![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I was talking to my psychologist and he suggested a particular task as my "homework" for our next consultation, and I said that I'd been thinking I should do another task before that, and he said, "You can do both of them at the same time," which was completely true.
Aaaand... that had never occurred to me?
And I was briefly mind-blown, and then disturbed to realize that it came as... kind of an alarming epiphany.
And naturally, then I was disturbed by the fact that I was so surprised - the scope of the emotional shock seemed outsize, even if it was a kind of duh moment.
I've had conversations before, of course, wherein someone pointed out that you can do things simultaneously, when I'd been unnecessarily waiting to have finished one of them completely - sort of like a bunny who stops and refuses to go down the hallway because it's alarmed by a blue Ikea bag lying against the wall (this happened a few weeks ago) or, as the ologist suggested, like a horse refusing to step over a stick or creek that's less than a foot wide.
And I do that all the time, in fact.
It's basically my default state of being, from a certain angle; my native status, even my security blanket.
This always-waiting-until-you-can-worry-about-the-next-large-anxiety-on-the-list state of being prevents displacement, when I always know where I'm going (or what I have to do - or be anxious about - next). Procrastination doesn't just allow for panic to provide the primary motivation I need in order to get things done: it also prevents the existential quandary of deciding for myself, with more or less freedom, what to focus on next in life. When you finish writing a story and suddenly don't know what to do with yourself is a much paler version of the existential dread in that experience.
And with avoidant procrastination, you never get it! You never have to make meaningful choices about prioritization because instead you're just always doing triage.
Aaaand... that had never occurred to me?
And I was briefly mind-blown, and then disturbed to realize that it came as... kind of an alarming epiphany.
And naturally, then I was disturbed by the fact that I was so surprised - the scope of the emotional shock seemed outsize, even if it was a kind of duh moment.
I've had conversations before, of course, wherein someone pointed out that you can do things simultaneously, when I'd been unnecessarily waiting to have finished one of them completely - sort of like a bunny who stops and refuses to go down the hallway because it's alarmed by a blue Ikea bag lying against the wall (this happened a few weeks ago) or, as the ologist suggested, like a horse refusing to step over a stick or creek that's less than a foot wide.
And I do that all the time, in fact.
It's basically my default state of being, from a certain angle; my native status, even my security blanket.
This always-waiting-until-you-can-worry-about-the-next-large-anxiety-on-the-list state of being prevents displacement, when I always know where I'm going (or what I have to do - or be anxious about - next). Procrastination doesn't just allow for panic to provide the primary motivation I need in order to get things done: it also prevents the existential quandary of deciding for myself, with more or less freedom, what to focus on next in life. When you finish writing a story and suddenly don't know what to do with yourself is a much paler version of the existential dread in that experience.
And with avoidant procrastination, you never get it! You never have to make meaningful choices about prioritization because instead you're just always doing triage.
