Procrastinators Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from chronic procrastination.

sick and tired of being sick and tired

I went to three twelve step meetings this sunday: PA, CoDA and SLAA.  I would've gone to an OSPA meeting, if I knew when it were, but instead I made dinner; a healthy "sacrifice."  I need to see more recovery in general, not just in myself but others.  Recovery is contagious. I  need/want to surround myself with it.  I felt so naked in my perspective of myself.  I opened up and did the work.  I even did a first and fourth step on an interaction I had with a roommate, but that interaction hardly scratches the pan compared to the great, great injustice I have done to myself by my chronic misuse of time, lack of proper use of myself and my time and my overall problem of avoidance.  Whatever anyone else has done to me in the past, nothing, NOTHING, holds a candle to my incredible injustice done to myself through the addiction in this program.  Whatever you call it (avoidance, workaholism, binging, procrastination, perpetual lateness), it doesn't matter, I have been a grade A asshole to myself one thousand times over, and I've already paid the price by the harmful consequences.  I do not deserve this sermon/soliloquy depicting just how much I regret dealing myself a blow like this.  I am not entirely to blame.  I am fully responsible, but I did have other problems at work.  And I did not have a way of dealing with or identifying my problems.  But forget about that for now.  I was just thinking as I sat down, after all the preparatory work I did today that I am sick and tired of being sick and tired.  I am sick of being this person, who has lost out on almost every single opportunity that ze has strived for with all hir perseverence.  I am sick of working hard at undergrad, only to have to withdraw from graduate school, because I could not figure out how to take on realistic tasks.  I am sick of being a person who took two years to figure out that instead of doing a research project from a former class, that ze should have just taken the class over again, which is exactly what I ended up doing.

I'm sick of being a person, who lost out on getting honors, because I couldn't write a simple summary paper to summarize my research, because I procrastinated until the end of time, and when I actually wrote a summary, which would have been fine, I felt so overwhelmed and scared of the idea of submitting an honors research paper I didn't.  But I could tell you many stories like that...I am sick of being someone who threw away an opportunity to go to the university of my choice, because I couldn't decide in time whether to appeal to the dean, after there had been a UDC ruling not in my favor.  OF course the situation was already unappealing for me, and of course i was in difficult straits, and of course I did not know what I knew now about how to function.  I didn't even have that much working for me.  Nevertheless, I am so angry at myself.  I am incredibly mad.  Incredibly mad.  I started having this addiction long before I even knew what it was. I  feel in a sense as if I were adopted by this addiction at an early age.  I coped with my unsatisfactory guilt of being late by always being perfect, or needing to be.  I was late because I could never be on time.  I don't even know why but I'd sure like to remember why I started coming late to things in the first place.  I thought that if i could make it, could fake it, could fool everyone else that I had it together, and I did, or so I thought (I fooled even myself) that it would be okay.  I didn't even have a notion for much of the time that what I was doing was completely destructive to me and those around me.  I had no clue.  And now, I am living a lie.  My whole life, off and on I have lived a lie.  For a few years I get to live honestly by removing myself of the burden of a life with too much to do, and then somehow I forget my lesson, overwhelm myself and lie to everyone including myself about what I can take on.  But the person I owe the biggest apology to is myself.

I do not now think I can ever forgive myself, even though that is key.  No wonder I feel so inept, have such a lack of self-esteem and have even felt worthless in asserting my needs most of the time.  I have been dishonoring myself full scale as if I were an ersatz version of myself.  Why do I do this?  They say that the why is not as important as the doing, but I don't even have a method for beginning to change myself.  And I want to change.  I feel like I cannot change. I do not know how to change.  I have been functioning in this binging methodology, this perfectionistic, over-compensating way my whole life I cannot even imagine a world outside of the self-deprecation of self-disappointment.  But I am sick of living in this world of living up to my own fears every time, so I know that I will change.  It's that not knowing, that desire to control the outcome, the craving to know all my tomorrows that will disable my attempts to take action today.  I'm appealing to my HP now.  Please show me the way out of this ball of yarn.  I reckon I get my own self into this mess.  Please, HP, give me some clarity about what is most important in my life.  I say I know what the proper thing to do is, but I must not know if I don't take action.  I surrender my whole life strategy of and obsession with chronic procrastination. I am powerless.  I am willing to do whatever it takes to gain sanity, clarity and self-honesty, even if that means not knowing what to do and not knowing what I am doing, I only ask that I am guided by a higher power.

 I don't even know if this guiding force exists.  The best of HPs I've had in this addiction thus far have been the following: my dean demanding I graduate on a particular quarter, my leaving the county, and needing to request my degree in writing, my friend from program being in class, forcing me to come on time, my friend being a grader of a class, forcing me to actually turn in all the homework, my boss demanding me to be accountable.  These forces were always other people, but *this* that I must do now requires MORE than just someone else helping me out through one itsy bitsy crisis.  I have some work that requires a serious self-commitment.  And then I need/want to be in program, but that requires that *I* take some self-initiative and actually follow through.  Follow through is what my life is missing and I rue that. I even detest that I'm writing that down.  I want to be someone who gets the job done, who follows through, who says what I say I'm going to do.  I need to be, or the success/knowledge I've gained in any sphere is almost worthless to me.  No wonder i have such little esteem, despite all of my accomplishments.   I need to keep promises to myself.  I need to do what I say I will.  I have got to follow through on commitments I make to myself.

