How Procrastination is a Form of Self-Neglect

Hi Dr. Webb. I was just reading this and it hit me that one of the reasons I procrastinate is that once the thing I’m working on is done, there is no one to applaud my efforts so part of me feels like “why try?” But it feels good to finish things I start, so I want to learn how to break through this habit and start looking for my own “applause” instead of waiting for another person to notice what I’ve done.

I definitely have CEN raised in 50’s with no emotional attunenent and states away from grandparents.there was no structure given for home chores but always tried to help mom. I was shy didn’t see my mom make friends and didn’t know how. What are three things you describe? How do I build a sense of support to learn to break out of isolation and procrastination? I am avoidant but want to learn how to lessen this and find a sense of feeling good and make positive progress

I definitely have CEN raised in 50’s with no emotional attunenent and states away from grandparents.there was no structure given for home chores just bussed across town to religious school that taught a terrorizing God. I was shy didn’t see my mom make friends and didn’t know how. Husband left me 5 years ago, he was primary breadwinner. What are three things you describe? How do I build a sense of support to learn to break out of isolation and procrastination when my immaturity is turn off if I’m honest with others? I deal with much fear and I procrastinate, want to break out.

I can’t help wondering if ADHD is also part of CEN especially now seeing Dr Jonice Webb’s work in correlating procrastination as part of CEN – I do wonder if much of this is linked.

My neighbour suddenly commented to me about my dog “what a mean, angry looking beast”. I felt hurt, offended, I felt my dog was being insulted. I have always been nice to my neighbour. This dog breed might look little bit “sharp” but he has the sweetest character, has never been aggressive to any human.
When I explained my hurt feeling to my mother, she was like “but it was a joke, I would have taken it as a joke, you are over reacting”. How an insult can be a “joke”? Sometimes it’s just so damn hard to be a cen child and now a cen adult…First being hurt by my neighbour and then shamed and invalidated by my mother. All I did was to spend some nice time outside with my beloved dog!
It’s super annoying, when my mother’s attitude is that her reaction and emotion is “correct” and mine is therefore wrong! She doesn’t seem to understand, that different people might react, perceive and feel different way in the same situation. Would I say to my neighbour that “your wife is a fat and mean looking woman”, and expect him to take it as a light joke? Obviously not! And I’d never voice such things! (he actually doesn’t have a wife, but as an example)
My point is, I realised maybe I should stop trying to share my emotions with people, like my mother, who will not validate or understand me. Instead are very quickly to invalidate me. Would an emotionally healthy/developed person do so??
It’s sad, I realised, if I don’t share anything about me personally, emotionally with someone…then there is really no real relationship, no depth in the relationship, no deeper connection. Then it is just in the superficial level…talking about the weather, news and celebrities etc. non-personal things. I love what someone said what intimacy means…it’s in-to-me-see.
That’s what I as a former cen child would deeply want…to be seen, felt, connected.

I find my procrastination filled w fear — even terror — at the prospect of being judged wrong and stupid for whatever is that I am doing. Based, of course, in the reality that I was called wrong and stupid for whatever it was I did. For being me. For showing up. My needs and feelings were not neglected. They were actively denied and ridiculed. Procrastination as self-neglect is fascinating! It demonstrates that my needs are just not important enough to address. Because I may not really know what I want or need! How very regularly I was told that I didn’t know my own wants, needs, likes/dislikes, or anything else about myself. I have only recently begun to recognize that I don’t even consider meeting my needs or wants. It actually never even occurs to me! Taking action on my own behalf now joins that recognition!! Sigh ….

But what if I’m just lazy? Or is any of us truly lazy? If I’m motivated, inspired, interested in about something, I’ll do it fast and efficiently!

I’ve wanted to write a book (I’m complete amateur), but just taking the first step, starting, seems to be the hardest part.
The nasty inner voice says, who do you think you are to write books…Fear that I’ll just waste my time. Could procrastination
be some form of self doubt, fear of failure?

