Extreme procrastination

April 22, 2009 9:19 AM

I'm in trouble because I try to ignore trouble.

I'm very afraid of suffering. Therefore, when anything could have an adverse effect on me, I try to avoid it.

This leads to problems: I haven't been reading my main email account for 5 months. I'm simply too afraid of what it may contain.

Now I need to check on that account: it's how I'll know I have graduated. In fact, to keep my current (well-paying) job, I need to have graduated. But altough my grades were all good in my last semester, I don't know if I've actually graduated, because I haven't been checking my email.

I should be able to get myself to do it, but I haven't [I have a drinking problem -- probably the subject of a future askme].
My family lives a few hours away, but I'd like to keep them out of the loop. I know they're in a very good position to help me, but I want, as close as is possible, to keep a "not-a-total-fuck-up" self-image.
My friend live in other cities. I'm also scared-to-death of them. [self-defeating? you bet.]

I need basic help to do basic things: check my email, get my situation at work regularized, renew my public health insurance [my situation has been going on for several months; I've been avoiding all obligations I could]. Given what I read about social workers on mefi, I think one would be able to help me [fill forms, check out on me; etc.]. But I don't think I fit the traditional profile: as long as I keep my job, I do alright monetarily; alcohol is the only drug I use; I'm college-educated.

I realize I need to get help. A few years ago, I tried talk therapy for 10 sessions and it didn't lead to much [maybe a longer approach would work; this would be more expensive, but is alright as long as I keep my job]. I will try to talk to my union representative tomorrow (I don't think I'm in any shape to work).

I live in Gatineau, Quebec; you can reach me at [e-mail]

posted by anonymous to human relations (23 comments total)

This is probably the most classic substance abuse symptom ever. I think you should avoid making your avoidance problem about anything other than your drinking problem, which you should stop avoiding.

Given what I read about social workers on mefi, I think one would be able to help me [fill forms, check out on me; etc.]. But I don't think I fit the traditional profile...

There are social workers for the employed, you can find one in your Employee Assistance Program. You could speak to your union rep about it when you talk to him tomorrow.
posted by The Straightener at 9:30 AM on April 22 [2 favorites]

I'm not a social worker, nor am I a therapist.

You seem to have a touch of the histrionic personality. Maybe it helps if you dedramatize things. Not graduating is a bit of a downer, alright, but it's not "suffering". Nor will you be a "total fuck up" if you didn't graduate, because you will more than likely be able to graduate next year. Or the year after. You seem to have done 80% of the work already. It won't kill you to do the last 20 % again, or to redo it partly.

If you landed a job that pays well, I doubt your a bumbling wino as well. Yes, maybe you drink too much - self medication is a well known problem for people with anxiety issues. You will need to see a therapist for this. He/she will also help you to dedramatize and put things in perspective. Once you know your own fondness for overreacting, you will smile benevolently upon yourself and tell yourself to just open your e-mail already.
posted by NekulturnY at 9:36 AM on April 22

I've had this same email-avoidance problem before, minus the drinking problem, so I don't agree that the two are necessarily intertwined. However, I absolutely think you should give therapy another try, for both issues.

In the meantime, just set aside one day, preferably on your next day off work, when your only responsibility is to check your email. Plan in advance what you're looking for, and make it a grab-and-go mission--scan all the subject lines quickly, and only open the important emails that you need to address right now, such as the ones from your school. Then close your email and go do something relaxing and fun. Chances are good that the unknown is far more terrifying than what's actually in there, and once you've had a glimpse of it and had a chance to wind down, you'll be able to check your email again and deal with the less urgent stuff.
posted by tomatofruit at 9:52 AM on April 22

I agree with The Straightener. It's not about "avoiding trouble". It's not about being afraid to "suffer". It's not even about your avoidant behavior. All of that is almost certainly secondary to your "drinking problem" -- and let's quit being cute about that and just call it what it is. It's alcoholism. When your drinking affects your daily life to the point where you're afraid to even check your email then, my friend, you are an alcoholic.

Get into treatment. AA is free and anonymous. Find a group and go to a meeting. Stop the drinking, and the group will help you straighten out all those other problems. One day at a time.

Best of luck to you.
posted by rhartong at 9:59 AM on April 22

I am a clinical psychology PhD student. It does not sound like you have a histrionic personality at all - avoidant personality traits, yes, but not histrionic. But please do get into treatment, this is significantly impeding your life. If you think this behavior is secondary to your substance problems (that is, if this is not a pattern you've experienced all your life) then, sure, you can try substance counseling first (thought therapy is a very good idea in addition). If it's a more pervasive pattern of avoidance that you suspect led to your drinking, see a therapist first, and quickly.

