How do i stop running away?

May 31, 2008 8:51 AM

How do i stop running away?

So I'm a twenty something a coupla years out of college and I've pottered around a few jobs here and there.

I've met great people wherever I've worked who've always taken me seriously at the start and plied me with opportunities and the freedom to choose my projects: and yet I manage to do this everytime.

What I've essentially ended up doing for a long long time now is: getting terribly excited about some idea, and then sitting on it for days and months, fretting the crap out as the deadline approaches, keep putting off doing anything real till a few hours before, and throwing together something hasty for the meeting.

I think I can manipulate people pretty well so it ends up sounding serious and high falutin but if you peer beneath the surface there's nothing deeper.

The thing is, every now and then amongst all the bullshit, I can come up with a pretty neat idea and this has lead to an impressive resume on paper - but I don't really know anything.

I've sorta convinced myself that I was 'still searching' but that line seems more and more implausible and downright bs even to me.

This is not to say that I doubt my abilities: I think I'm pretty smart and have pretty good sensibilities about the things I like: but if I never actually *do* anything about them, and instead keep running away, then I'm dumbing myself down.

So I am asking for your help.

Especially worrisome is that I live with this constant feeling of dread - I've had this since I was a kid. The cause itself maybe trivial or important - but the dread is *always* present. The physical sensation is a weight at the pit of my stomach and feeling like I need to go to the toilet to take a shit. This causes me to fret, pace, eat junk, smoke, neglect the people in my life and generally self-destruct slowly.

I also tend to live thinking of how my biographies will look like - so I talk as I think will look 'good in a book', assume poses all the time. Only complete surprises jolt me into an honest response, but this is quickly tailored to how I want this event to 'look and sound' later.

In college I'd be glib and pass this off as 'solipsism' (leaving other people to pick my shit up after me) or crave for little laurels: 'maverick' etc.

Is this something pathological? How can i cure this. Please help.

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posted by anonymous to Human Relations (11 answers total)

Does this sound like you?
posted by phrontist at 9:09 AM on May 31, 2008

This sounds like something a good therapist could help. There may very well be something, most likely someone, in your background that continually caused you to fear the unknown. If so, a therapist can help you explore that, find the truths and myths and help you learn to move beyond your irrational fears.
posted by caddis at 9:24 AM on May 31, 2008

I've always been chronically lazy. I've never felt the sense of dread you talk about, but I always just kind of thought I could coast through life on the basis of my intelligence without putting in any real work. But lately I've came up with a sort of mental framework that's helped me be more productive on things I actually care about.

One is start valuing effort rather then ideas. Everyone comes up with great ideas (at least every once in a while) Most people think it up and forget it, rarely will they put in the hard labor to birth their idea into existence. Don't judge yourself based on the quality of your ideas, judge yourself on how much time you actually spend on them.

The other thing that's helped lately is to try to set aside a specific amount of time each day at a specific time to work on it and nothing else. I kind of stumbled into this method after changing my workout goals from trying to get in X amount Cardio (I have an elliptical at home) a week to trying to do Cardio as many days in a row as possible. Right now I'm to 75 days in a row. I started with that in January and it worked incredibly well. I've lost like 30 pounds, I feel fantastic, etc.

I realized I could apply the same method to other things that I wanted to do with my time, rather then just dreaming about doing them, I started keeping a list with checkboxes for things I wanted to do each day. It didn't work as well as I liked because I would end up procrastinating and not realizing how much time everything would actually take. So I started actually scheduling hours out. I'm still not perfect, but it's been working pretty well so far.

By putting in a specific time I force myself to think about how much time I actually haven and I prevent procrastination.

Think of it as a long journey, if you just sit on your ass and think about how far away you are you'll never get there. But if you just concentrate on taking the next step and don't even worry about the final goal you'll eventually get there, if it's possible.

And if worrying about the final destination is slowing you down, keeping you from taking those steps, stop thinking about the final destination. Just keep taking those steps until you get there, and if in the end you decide it's not possible or it's not really what you wanted, you can turn around but you'll have the choice to make yourself.
posted by delmoi at 9:38 AM on May 31, 2008 [10 favorites]

"Especially worrisome is that I live with this constant feeling of dread - I've had this since I was a kid. The cause itself maybe trivial or important - but the dread is *always* present. The physical sensation is a weight at the pit of my stomach and feeling like I need to go to the toilet to take a shit. This causes me to fret, pace, eat junk, smoke, neglect the people in my life and generally self-destruct slowly."

This really got to me - we have a lot of similarities. I know that feeling of dread...I wake up with it more mornings than not - I "medicate" myself (drink myself silly) when it gets too strong, and there's nothing so trivial that it can't set me off. It took me many, many years to realize that this dread is the PROBLEM, not a sign of failure or impending doom, and my attempts to avoid this feeling have caused me a lot of harm.

This feeling is just a feeling. Yes, it's unpleasant, but It doesn't mean anything except my adrenaline is off the charts and I'm obsessing about something that's keeping me in a keyed up state. Deep breathing really helps, as does making lists of thing to do and crossing them off when done (start with the smallest, and work up). If I get those things to do out of my "working memory" (in a way, I'm clearing my buffers), and give myself enough mental resources to monitor my state of mind, I can head the dread off at the pass before it can grab a hold of me and mess everything up. It requires a lot of mindfulness, and sometimes I just need to sit and FEEL so that I can normalize my reactions.