Also diets always start on mondays or “tomorrow” for me…which basically means never 🙂 I think my routine, habits, even an unhealthy one provides some sense of familiarity, safety, comfort…starting to do something in a new way consumes energy, feels uneasy, unpleasant…it’s just hard. Could procrastination actually also be somekind of self-protection…I’ll procrastinate so that I don’t have to face, feel, those mentioned “negative” emotions? And what’s the “cure” for this? I just realised, procrastinating things endlessly means nothing will change for the better, nothing will be done 🙁

Perhaps you should also consider how parents being TOO punitive and too harsh in taskmaking can create the same thing. I was the kind of kid who came home every Friday night and was made to clean half the house immediately. I couldn’t even sit down and watch the last half hour of a soap opera I liked without my mother screaming at me to get to work and that I was lazy. I had to vacuum half the house, clean both bathrooms, and dust. Often this would take me til 8pm. What kid had to come home on FRIDAY after a long week of school and do all this? Then first thing Saturday morning it was homework until it was all done. I was in a gifted program at school and was piled up with homework every night. I hated it. It would take me longer than it had to because I wanted to play, read, relax, and I would start to daydream.

I treated myself like this most of my life. OK, so I have a professional degree, but I have suffered a lot because from school to college to professional school to jobs I called “cot jobs” (“Bring a cot and a hot plate, ’cause you ain’t NEVER going home!”) to elder care over the past ten years, I. AM. SICK. OF. WORK.

Sick of it, sick of it, sick of it. And, you know what? IT DOESN’T MATTER. There’s just more and more and more and more of it. More chores. More bills. More hours at work. The older you get, you have to work harder and harder and harder and harder for less and less and less in terms of fitness and leanness. Nobody will ever want my writing. And for what?

When I am old, I will still be the same little old lady in the same nursing home, doddering and crippled or demented or whatever I am going to be. I will still be alone. What difference will it make?

Today I had plans. I was going to get up! I was going to walk a mile or two! I was going to go and vote early! I was going to clean the house!

I opened the doors and windows and started my day doing a tarot card reading. And it was such perfect, perfect weather and it was so nice to have the windows open and the sun shining and be able to hear the creek and the birds outside, I. FUCKING. DID. NOT. WANT. TO. DO. A. THING.

And I didn’t. I enjoyed the nice weather and the beautiful view outside. I goofed around on the computer. I took a nap. These are the things I never, ever felt like I had luxury to do.

Who CARES if I clean the house? No one. Who cares whether I vote this week or next week? Does it really make any difference to anyone what I do? No, it does not. And I am sick of working, working, working myself to death to accomplish, accomplish, accomplish, accomplish things that really don’t matter very much at all in the overall scheme of things.

I am widowed. I am alone. I’m likely to spend the rest of my life that way. The day is coming when I won’t be able to do anything else but sit.

Might as well learn to be happy with that. Because, in my experience, all this do-do-do-do-do has left me with expectations for my life that were unrealizable and a big pile of doo-doo.

Why be so driven all the time?

I could be Lisbeth!! Running On Empty has been my go-to since starting therapy with a CEN professional. Your blog post really hit home this morning though. I’ve come a long way in the last year but I need to work harder at overcoming my procrastination. If often holds me back when trying to address other areas of CEN – either by avoiding or by letting my list obsession overwhelm me. I’m going back to the 3 Things Exercise today & work harder on that area. Loving your work! I have a long way to go still but it’s been life changing already. Now I UNDERSTAND where all this comes from and I can finally focus on correcting the behaviors. Thank you Dr. Webb!!!

Thank you Jonice, this article makes me think about my own procrastination.

I have significant procrastination issues, but not always. Much has to do with whether I feel involved in the work, and have faith in myself.

I do believe that there are links to my upbringing. My father and mother were never much involved with my school. They didn’t have much schooling themselves, and I went to a top-level school. My father was not much interested in it, and my mother too insecure to involve herself into it.