Good luck! These are all behaviors you can change.
posted by namesarehard at 10:20 AM on April 22 [1 favorite]

Do you know your GPA?
posted by kldickson at 10:38 AM on April 22

What's the worst that could be in the mailbox?
posted by kldickson at 10:41 AM on April 22

I second namesarehard. I posted this question and no one said therapist and I even got weird memail comments about it and I'm still struggling with it and now I talk about it with my therapist. I don't have a drinking problem but I DO avoid things due to anxiety. Therapy.
posted by sweetkid at 10:48 AM on April 22

Get a therapist.

I have conflict-avoidance issues as well (not as serious as yours, it sounds.) In therapy, I was encouraged to "desensitize" myself to conflict. Engage with things you think are conflicts, or that will cause suffering, and soon these things will become less painful.

You need to do this. Your email is not cancer. It is not a divorce. It is not a stranger breaking into your home. It is a communication device. Open your email, read it, deal with its contents. Rinse, repeat. After 50 emails, you will have conquered some conflict - most of it involving penis enlargement pills - and you can move on to your next conflicts.

Perhaps you can move on to a conflict with drinking, or with the conflict that will come with actually being honest with your friends and family. These conflicts are worth having.

Good luck.
posted by baxter_ilion at 11:23 AM on April 22 [1 favorite]

update from the OP

Thank you for your responses. I have definitely been scared of the mailbox. And the phone too; still am, in fact. Oh, and of encoutering my roommates -- I do okay with the current set, but I've hid from previous roommates [who were objectively totally harmless]. These things have also happened when I drank much less than I do now. In fact, a couple of years ago, I lived at night to avoid people for a few weeks. I didn't drink during those weeks.

As for my GPA, it's fine; I successfully completed all my courses, and made an official demand to graduate last fall; I know there have been news, but I've been afraid to check

posted by jessamyn at 11:40 AM on April 22

Er, if you made an official demand to graduate last fall and your GPA is fine, I severely doubt that you haven't graduated. I suggest you check your college's website to see what the minimum GPA is to graduate. And then suck it up and check your email, because honestly, what's the worst that could happen? The registrar saying 'Whups, we screwed up, let's take care of the administrative paperwork and get your graduation officially processed'?
posted by kldickson at 11:44 AM on April 22

Get a therapist.

Read the post, he got a therapist and the therapy was ineffectual. Now, that could be because he had a shitty therapist, it could be because the standard initial "dosage unit" for psychotherapy is ninety days and he came up shy of that before disengaging, or it could be because he didn't disclose his alcohol problem to the therapist and was therefore not really receiving any treatment for his primary disorder. Sure, he may have another disorder besides his admitted drinking problem, but until his substance abuse is stabalized a professional isn't going to be able to do much about that.

Please, please becareful with telling this poster he has an anxiety condition that supercedes his drinking, lest he present in front of a doctor saying he has anxiety problems, under reports or does not report his drinking, and is subsequently prescribed an anti-anxiety medication that when combined with alcohol may kill him.
posted by The Straightener at 12:24 PM on April 22 [3 favorites]

Can you call the university instead of checking your email? That may be a way to get over this specific hump.
posted by rhizome at 12:39 PM on April 22

Speaking as a fellow avoidant^., the following is what works for me when I need to check my email but I'm completey freaking out over it. The key is break into very small steps and after each step Stop and do not move on to next until your anxiety is at a manageable level. Not gone, but low enough that you can push your way through it. You only committ to doing one step. If you do more that's great. If not, try again later.

1) Go to the login page into for the email account. Stop.

2) Log in. Stop.

3) Open Inbox. Stop.

4) Look at the subject headings. Stop.

5) Find email from college about graduation. Stop.

6) Open email but do not read it. Stop.

7) Leave email open on the computer screen for as long as it takes for the anxiety and/or fear to decrease to where you can read it.

8) Read email.

9) Be happy because you graduated.

For me the hardest part is between 4 and 5. But after a couple minutes of staring at the subject line, I'm just like fuck this and take Churchhill's advice: "When you're going through hell, keep going."

Also, remind yourself that you can do it. You've probably been through situations where you were feeling as anxious as you are now and you got through them right? And think how much better you will feel when you've finally checked it. Concentrate on that. 5 minutes of suffering now followed by joy to advoid more days and days and days of anxiety. Sounds like a nice tradeoff.


^.I think I have avoidant personality disorder or very severe social anxiety. Alas, everytime I think about going to therapy, I freak out as I probably have avoidant personality disorder or very severe social anxiety.

posted by nooneyouknow at 1:14 PM on April 22 [2 favorites]

The Straightener is right one both counts!

