How are Anxiety and Procrastination Related?

Anxiety and procrastination are related in a number of ways; two really stand out for me. Procrastination is often caused by anxiety about failure, or by anxiety about success.If you’re afraid of failure, and you have a term paper due, logic would seem to dictate that you would get started early, and give yourself plenty of time to do the best work possible; however, you might be so anxious about not doing well that you can’t even imagine succeeding. In that case, it can seem to make sense to try to push the whole project out of your mind, and act as if you don’t have to do it.Trying to push something out of your mind completely is one way of dealing with anxiety about failure. Another way is to leave things until the last minute. Leaving things until the last minute takes the sting out of failure because it allows you tell yourself that you would have succeeded, if you’d started earlier. You’re not a failure; you just ran out of time.There are many other ways anxiety can cause procrastination. Not all of them have to do with fear of failure. You might procrastinate about making a doctor’s appointment because you’re afraid you’ll get bad news. You might put off having a difficult conversation with someone because you’re anxious that it won’t go well. Anxiety about possible bad outcomes is a major contributor to procrastination.How is procrastination related to fear of success? Don’t we all want to succeed? Why would we do something to keep ourselves from succeeding?You probably do want to succeed, but you might have conflicts about what your success will mean. These conflicts can cause you to undermine yourself, without even realizing that’s what you’re doing. You’re striving for success and, at the same time, you’re doing things to make succeeding difficult or impossible.Conflicts about success are specific to each individual, but they often have to do with basic issues about your identity. If your family needed to see you as the child who always screws up, it might feel threatening to your relationship with them, and to your sense of who you are, if you start to experience yourself as competent.If your family saw themselves as failures, you might feel like you’re hurting them, if you do better than they did. In these and many other cases of fear of success, procrastination becomes a way of not challenging the emotional status quo. You keep yourself from doing your best by putting things off, to the point where you can’t be as successful as you think you’d like to be.What are strategies for dealing with anxiety-related procrastination?Sometimes the most effective strategy is to “just do it.” This is especially the case when the procrastination itself has become a bigger problem than the problems it was originally intended to solve. Maybe, at this point in your life, you’re no longer afraid of the things that used to worry you. Yet perhaps procrastination has become such a habit that you don’t feel you can break out of it.If procrastination has become a bigger problem for you than the things you’re procrastinating about, the best strategy is to change your habits. The more you learn to stay on top of things, the better you’ll feel. At some point, procrastination will no longer feel like the most attractive option for dealing with things.If your procrastination is driven by fear of failure, it’s important to try to understand the focus of your fear. What’s the worst thing that could happen if you did things on time? Where does your fear of failure come from? Have you actually failed in the past? If so, why did you fail and what lessons did you take from your experience?If you’ve never failed at anything, are you anxious that you won’t be able to deal with failure if it happens? Do you feel you have to do everything perfectly, and procrastinate, because you know you can’t? Understanding your fear of failure is the first step toward overcoming the procrastination that it causes.Fear of success is often more difficult to understand, both because it seems so irrational, and because it’s so often unconscious. If you’re able to figure out on your own that you’re anxious about doing well, and you understand why that might be the case, that’s great. If you’re feeling stuck, and nothing you do seems to get you out of your procrastination rut, getting help from a qualified therapist can help you overcome your anxiety about success, and get you back on track.Finally, I think it’s really important to recognize that procrastination can take a huge emotional toll because it doesn’t really work as a psychological strategy for relieving anxiety.Some people really can put things out of their minds, not deal with them, and feel less anxious. But it’s more likely the case that your procrastination only makes anxiety worse. In addition to feeling anxious about whatever it is you’re not doing, you’re anxious about the fact that you’re not doing it. So in addition to worrying that you’re going to fail when you finally turn in your project, you feel like you’re already a failure because you’re procrastinating.If procrastination is creating problems in your work or your relationships, and it’s wreaking havoc with your self-esteem, getting help is the surest route to relief from your suffering.Click to learn more about anxiety therapy and treatment with Dr. Jane Rubin.

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