Another step is the acceptance of emotions for procrastination. Anxiety, depression, or anger may be the chief emotions causing someone to put off doing things. Someone experiencing these emotions or mood state may need to consider getting medications when it comes to the area of procrastination. Acceptance of these emotions involves allowing yourself to feel the emotion, allow it now, and sit with it briefly. This is not easy as humans are wired to avoid feeling the negative feelings. Anger may mask feelings of helplessness, fear or hurt so it can be helpful to tune into those...
Learn MoreOne step to end procrastination is to observe and allow in whatever physical sensations come along with procrastination. In Acceptance and Commitment therapy (ACT) we call this part Acceptance. If you are feeling unmotivated where does this show up in your body? Is in in your neck muscles or stomach and or do you feel it in your shoulders? These are the type pf questions you can ask yourself and then tune into the sensations. You may notice if your are struggling with the sensations and or being judgmental about them. If you are see if you could stop your stugggle and take an observing...
Learn MoreProcrastination is not the explanation for the lack of blogs over the past while. There have been some computer glitiches that finally got fixed. I am sorry for the delay but I thought I would use this negative experience and turn it into a postive oiutcome. Procratination is often a symptom of depression and or anxiety. You may put off things that are important to do because your energy is drained and you don’t feel like doing them. You may put off things because you think you need to do them perfectly. Over the next couple of weeks I plan to adrress some ways of how you may cope with these borrowing from some of the basic ideas of CBT and...
Learn MoreAre you feeling stressed about the new President? This is written a few days before he actually is sworn into office. This means how he really acts as the President is unknown. The things he stated in order to be elected may not come into being. Yet what he said was scary to many people. Whether terrible things will happen is an unknown at this point. He may start to act like a dictator and order the arrest and execution of any people who have opposed him. He may put certain groups of people into concentration camps. He may easily get us into a nuclear war and wipe out the entire human race. On the other hand he may act in a friendly and compassionate way to others and enhance the well being of the population as well as help improve the economy. We don’t know and this uncertainty can result in a good deal of anxiety for many of us. It could have us focus on these scary stories and then some. The question is how could we Californians cope with this? Here are some ideas I came up with. You may want to discuss them with a therapist so that they could be of a help as...
Learn MoreThis article is about suggestions for dealing with high anxiety. High anxiety can have two components that are troublesome. One is that you may avoid important matters so you don’t have to feel this intense feeling and the other is that when the tension button is on very high it feels lousy. As for the latter, we can control the lousy feeling by some interesting ways. They may sound a little confusing but if you are willing to put up with some uncertainty these can be valuable. Allowing in or accepting the lousy feelings is essential. It is, in my opinion natural to fight this feeling but the battle just creates more stress because we cannot win this battle. The other way in addition to acceptance is to very closely notice your breathing, follow it and stay with that pattern for a while you don’t get hooked to any thoughts. The other issue centers on making sure that you will do the things that you want to do as long as you are physically safe even though there is intense anxiety. To do this it seems to me the only choice that can be helpful is doing the thing with the willingness to experience the anxiety that comes...
Learn MoreHow to go about keeping your New Year’s resolution is a major challenge. In using the model of Acceptance and Commitment therapy (ACT) we look at promoting what is truly important to you and what are the barriers that get in your way of trying to head in that direction. The ACT term for this is Values, that is, how to go in the direction of your values even though my be psychological barriers that get in your way. Let’s say your New Year’s resolution is that you will go on a diet. In using Values you would want to make sure that losing weight is something that is truly important to you. It would be important to list and repeat often to yourself the specific reasons why you want to lose weight. You would plan out your new diet and in using ACT you would remind yourself of the value related to losing weight and what are the barriers. One probably would be that you would still have the urge to want to eat your now forbidden foods. Using ACT you would practice acceptance of the urge by allowing in the urge in a non judgmental way. The book called The Happiness Trap by Dr. Russ Harris...
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