I can get into patterns of behavior like this, albeit in less dramatic circumstances, and I usually break out of them when I am able to truly rationally realize that my avoidance is causing me more grief than whatever I've been avoiding. From your post, that would seem to apply to both your email and your drinking.
posted by OmieWise at 1:41 PM on April 22

You sound like me :).

For me, it's not e-mail, it's the phone. I hate talking on it. I also hate looking at bills, looking at my bank account, doing taxes, etc... When I was younger, I drove without insurance for a few weeks because I let my policy lapse and then was afraid to talk to anyone about it to get it renewed.

I also am an alcoholic although I have been continuously sober for 9.5 years now. I had never thought that the two issues had anything to do with one another, but perhaps they do :).

With regards to avoiding/being scared, here are some of the things I do to help with the problem:
- Just do it. Don't think about it, just do it. This works for small things like listening to the voicemail message that's been blinking on my work phone for the past three days. If I am quick enough about it, it's almost over before I can think about it. Kind of like ripping off a bandaid :).
- For longer things (such as projects), I imagine what it will be like when I'm (successfully) done -- what will I be seeing, hearing, feeling. Then, from that viewpoint, I look back in time to now and imagine what I had to do to get to that point. Somehow then it doesn't seem so scary and I can take the next step.
- I also have found, over the years, friends I can confide in. Sometimes they hold my hand (virtually or literally) while I do something. Sometimes they celebrate with me when I've successfully done something that was scaring me, even if it seems small.

With regards to the drinking, AA helped me. I was scared of it too :), but so are a lot of people at first. It wasn't until I got in AA that I realized that a lot of people have the same types of problems as I do and it's not so bad/scary/shameful.

Now, I have to stop avoiding my work by reading AskMeFi :).
posted by elmay at 1:42 PM on April 22

Wow! You could be me!

I've spent entire years of my life refusing to answer the phone, open snail mail, or deal with email. I'm afraid of bad news. I spent almost an entire year of undergraduate hiding in my dorm room.

I've gotten better over the years (mostly because of the support of a wonderful partner who helped me clean up the messes I'd been avoiding for years), but avoidance still rears it's ugly head frequently in my life.

Just recently, I've had trouble dealing with personal obligations to people I care about to the point of avoiding answering thier phone calls and emails and just generally avoiding them even though I love them. For instance, I photographed my sister's wedding and then didn't meet my own timeline for editing and posting the pictures online. So, even though I love my sister, have a great relationship with her and want to talk to her, I've avoided any and all contact with her - which just cycles visciously and causes more procrastination about finishing the wedding pictures.

Typically, I sleep too much when I get avoidant. I'm not a heavy drinker but if I was I imagine I would drink instead of sleep.

One thing that helps me is to find a friend who will agree to help me be accountable for one thing at a time. I try to share the load between my friends and space it out so that I'm not super needy and dependent on one person.

Another thing that works for me is to limit an unpleasant task (or a task I've been avoiding) to a very short period of time and then rewarding myself. So, regarding email, I'll make myself review and respond to email for only five minutes and then I'll reward myself with a nap or some metafilter time. It's really vital for me that I experience success when a task has become overwhelming for me. If I tell myself that I must review and respond to all the email I've been avoiding for 6 months, I'll never actually do it because it seems like way too much.

Just two nights ago I had an epiphany regarding my procrastination: I think it's related to being a perfectionist and not being able to meet my own expectations regarding my performance or responsibilities. If I don't try then I can't fail, right?

About the drinking: I'm neither going to nag or judge you. You seem like you know it's a problem. I understand it might seem insurmountable when you're experiencing chaos in other areas of your life and used to boozing in order to check out.

Hang in there. Tackle one thing at a time, redefine success, and reward yourself. You can do it.
posted by dchrssyr at 1:45 PM on April 22 [1 favorite]

I also recognized myself in your question, Earl. I have not figured out a solution to my problems yet, but with the limited information I have from you and the bias of my personal experience and point of view, I'm not sure your avoidance problem is directly related to your alcoholism. Obviously, abusing alcohol isn't good, but I think you'd still have the general avoidance problem even if you stopped drinking tomorrow for good, maybe not quite as bad, but it would still be there.

You seem like a young guy in his early twenties. Be careful about alienating yourself from your family over a matter of pride. It's OK to ask your family for help, especially at your age (at any age, for that matter). The question is: do you trust your parents and family to help you? If so, you should get in touch with them as soon as possible. Don't let pride come in the way of solving your problems. Better be the young-adult-fuck-up-asking-for-help than the alienated-isolated-40-something fuck-up.

