How can Cognitive Behavioural Therapy treat Procrastination?

Procrastination

Conditions

Are you Struggling with Procrastination?

When we procrastinate, we prevent ourselves from living a stress-free and happy life. When chronic procrastination becomes entrenched in our behaviour patterns, we need to learn new thought processes and behaviour patterns to counteract the negative impact procrastination has in our lives.

CBT helps with this. With chronic procrastination, cognitive behavioural therapy works by helping you approach your with the problematic behaviours and thoughts in a more positive way.

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What is Procrastination?

According to an academic paper on procrastination published by the Journal of Educational Psychology, chronic procrastination can be defined as ‘the practice of carrying out less urgent tasks in preference to more urgent ones, or doing more pleasurable things in place of less pleasurable ones, thus putting off impeding tasks to a later time.”

Chronic procrastinators often have perpetual problems starting or completing tasks. It is linked to a wide range of mental issues and negative emotions such as guilt, anxiety and depression. Chronic procrastination can also negatively impact our self-esteem as well as our physical health and stress levels. In fact, a 2010 study titled, “I’ll go to therapy, eventually” found that procrastination and stress are closely connected and that high levels of procrastination is linked to poorer mental health and fewer actions taken to look after mental wellbeing.

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When to seek treatment for Procrastination

You should consider treatment for your procrastination when:

You avoid going to work, miss crucial appointments or meetings or avoid the task in hand altogether by watching TV or engaging in an activity that brings us more joy.

You engage in behaviours or actions that prevent you from committing to the task we actually need to do.

You convince yourself that what we need to do is not that important.

You compare your situation and actions to those you perceive as being even worse than ours.

You make jokes to make yourself feel better about your inability to complete something or reach your goal.

You believe that your procrastination is a result of external factors beyond our control.

You pretend that doing that task in hand straight away will be harmful to your performance.

You deny that you’re even procrastinating at all and convince yourself that what you’re doing now is actually more important than what you really need to do.

You procrastinate because you’re too lazy to do what you should be doing.

"Was unsure what to expect initially, but found talking through the sessions and logically working them out beneficial"

Female, 26

"Was a wonderful service. I have all the stuff that I need to look back on if I need to use it. I'm sad that they have come to an end as they have helped a lot."

Male, 22

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