“To the people who love you, you are beautiful already. This is not because they’re blind to your shortcomings but because they see your soul. Your shortcomings then dim by comparison. The people who care about you are willing to let you be imperfect and beautiful, too.”
It turns out procrastination is not typically a function of laziness, apathy or work ethic as it is often regarded to be. It’s a neurotic self-defense behavior that develops to protect a person’s sense of self-worth.
You see, procrastinators tend to be people who have, for whatever reason, developed to perceive an unusually strong association between their performance and their value as a person. This makes failure or criticism disproportionately painful, which leads naturally to hesitancy when it comes to the prospect of doing anything that reflects their ability — which is pretty much everything.
But in real life, you can’t avoid doing things. We have to earn a living, do our taxes, have difficult conversations sometimes. Human life requires confronting uncertainty and risk, so pressure mounts. Procrastination gives a person a temporary hit of relief from this pressure of “having to do” things, which is a self-rewarding behavior. So it continues and becomes the normal way to respond to these pressures.
Particularly prone to serious procrastination problems are children who grew up with unusually high expectations placed on them. Their older siblings may have been high achievers, leaving big shoes to fill, or their parents may have had neurotic and inhuman expectations of their own, or else they exhibited exceptional talents early on, and thereafter “average” performances were met with concern and suspicion from parents and teachers.
One of my favorite clinical psychologists uses the language “false refuge” to discuss behavior and ideas we visit that give us short term safety but due long term harm to our growth and well being. Procrastination is a big one.
“I always just draw porn without thinking about it because to me it’s just like drawing anything else cause w/e what’s the difference between smoochin and smoochin with your junk out?”
“Picture yourself when you were five. in fact, dig out a photo of little you at that time and tape it to your mirror. How would you treat her, love her, feed her? How would you nurture her if you were the mother of little you? I bet you would protect her fiercely while giving her space to spread her itty-bitty wings. she’d get naps, healthy food, imagination time, and adventures into the wild. If playground bullies hurt her feelings, you’d hug her tears away and give her perspective. When tantrums or meltdowns turned her into a poltergeist, you’d demand a loving time-out in the naughty chair. From this day forward I want you to extend that same compassion to your adult self.”
“A few times, I’ve noticed someone deliberately watching me to see which bathroom I’ll go into. If this happens, I pause by the entrances to the bathrooms, pull a coin out of my pocket, and flip it. Then (and this is what makes the performance more than a mere prank) I look down at the coin with an expression of dismay, mutter aloud, “Oh, God, not again”—and walk into the bathroom I was going to use anyway.”
—
“Renaming the Bathrooms: A Cruel Trick for Queer Ends” - Raphael Carter
Have a look at the source page to read some examples of odd bathroom renaming they did.
