but it ends up dying out when taking action. You might be dealing with unresolved trauma resulting in perfectionism, the feeling of never being good enough and/or fear of failure. Maybe you were told as a child that you are lazy or you were often blamed, shamed, cursed while it was unjustified. Narcissism of a parent or a partner could be the culprit. There can be a million of reasons.
Procrastination can have dramatic consequences as an adult. You might even have procrastinated all through your teenagerhood in high school with assignments or homework. Back then, it was easy. There were no huge long-term consequences linked to not doing a certain thing. Unfortunately, in adulthood, life becomes more serious. We need to fulfill our duties like for example filling in your tax form on time or else we get a fee, or being on time for work, or else you can get fired. This is why it is so important to start working with yourself. It’s never too late!
But...What do I do now?
It is
essential to focus on healing the trauma brain first together with your basic
needs if you feel like you neglected yourself. If you are too much busy with
making new goals, it can lead you into a false belief of self-fulfillment while
you are actually just distracting yourself again. Try to take care of yourself
first. Did you have enough water today? When was the last time you ate or shower?
Did you brush your teeth in the morning? I, from first-hand experience, know
that it is so easy to make goals for the purpose of numbing yourself from
feeling the pain of trauma, but I know now that it would lead me to crash again
which ends up to laziness. Traumatized overworked brains get burned out really
fast because there is already things happening in the background. Look at it
like a computer with too many tabs open at once, trying to load at the same
time. The computer would lag, and maybe ultimately crash. Same goes for you.
You might have googled tools for procrastination and spend watching videos for hours upon hours, only to find out that you procrastinated doing them and feeling like a complete failure. Trust me, I’ve been there as well. However, the thing is that those tools were designed for healthy functioning brains, not for people already dealing with a bunch of trauma on their plate. You might be asking, but now what? What do I do now? Am I unsalvageable? ABSOLUTELY NOT! I found a way to get tasks done while also dealing with the inner thoughts. Here it is:
The Ultimate Plan For Traumatized Procrastinators
- Identifying unnecessary patterns
Dig deep inside yourself. Do some inner work. Find what is underneath your trauma. What thoughts come up each time you want to do a task? What do you feel? Do you feel uncomfortable, anxious or irritation? Try to raise your awareness towards this. Some tools to help you is journalling or writing down your feelings and thoughts. Another tool that has helped me tremendously with identifying what is going on in my head is imagining them sitting on the chair next to you or in front of you just the same as if it is a person. What do they say to you? Is it in a screaming or low voice? If it is hard to imagine this, try sitting in this chair yourself and pretend you are the thoughts. Then, go back to your own chair and think about how it makes you feel. Is it really true what your thoughts are saying? Does it make sense logically? Your thoughts are not who you are EVEN if it seems very convincing.
- Talk to yourself with humor
When thoughts play up again, you can handle it with humor. Try to see it as an annoying family member bothering you. Talk out loud to yourself such as “here we go again” or “oh you are here again, can you please be quiet”.
- Speaking up about your fears and self-soothing according to needs
What are you afraid of? Say your fear(s) out loud. This give the thoughts a lower voice and less room to create chaos. In turn, you can write down self-soothing ways in according to what you need: e.g.: you always got told you were never good enough anywhere. No effort you did got rewarded. In turn, respond back in the way a best friend would respond. Lift yourself up. Saying things like “I believe in you” or “C’mon, you are the boss, you are made to do this” can lift up your spirits. Try to tell yourself that you are not living in the past any longer and that you CAN do this. Remind yourself that failing is a part of life. Give yourself positive encouraging words instead of going to other distractions once again.
- Identify and list your most time-consuming distractions
What do you get distracted by the most? Is it scrolling on your phone, watching your favorite tv-show, talking or meeting up with friends all the time or doing overhours at work? One tip to differentiate distraction from essential relaxation time is to notice how you feel after you did it. Do you start self-blaming yourself after you watched Netflix? Do you feel annoyed at your partner or yourself when you go on day trips daily but leave the dishes from 5 days ago on the kitchen counter?
- What is the WORST that can happen?
By already preparing yourself for thinking about the absolute worst outcome, you ease anxiety and get more motivation to actually pursue it. So think, what is actually the worst that can happen if you do this one task that you want to get done? Write it down on a piece of paper. This can serve as a reminder for the future. After you wrote down the worst-case scenario, find a solution for it. For example: if you wanted to work on your skills of writing in English, the worst that can happen is that you embarrass yourself if anyone would read it or maybe you will feel like it’s a waste of time. The solution for this can be shifting your mindset. Thinking that those are actually irrational thoughts and no one cares about your spelling mistakes. You are only learning! And the people who laugh at you, it triggers them that another person is trying something in life and they aren’t. See, now what is the worst that can happen?
- Plan in baby steps
Write your task down in WAY SMALLER steps f.e. if you have to cook a dish, think about when you will write down a list of recipes or dishes, then think about what you need in the recipe, in turn think about when you will go shopping for it, etcetera. Soothing the overwhelming feeling of not getting anything done is the main goal.
- BONUS TIPS
You can
reward yourself with what you distracted yourself by in the first place if you
just did the first step of your plan. For example if your main distraction is
watching that Netflix show that you desire to finish and you need to get the
laundry done, you can already do the first step of your plan, which is sorting
out the laundry and then watch one episode of your tv-show.
Another tip is that you can do your main distraction for a few seconds to get the taste of it and then go back to doing the first step of your plan. Beware, this can be dangerous for some procrastinators as you might get sucked in and distracted again.
Ultimately,
forgive yourself for not knowing what was going on with you in the past.
Forgive yourself for the tools you had to use in the past to survive and are
still using. Take it step by step and talk to your inner child. You deserve all
the care and love in the world. And remember.. you’re not alone.