Hello
I’m really glad I found this site. This problem is going to kill me if I don’t deal with it. I am 30, and it hasn’t gotten any better with time, the stakes however have gotten higher.
Abut three weeks ago I started attending AA meetings with my uncle, who is a recovering alcoholic with 1 year of sobriety. I found the experience inspirational, moving and helpful, but I just didn’t feel like an “alcoholic” more like someone with a troubled relationship with drinking. I found stopping drinking about as hard (so far –its been three weeks) as kicking some other annoying habit. Although tempted, I didn’t feel like I thought about it all the time. However I finally made the cognitive connection that drinking was a short term solution to a long term problem. Sounds logical right?
Then something my uncle said to me recently made me think- about my life being “unmanageable” and that I needed to “surrender” to that fact. Surrender was one of the big themes of AA that I found hard to swallow.
Then I was watching Dr Drew’ latest reality show about sex addiction, and I thought about my own compulsive porn habit. That activity seemed like much more of an addictive behavior than drinking. I had always known of my life long procrastination “problem” but I had never thought of it as addiction before.
After reading a few posts (thanks Pedro), I recognize that procrastination does give me a “kick.” A high that I engage in compulsively. I’m addicted to avoidance, to escapism, and to fantasy. My three biggest escape activities are porn/masturbation, reading, and TV/movies. Sometimes it doesn’t even seem like my life or my body are my own. Its like there’s a voice in my head that urges me not to think, but just to go ahead and DO whatever escapist option presents itself. Anything to escape from the present reality and the feelings that go along with it. Even staying in bed. Whatever resolutions I make the night before go right out the window…unless I am literally going to get fired or some other life altering consequence, 99 out of 100 times I am hitting snooze and rolling over. The only strategies I find helpful are putting as stimulant (coffee, tea, pills) beside the bedside table to consume immediately upon waking, then going back to sleep, and putting an alarm on the other side of the room. (Of course going to bed at a normal time and not staying up all hours reading or watching TV would help a lot too.)
I hate myself. I feel like a total failure. I am totally ashamed. And I know shame is one of addiction’s greatest allies, because it prevents honesty, directness, and asking for help.
I feel like my life is not my own. Like I’m not a real person because I can’t go out and get the things I want out of life. Sooner or later you have to do things that are unpleasant, difficult, intimidating, scary, personal. You have to be comfortable with failure, You have to be comfortable acting contrary to your impulses and desires. Its like I feel paralyzed. SO many opportunities in this life I know I’ve let slip. And wow I just realized in writing this that that is what people in AA talk about as a consequence to drinking – all the bridges burned, etc.) Every day defined by avoidance of the big issues and the quest for a pseudo meaningful escape activity. Like reading some intellectual, philosophical book- sure it deals with the “big” issues, but the small ones need to be dealt with too, like shoveling the walk or some other chore.
I think procrastination started in about 6th-7th grade, when there was marked shift in school away from creative learning to output oriented execution. For the first time in my academic career it didn’t matter how well I grasped the material. Success depended upon the juggling of responsibilities and the completion of increasing amount of homework projects, i.e. exercises in sustained commitment.
Or maybe escapism had its roots even earlier. After my parents divorced, books and the occasional stolen minutes of TV were the only tangible sources of pleasure. I could lose myself and the realities of an authoritarian and chaotic upbringing in fantasy. I consumed books the way a food addict does Twinkies.
When they diagnosed me with ADD and put me on stimulant medication ( I have been off and on for the last 15 years), which I found somewhat benefited concentration but mostly heightened the experience of procrastination. I would take the pills, then go up into my room and play sim city or some role playing game. I realize now those games seemed far more pleasurable because they were diversion form doing homework. It was like a feeling of control/power, and sort of a guilty pleasure feeling.
For the last year I have been unemployed, telling friend and family I have been writing, taking classes, but mostly just wasting huge amounts of time. Its no way to live. My kind, loving and supportive girlfriend just moved to Germany and wants me to join her over there. She has basically been supporting me the last year.
The biggest thing I am avoiding these days is finding a new job. I haven’t even looked at my resume in years. I feel so out of sync with the world. I feel unemployable and miserable. Its, like I’m not even sure I want a job! I get so resentful b/c I feel like my abilities and attributes aren’t prized in this world (crazy, right?) and I never get recognized for what I do right, only what I do wrong. These feelings probably stem from a perfectionist, critical parent model. I guess I’ve felt like I have always had to be someone I’m not my whole life, like just being “me” just was never good enough. And maybe that resentment is the most damaging thing of all, b/c it’s a lose-lose approach. If I try to “play ball,” I always fell short, and if I try to succeed in something I care about, I will be seen as “wasting time.” So I might as well just sink into the pits of procrastination, play the part of the eternally underachieving martyr, and leave the world behind.
Phew. It feels really good to get that all off my chest, sorry to go on and on but when I get going, look out.
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Hi Seek. I'm pretty new
Hi Seek. I'm pretty new here as well and I've been so blown away by the courage, openness, and support of the community here. You being here, writing all that you did shows that deep inside you there is hope even if you don't necessarily feel that consciously. There was a deeper wisdom in you that led you to reach out and seek support. Welcome and bravo for not giving up. Hope you'll keep posting :)
Life
(Seek)
Welcome. All I can say is WOW!
Keep coming back, your uncle, something/someone is looking out for you.Bring the body, the mind will follow. "I think procrastination started in about 6th-7th grade, when there was marked shift." Be grateful you have not experienced the shift in AA yet. I was lucky enough to come into AA within a year after that "shift" after college. I am trying to remember procrastination shift, around 10th-11th grade. Same time as using food escape. I always thought when I had food recovery, I would stop procrastinating, now I learned is is one of my escapes.
Since PA, I have "showed up" for almost 6 months, every day, through things that would have made me shut down before. A new "shift" in the right direction.
You are not alone. Keep coming back.
I can identify with SO much
I can identify with SO much of what you've said about procrastination. If it helps at all, I was seriously worried I was unemployable a few years ago (I'm now 32, so about the same age as you, too) - I don't know how many times I'd been fired, but I stopped counting at 10! I'm now a legal PA and have kept the same job for 2 years. It's difficult but my bosses are really appreciative and supportive. You CAN turn it around, and there ARE bosses out there who prize creative and unusual people.
About getting a job: I'd suggest you ask a friend to help you with updating your resume and getting in touch with local job agencies. Look for temp jobs because they're easier to get with a holey resume :) and be open to jobs that are 'not good enough' for someone of your intelligence. Factory work was a godsend to me when I felt unable to cope with an office job - it's impossible to procrastinate on a production line! Doing the 'not good enough' jobs gave me an employment history, references, and a bit of confidence to work my way up into better ones.
I hope you don't mind my dropping a bucket of unsolicited advice on your head, I just hate seeing anyone in that position and wanted to let you know that I think there's hope.
Hi Seeker
Several of us here are multiply addicted and attend face-to-face meetings of various 12 Step groups. Even if that group's issue isn't mine (of course respecting their traditions on open/closed meetings), I almost always find points of connection about the nature of addiction and the steps to recovery.
I hope you'll check out the PA Tools and use the daily check-ins. The latter is especially helpful in getting started in PA, by reading what others share on the daily journey. See you around PA!
Welcome Seeker!
You will find support here.
Jo
How you spend your days is how you live your life - Edge
welcome
Thanks Jo, I have already felt that. I hope to be able to help as well as be helped. As you can tell, I have a lot of ideas :)