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iāve seen lifelong anxiety essentially resolved in a few hours for the right person - even if they already tried years of therapy meditation etc. But iāve never seen this for procrastination (or any kind of avoidance issue). even after asking other coaches, examples are scarce
@ChrisChipMonk Cos procrastination is 2 layers; the underlying anxiety/discomfort, and the surface level procrastination. You can't solve the surface without solving the underlying, but you don't have access to the underlying. For anxiety, it's already on the surface to work with immedatiely.
@secretpinko watch: https://t.co/DDwEYg6nd6
@tigran_iii for procrastination i'd like to see more experimentation and things like auren - have you tried it? (for the record i haven't tried it much and don't have data on whether it helps with procrast) https://t.co/ae1uwba5KK
Auren is the most emotionally-intelligent AI in the world and can you help you process emotions, make important life choices, and be happier and thrive like no other app can. I've received >100 DMs personally thanking us for making Auren already! Try Auren on iOS! Android soon!
@ChrisChipMonk Oh I got a much better handle on my procrastination before I did anxiety Though tbc I *thought* I had developed a pretty good handle on anxiety prior to that, but it was only that I had dissolved 90% so suddenly that it felt like it was all gone
@ChrisChipMonk Fascinating. I wonder if itās hard because you need to continually balance fear. e.g. if you eliminate all fear - incl. the sense that time is passing, life is finite, thereās more to do - you become complacent, but if you lean too far in you get crippled by it
one theory someone gave me that i liked: - resolving anxiety is like processing emotion - resolving procrastination is like learning to process emotion (takes longer!) maybe resolving lifelong procrastination is usually bottlenecked by interoceptive skill? which is basically like learning to see or a motor skill- requires learning (whereas resolving anxiety is mostly UNlearning insecurities and locally optimal strategies)
@ChrisChipMonk probably because they haven't yet heard of @neuranne's method of triage - is the procrastination based in the head, the heart, or the hands? https://t.co/ml01BPFhXe
@Jeanvaljean689 @neuranne seems interesting! have you seen this technique resolve anyone's lifelong procrastination for 6+ months ongoing? https://t.co/LM4BOHE6ds
Help me find coaches: $200 Bounty I'm looking for referrals to coaches who have, at least occasionally, led someone to resolve lifelong procrastination: - in approximate one session or intervention - even though the client had already tried all of the standard procrastination advice - with effects lasting 6+ months - such that the client became MORE alignedĀ andĀ less numb This referral will be valuable for the coach: Iām looking to refer them bounties from my backlog or at least learn from them I will pay $200 each when I feel satisfied with the above *DM me the referrals - I have questions to ask you* When DMing, please share the best evidence you know that they meet the criteria above
@ChrisChipMonk Is it potentially because anxiety is a state where someone wants to do something so much theyāre overthinking and causing themselves stress, vs procrastination which feels like the inverseāsomeone is forcing themselves to do something they donāt want to do?
@ChrisChipMonk guess: solving anxiety is more about resolving (mistaken) beliefs, which you can do fairly quickly; solving procrastination is more about developing taste about what you like, and finding stuff that's worthy of your agency, which takes time
@ChrisChipMonk Procrastination is evolutionary adaptive, but often misfires now we have longer term, more abstract goals (Some) Anxiety is evolutionary adaptive, but so is the contextual reduction of anxiety (e.g. exposure therapy evolved as a mechanism)
@paul_cal āmisfiresā i don't believe you https://t.co/EUNYgvveVU
Locally optimal psychology Thereās no way that chronic depression, self-loathing, poor agency, or muscle tension could be *optimal*ā¦ right? Jake was depressed for 6 months. He also felt horrible every time he interacted with other people because of his emotional insecurities. So without knowing how to outgrow his insecurities, his system basically had two options: 1. Interact with other people ā and constantly feel horrible 2. Donāt interact with anyone unless absolutely necessary So his system converged on the second option, also known as ādepressionā. Depression certainly wasnāt the globally optimal strategy, but given the options, it was a locally optimal strategy. [š“Depression, the best strategy known and accessible at the time.] Once he outgrew his emotional insecurities, however, he was no longer blocked on the better optimum of both interacting with others and not feeling horrible. And so with no need for the ādepression strategyā, the symptoms evaporated ā two years and counting. I know because Jake was me. More examples of locally optimal strategies Most chronic issues for the people I help end up looking like locally optimal strategies. For example, self-loathing often turns out to be a strategy for avoiding conflict with others. Lack of agency often turns out to be a strategy for avoiding judgements of failure. But ideally, they would both have self-love and be safe from conflicts; or have agency and be okay with judgements of failure. Iāve seen people make significant and sometimes total progress in weeks on issues theyāve had for years. One of my tenets is that any persistent mental issue is probably a locally optimal strategy. (Again: if my mind had hit the āundo depressionā button while I was depressed, I wouldāve gotten hurt!) In my own growth, my issues relating to depression, empathy, conflict avoidance, emotional numbness, eye contact, boundaries, neck pain, and more all turned out to be locally optimal strategies. Only once I fully understood what an issue was doing for me did I make a step change towards resolving it. For example, I had neck pain for 3Ā½ years. A few times it was so bad I couldnāt turn my head. Over the years, I had tried to counteract my neck tension with physical therapy and stretching but nothing really worked. Then, earlier this year I finally realized precisely how it was strategic, so I implemented better strategies towards the same goals and have had ~90% less neck pain since. Btw: Noticing how my neck pain was locally optimal was quite tricky, and even suppressed. So even if an issue IS a locally optimal strategy, it can be quite difficult to understand how. How common are locally optimal strategies? I have no hard data, but I suspect that when an issue has lasted years, local optimality is more probable than not.Ā Why? Consider: If there were no downsides to resolving a persistent issue, then why has it lasted so long?? Thanks to @bjtoomey, @xuenay, @staglynn, @KanizsaBoundary, @AnnaWSalamon, and my clients for support. Further reading on my blog.
@ChrisChipMonk Anxiety hurts when it's happening. Procrastination only hurts when the bill comes due. People will try to attach guilt or anxiety to procrastination to make it hurt when it's happening, but the body knows the mind is intentionally applying that pain, and it knows the solution.
Procrastination hurts a bit. There are two kinds of people. Those who consider procrastination a serious problem (procrastinators) and those who consider it an emergency: won't even eat until something's done, much less distract themselves (who don't procrastinate, but do suffer.)
@RussellJohnston @ChrisChipMonk @AaronPogue my experience resonates with this postāprocrastinating feels bad, work (often) feels better and yet https://t.co/OkUb2Hnrug
Anxiety consistently easier than procrastination in my experience and othersā