This means that I have had to slow down and stop biting off more than I can chew. That doesn't mean that I give up on things that I want to do, but it does mean that I have to realize my own limitations as far as internal resources and take them into account. The best analogy I can come up with is attempting to drive a car up a muddy incline. If you use all of the car's power, you will become bogged down almost immediately - and applying even more power will get you impossibly stuck. If you use a measured amount of power, however, and let off the gas in the worst spots and apply it in areas of traction, you will get up the hill just fine. This is what I attempt to do in my everyday life. There are going to be bad days, and trying to power through them will just make it worse.

A good friend of mine, who is a lot older, has been through a lot of hard times in her life, and has managed to become successful and fulfilled, told me this: "It doesn't matter how fast you move forward, even 1/2 an inch is forward progress. Just keep moving in the right direction." This has been invaluable advice. Goals are wonderful, projects are great, and we all have so much potential. Potential is just that, however, and in reality we have so many other factors impacting outcomes that it becomes obvious that "potential" can only be reached in a perfect world. I guess the point I'm trying to make can be summed up in "do the best you can do - whether it's just a little or a lot - and stop holding yourself to some imagined standard." Life is tough, I'm trying really hard to not make it even tougher than it has to be.
posted by The Light Fantastic at 12:09 PM on May 31, 2008 [3 favorites]

Maybe you're not giving the other people enough credit. Could it be that they can understand the ideas, even if what you're presenting them isn't the acme of what it could be?
Your sense of self-worth seems badly skewed to the not-having-much end of things. Do you really think you're the only one who ever mailed in a project? I'd be more concerned about that and about your anxiety than about the sense that you're losing your innate abilities (everyone feels like that; it's called getting older). Seek professional help for those, post haste.
posted by willpie at 12:41 PM on May 31, 2008

The feeling of dread is either caused by something or it isn't. Most likely there is something specific that you fear. For example, fear that you'll fail to live up to these folks' expectations and they'll then reject you. Or that you'll succeed too well and frighten them away. Or that they're just using you temporarily... etc. This is the sort of thing that therapists help you to discover, though introspection can help a bit.

So I would approach the conclusion that "it's just a feeling" simply as one possibility, and not even as the most likely one.
posted by yath at 2:24 PM on May 31, 2008

I also think a therapist would be useful in helping you figure this out/deal with this.

Another option might be medication. After living with my own dread for many years, my doctor prescribed paxil for anxiety - it "lifted" the anxiety and I can think clearly.
posted by All.star at 5:23 PM on May 31, 2008

Especially worrisome is that I live with this constant feeling of dread - I've had this since I was a kid. The cause itself maybe trivial or important - but the dread is *always* present. The physical sensation is a weight at the pit of my stomach and feeling like I need to go to the toilet to take a shit. This causes me to fret, pace, eat junk, smoke, neglect the people in my life and generally self-destruct slowly.

I think The Light Fantastic is absolutely right to emphasize this, and I would have skipped right over it if she hadn't done so.

You know, very few things are more upsetting than having some powerful feeling which has no basis in reality.

What I've essentially ended up doing for a long long time now is: getting terribly excited about some idea, and then sitting on it for days and months, fretting the crap out as the deadline approaches, keep putting off doing anything real till a few hours before, and throwing together something hasty for the meeting.

Almost anyone on the planet would feel dread going into an important meeting as poorly prepared as you seem to make a habit of doing; they would feel mounting dread as the day of the meeting approached and they hadn't done anything.

I want you to consider the possibility that you are feeling this perpetual dread for some underlying physiological reason, and that you are therefore setting up situations which justify feeling the dread to avoid the cognitive dissonance you would experience doing everything right and having horrible feelings of dread, anyway.

I would say take stock of yourself physiologically and medically-- get a comprehensive physical if you can-- and look closely at any unusual findings, and think hard about whether having these feelings of dread might be helping you to cope with a physiological issue which could be treated medically, leaving you free to stop setting up all these dreadful situations.
posted by jamjam at 6:55 PM on May 31, 2008

I'm not sure if this will be helpful, but I would guess it is a narcissistic attitude. Aligning yourself with ideas you find exciting, putting off the required mundane work, manipulation & subjugation of others so you appear awesome, ect. The dread can also included, but as with anything, it could be anything else. All (to me) point towards having a narcissistic personality disorder or a lesser equivalent.
posted by Submiqent at 8:17 PM on May 31, 2008

Impostor syndrome interlocked with a cycle of procrastination -> stressful hurry -> success -> new assignment -> aversion due to memory of stress -> procrastination (and maybe a side order of not really having found the kind of work you're looking for, or not thinking it would be 'acceptable')? I have a bit of experience with all of these, and I found the procrastination cycle builds more dread each time it runs.

All I can suggest is what I try to do or would like to do or have done myself: Plan time a little better so as to more often create the happy coincidence of having time when I need to be doing something and having something I need to do. Be more mindful/compassionately realistic, toward self and others. Keep a journal of genuinely valuable, productive, world-improving things I do.
posted by eritain at 9:21 PM on May 31, 2008

I think I can manipulate people pretty well...

This statement in particular lead me to the same conclusion as Submiqent regarding narcissism or some other personalty disorder. I think it's good that you're addressing this issue now because these things only get harder the longer you wait. It's hard to teach an old dog new tricks. The key is acknowledging you have a problem and wanting to change. I nth therapy ASAP.

I think it's interesting how many people have marked this question as a favorite (19 as I write this). That might suggest this problem is either very interesting or a lot more common than we think. My guess is the latter. I've always thought that if we knew what was actually going on in the average person's head, all social stigma regarding therapy (and mental health) would disappear instantly.
posted by bda1972 at 11:04 AM on June 1, 2008