 I won't lie to you.  My lack of faith in self has gotten so bad that I am resistant to making promises to myself and others.  But today I glanced upon a new potential self.  I let myself entertain the thought of committing to something.  It made me feel involved, invested.  And yet, at once I saw how I'd relinquished my commitment to things past and I rued that.  So I have to do one thing at a time, before I take on any new projects.  Today is the first day I thought about that, and actually put it into action in a small way, and believe me, I hated the idea of it.  I felt deprived.  But the real deprivation is that I have gone about my life half-assed and not accomplished those things that I have deemed essential.  Sure I 've gotten the big blocks done, but not without a lot of structure, and a lot of help, and at one point or another P. catches up with me when I am on my own.  Oh how I regret my errors.  I would go anything to go back in time.  I would go anything not to have done what I did to myself.  I have not yet got a clue how to get myself out of my present crisis situation, but I'm going to start with some self-honesty.  Something I don't even know how to do, don't even want to do.

your thoughts have some

your thoughts have some ressemblance to mine after I've went through a very rugh day, usually I just start writing everything that goes trough my mind. When all that negative thinking is done, I stop and then I start thinking about the stuff that cheer's me up, like my family or simple thing like walking in the forest whatever makes you feel better. I believe negative thinking will only induce more of that negative thinking and breaking this pattern is essential too overcoming the challenges ahead.

 Maybe what I wrote won't help you but coming here is a good way to help you recover that's for sure.

cheer up!

encouragement for fudo

hi fudo.

Some positive things about you: You are very introspective. You have spent a lot of time analyzing yourself deeply. That's a skill not everyone has.

You have high standards. I have met many people i wish had higher standards, but you already have those high standards.

You are trying to improve yourself. Many people just give up, but you're a fighter. I know you're not happy w/ yourself, but at least you have not given up on yourself.

You are honest. Many people shy away from their own faults, but you are brave enuf to face them.

this i pick up on just reading your posts. I could go on.

I hurts me to see you beat yourself up so much. Imagine if someone on the forum said to someone else the things you said about yourself. In fact, i do this exercise with myself. I treat myself worse than i treat others--dont give myself the benefit of the doubt, condemn myself instead of encouraging myself to try again. So i'm now trying to treat myself at least as good as i treat others.

Also, i have adopted an idea that i got here from journey, that i serve HP and others. And if i beat myself up, i am taking away from my service to HP and others. In fact, in the face of failures, no matter how severe, or how frequent, the best way i can serve is to try again. Reflecting on my failures to learn from them helps, but getting myeslf into a funk helps no one, especially not the ones i want to serve. This idea has been helping me try again a lot lately.

Please keep coming back so we can encourage each other and share recovery stories. Good Luck! :)

-----
fall down seven times, get up eight - japanese proverb

procrastinating by studying procrastination: http://www.procrastinators-anonymous.org/node/1114#comment-23050

Hi Clement,   I love

Hi Clement,

 

I love your/journey's thought:

"if i beat myself up, i am taking away from my service to HP and others.
In fact, in the face of failures, no matter how severe, or how
frequent, the best way i can serve is to try again. Reflecting on my
failures to learn from them helps, but getting myeslf into a funk helps
no one, especially not the ones i want to serve. This idea has been
helping me try again a lot lately."

 

and I try hard to live it, but my passive aggressiveness towards my loved ones (and towards myself) is most of the time much stronger than my wish to improve myself for the sake of my family (I don't believe in HP).

 How on earth, please tell me, did you get there? The thought of treating my family and friends with so much more respect by just doing the things I'm supposed to do, is so breathtakingly beautiful, but I just can't live it, only a little little bit. How did you get there?

 

"The sands are numbered that make up my life" Shakespeare

re:Constance beating yourself up

Obviously we are not yet perfect :) but at some point I realized that the time I spend "beating myself up" is wasted just as surely as the time I spent procrastinating.  I began to see that it is a bit selfish and ego-involved too to spend that time just thinking about myself. 

If you don't want to think about a higher power, it may help to think of a higher part of your consciousness - the part that sees the truth about procrastination, resistance, and passive-aggressive behaviors.   There is a part of you that understands what you are doing . . . seek advice from that part of yourself. 

Some of us believe that the higher part of your consciousness is the part that is connected to source, to the infinite.   But it is not necessary to believe that way to realize that some part of you can see more clearly what is going on.

Jo    

"It is never too late to be what you might have been." - George Eliot

good for you

good for you for finding this site!  You write very well, I could identify with so many of the issues brought up.  The terror that paralyzes one faced with the enormity of a project...even though we know perfectly well to break it down, and once it is started it will be so easy...

But things MUST be broken down into smaller chunks, and those smaller chunks can be broken down as well.  Life only works this way, we can only take one physical step at a time.

I need to start relearn this every day so I feel better about myself and my multiple roles in life.

Good luck to you! and me too !