The link between our relationship with our emotions and procrastination

In my last blog, we explore the topic of procrastination through a trauma-informed lens. In this blog, I wanted to explore with you the link between our emotional world and procrastination.

When we were young, ideally our environment was supportive. Our caregivers, parents, teachers and other adults in our lives responded to our needs and comforted us when we were hurt, afraid or sad.

We felt safe, validated, and soothed.

We learnt the skills we needed to regulate and sooth ourselves. We understood our emotions and what they meant. We felt able to respond and make a difference to our situation.

If we didn’t grow up in that environment, we don’t pick up these skills. Instead, we may have learnt that emotions were to be controlled. An intellectual head-based approach was promoted, that we should ‘fix’ or shut down emotions and bodily sensations.

Emotional growth becomes stunted, and you don’t develop the language to articulate how you feel. Instead of recognising what our bodies and emotions are communicating to us, we learn to shut them down, ignore or belittle them. Emotional literacy is key to truly being able to express ourselves. 

We learn to avoid tasks which bring up emotions or feel ‘too much’.

Further ‘injury’ may have been caused by being told that emotions were a weakness, that you were too sensitive, were ridiculed or rejected for how you felt, or to stop crying. All which leave a child thinking that their emotions aren’t valid, aren’t to be listened to, were a burden for others and shouldn’t be expressed.

Our go-to strategy can be to avoid big emotions as we were never given the skills we needed to work through them.

If we keep avoiding them, we are functioning with part of our biological navigation system offline. Our emotions are part of our natural way of being, so even if you try to ignore them, they are still there. We have become disconnected, disembodied.

Events can become more overwhelming as we struggle under pressure to calm or regulate the sensations or emotions as they rise up. This stress in our system builds up and can push us into another biological response to threat, to freeze. 

This is where we can become stuck, living our life stressed and disconnected. It can impact our joy, our health, our relationships and knowing what we really want or need.

Recognising the importance of being in touch with and responding to our emotions in an appropriate and regulated way is key when we are working in a trauma-informed approach.

If you recognise this pattern, living in a head-based, intellectualised way in any of your clients, I invite you to reflect on past sessions you’ve had. How does knowing this influence the way you coach your client in becoming unstuck?