Wish you the best, and I hope you take care of your stuff and feel better. There's hope for you and you can get through this.
posted by jchgf at 3:14 PM on April 22

I know a number of people who have problems like yours who also have problems I would put in the OCD-Tourette's-autism spectrum.

I looked around online and found an account I thought captured the essence of the connection I am imagining for you:

Proscrastination or Something Else?
...
I procrastinate about many, many things and it's practically destroyed my life.
...
But heres the thing --and I wonder if there's any connection to procrastination for me. I shake my hands vigorously, almost always unconciously, whenever I feel like I've accomplished something, or even if I think about or anticipate (exited?) accomplishing something. It looks and feels very weird when I do it (my face even contorts somewhat) and I've always been afraid of being caught doing it. I guess the only way I can stop it completely is to kind of not do much and to not think (fantasize) about doing much or to get too excited as a spectator of something, say for instance a sporting event on TV. Iv'e had this unconcious physical compulsion since I was a little boy. Could you provide any insight or direction for me? I don't want to see a professional or even describe --in person-- what I just described to you (let alone give a demonstration!) unless I have at least some idea what the hell this is, going in. I don't have much time left to try to build some sort of a, not so isolated, not so hopeless, not so useless life.

The therapist to whom this man addressed his question (Dr. Allan Schwartz), mentions OCD and Tourette's in his answer.

In qualitative terms, I would say this man has succeeded in blocking a tic or compulsion at the expense of blocking almost everything else he is supposed to do, or might want to do, at the same time.
posted by jamjam at 4:04 PM on April 22

Avoidance is a sign of anxiety and worry. You can work on this yourself with this book.
posted by damn dirty ape at 9:31 PM on April 22

As a former avoider, here are some tips:
- you have to prevent trouble. eg, put all your bills on auto-pay so you don't get scared of checking your bank balance. check your email a lot.
- early action: get used to catching yourself when you're avoiding things. things are a lot less scary if you deal with them early.
- learn to go toward the stuff that is scaring you the most. that frees up a little mental energy for dealing with the next thing. eventually, you have all this free energy.
- for example, start the work day with the most intimidating project.
- talk about the stuff you're scared about. it defuses the shame side of the worry. I mean, to me, the idea that there is this message in your inbox that you can't get because of seeing other email subject lines (90% of which are spam) kind of makes me laugh (not in a mean way). if you told three people, you'd probably start to see the funny side of it, or you'd realize that it'd be easier to get over with than to carry around like this big weight
- combining "early action" with "tell people," get good at telling people what you're worried about before the entire thing becomes this big scary mess that you try to carry in secret.
- think about the whole problem like a monster under your bed.
- meditate. gets you used to pain.
- exercise. gets you used to pain.
- make "to do" lists. just having something on a list defuses the "i'm scared so i'm not even looking at it" factor. At some point, it's just a thing on the list. If it still scares you while on the list, add an additional step (e.g., if "do taxes" scares you, it's probably because you know you can't actually just do it, so add "get W-2 form from last year's employer")

I'll keep thinking about it, but I have to run for now.
posted by salvia at 10:23 PM on April 22 [1 favorite]

This is not a general answer, but a suggestion specifically about your current email backlog:

Clear out next week's weekend (or this week's, if you can) such that you don't have any plans at all.

Make preparations for Sunday: rent movies you like, buy food you'll want to eat, set aside your favorite music, etc.

On Saturday you get up and go through the lot of it. Just read it; make it a point to not answer anything. Even if it seems important (you've put it off this long, it can wait another week). Psychologically, it might even help to download all of it and read it offline. Set aside the whole day for doing this.

In practice it won't take more than a few very miserable hours. After which you have the rest of Saturday and the following day to take care of yourself and calm down.

If there's any email that's really important to answer or otherwise act on, do the same the following weekend but switch reading for responding this time.
posted by mail at 7:39 AM on April 23

I am going to, not disagree with the straightener, but offer a different perspective. It sounds to me like you are drinking because you have all this anxiety about everything in your life.

Others have said above that you need some perspective to see that some of your problems aren't really so bad (drinking problem aside - that one is obviously serious), but I have found that when I was struggling with anxiety, I knew that some of my problems weren't really so bad, but I was still terrified to deal with them. The anxiety can get so overwhelming that it becomes impossible to do things that would be simple to anyone else.

I agree that you need to find a better therapist - anxiety of this magnitude is something you might want medication for, if only to get you to a point where you can deal with your life again. It sounds like you would benefit from a better emotional support system (nearby friends) but it can be hard to make new friends when you are feeling anxious.
posted by mai at 9:19 AM on April 23