Anxiety and depression cause procrastination

Most people don’t realise the profound effect anxious and depressive emotions have upon reducing our levels of motivation and increasing our levels of procrastination! By procrastination we mean, putting things off, refusing to accept that things need changing, suppressing needs, avoiding conflict and generally not feeling like you have enough emotional desire to take action in your life.

Good things don’t feel good & bad things don’t feel bad!

So how come anxiety feels so terrible? And depression feels so numbing?

After extended periods of experiencing anxious feelings, panic attacks and /or depression, nearly everybody gets to the point where their emotions become less intense. The person becomes more and more emotionally exhausted and their general feelings begin to become more and more numbed (except for the feelings of anxiety.)

What we mean by emotions becoming numbed are feelings of; love, excitement, joy, hope, determination, acceptance, humility, positivity, motivation, as well as, negative emotions being numbed such as; pain, despair, unfairness, apathy, anger, resentment etc. For now, it is important to realise that without full access to your emotions and feelings, it is very hard to make decisions and therefore procrastination may rear its ugly head.

We explain why (and how to recover) in the Calmness In Mind Anxiety Recovery Program  for now though, we’d like to give you some things to consider.

Emotions help us to make decisions

One of the problems we generally experience when anxiety / depression takes hold, is the decrease in our ability to make decisions. This is because it is our emotions that help us to make choices, we look at our options and then we get a feeling and this emotion guides us towards a yes (feels good) or a no (feels bad). We used these unconscious emotions when we were cavemen (before we could talk) as do most mammals to make decisions about what is good for us (as an animal) and what is adverse to our survival. We often call it instinct or gut feeling.

You might say that an emotion is the unconscious agitation of our internal organs and is the ‘animals’ way of communication with us (and it works well) except when the person is anxious or depressed.

So, when a persons emotions become numbed they temporarily loose the ability to use their gut feeling, and therefore, start to use their conscious mind (thoughts) to make logical decisions (still hoping that the body will confirm their conscious decisions with a feeling) which doesn’t come.

This leaves the person stuck in their thoughts and unable to easily make decisions, they think and think and think, procrastinate and procrastinate, and just get themselves further trapped and anxious by all the voices in their mind. I hope by now you are also realising that you can’t think your way out of anxiety or depression – it just doesn’t work that way!

Anxiety drugs numb feelings too

This article is not about the pro’s and con’s of anti-depression SRRI’s or anxiety beta blockers – there is a time and a place for the use of these. What is important to consider is; what emotions are being numbed by these drugs? Because if they are numbing certain fearful emotions they may also be numbing love and joy! And even though your mood may lift, your ability to make decisions (which will help you to change your life) may not! The anxiety and depression drugs can’t change your circumstances either – they don’t make you smarter or give you new ways of looking at yourself and how you relate to the world.

Helping you to make decisions and end procrastination

Therefore, it makes sense to be able to re-engage with your emotions and quieten your mind if you’d like to be able to become more decisive whilst you are recovering from emotional stress. When you follow the Calmness In Mind Anxiety & OCD Recovery Program  we will teach you exactly what is happening to you at a biological, psychological and physiological level and show you what you need to do to handle the anxious emotions and bring back your authentic emotions and re-engage with being able to make decisions and take back control of your life.

Time to end procrastination? Perhaps you can make the first decision today?