rex-luscus:

rex-luscus:

averagefairy:

ok can we agree that the WORST feeling is when you’re just sitting around consciously procrastinating and you’re just overly aware that each second that passes is more time wasted and you like watch hours pass and you’re STILL procrastinating and you CANT STOP and your panicked brain is trapped inside a body that refuses to be productive and inside you’re screaming but outwardly you’re just eating chips 

The best thing I know for this is just to do SOMETHING. It’s like you’re in a trance, so you have to break the trance. Get out of your chair and go into another room, or step outside. You don’t have to stay there long, but if there’s something small you can do in that other room, like wash a dish or fold a shirt, do it. If you hate it, you don’t have to do it forever. Then sit down somewhere and just experience the urge to do the procrastination activity but don’t act on it. See if the urge fades a little. If it doesn’t at all, go back to the distracting activity and set the timer for 10 minutes. At that ten minute mark, get out of your chair and repeat the above.

My shrink calls this STOP. It’s a DBT Distress Tolerance skill: Stop, Take a Step Back, Observe, and Proceed Mindfully. Once you get out of your trance, you can shut your eyes, check in with yourself, and DECIDE what to do next instead of just getting carried a long. Don’t pick something HARD to do, pick something very easy but active and that will give you a sense of accomplishment, no matter how small. If you really need to, you can go back to the distracting activity for little breaks but try to set a timer so you don’t get entranced again.

This is hard and takes practice. Maybe the first time, all you’ll manage is getting into the other room and then coming right back. Keep trying. It’s a muscle you build. I leave little notes around my house to remind me to do this. That helps.

Here’s a thing you might do BEFORE all of that. When I’m SUPER anxious and stuck, I’m out of what my shrink would call my Window of Tolerance, which is when you’re so keyed up (or so keyed down) that you can’t really think or act deliberately. So I have a list I keep on my wall: First I stick my face in ice water for about 30 seconds. This triggers the mammalian diving reflex, which depresses your sympathetic nervous system. Then I take a shower, trying to focus only on the water and not my racing thoughts. Finally I sit and do Four-Square breathing for a few minutes, which actually you can do anytime, anywhere. It has a similar effect as the ice-water thing. (If you have PRN anti-anxiety medication, taking a little of that at the beginning of the process can help you get through the exercises.)

Once you’ve calmed down and de-entranced yourself a little, you can possibly think about working again. Pick something very limited and specific. “I’m just going to write ONE paragraph about [x]” or “I’m going to study this one page.” Or “I’m going to work for 15 minutes.” GIVE IT A LIMIT so you aren’t trapped. Then you get a break to distract yourself. Keep the break short, but don’t skip it. You can finish a whole task by just going from one little sub-task to another, without ever looking at it from a whole-task perspective. Just keep doing one more little bit next and eventually you’ll be done.