Unfortunately, my father especially was also totally ignorant of, and uninterested in, my feelings. When I struggled with social issues at school, I was all alone. When the age had arrived to explore possibilities for university (I was first in my family) I was all alone.

I chose the wrong subject at university and I wanted to switch to medicine. I gathered all my courage to say that I wanted to switch. Itself a bad sign: I needed courage to tell my parents about my feelings! My father responded way worse than with indifference: he outright forbade me from switching. In one single sentence. And that was the end of the conversation.

He never, not at that time and not later, asked me even about my feelings or thoughts on the matter. He was not at all interested in why I wanted to switch.

I now understand that I have never had a relationship of trust and intimacy with my father. He was unable to create that relationship, and unwilling too. He was never interested in changing his approach, or learning, or opening up, or getting to know me.

Over the years my relationship with him ossified and marginalized. Eventually we landed in years of fights in which I desperately tried to connect with him. Sometimes I tried in good ways, sometimes I tried in bad ways. It never worked. And the effort always came from me.

A moment that really hit hard was when I in a conversation told him – not for the first time – that I needed to hear from him that he loved me. That these words were important to me. His response: “I love you? Those are just words. I cannot do much with that.”

He couldn’t even acknowledge – perhaps not even hear me say – that I needed this. And I realized anew the vast distance between us.

I broke with him two years ago. It is a sad choice. But I feel in my heart that it is the right choice.

There is a line in the movie Guardians of the Galaxy 2 that always rings true to me: “He may have been your father, but he was never your daddy.”

I think that my tendency to procrastinate goes back to the iniquity of school homework and having to focus on something that I really didn’t want to have to do – and in the evening when parents were able to relax after their day at work. Then there is the desire to turn in a good job. What I write, whether an email or a report, when it finally emerges, is good but oh! the effort taken to get there; where a single sentence can take over an hour due to finding other things to become engaged in. A computer offers endless sources for distraction so I feel that my procrastination is becoming worse and worse (I even put off reading your article!). I shall certainly try your exercises.

Thank you so much for this post! In the last couple of months, I have really been trying to understand my procrastination habits and had recognized that it is rooted in self-neglect and in fulfilling that feeling of chaos because of the lack of structure in my household growing up. This post just perfectly put together what I was picking up on.

This makes perfect sense. My procrastination drives me crazy, I feel like I’m wasting my life. I feel guilty saying CEN applies to me to because my parents did their best and were great in so many ways, but having two older, troubled half siblings rendered me the good, quiet girl who asked for nothing and never let her feelings show. Now, at 46, I feel paralysed and unable to distinguish the difference between being selfish and recognising/asking for what I need. It feels like nothing matters yet everything does, and procrastination is the middle ground. Thank you for this insight Dr J, and I look forward to working my way through your books and other material.

Oh Dr Webb this is me to a tee. I put non urgent things off endlessly to the point where they become urgent and I stress endlessly about them. I have realised though that this is a form of self neglect and am trying to address it. Thank you so much for writing this.

Where can I find the 3 Things Exercise in the book? Thank you!

My issue with procrastination has always been fear of failure/doing poorly. This has re-emerged in my efforts to learn to draw. I have little patience with the learning period, as I expect that I should be perfect right away. When I actually apply myself (e.g. when I was working in a job that involved writing legal appeals), I generally do OK. But the whole process is agony. I’m not very kind or patient with myself (you can guess that I had highly critical parents). I just can’t give myself the leeway to be less than perfect. *sigh*

Hi Dr. Webb, thank you for making this connecting between procrastination and self-neglect, as it helps me develop an “aha” that began for me about a year ago. I began to realize that my lack of self-discipline was tied to my low self-worth. I would happily do things for other people and help them, but cleaning my own room or doing my own dishes felt like such a burden. Even things as simple and basic as brushing my teeth felt like an necessary chore. Once I made the connection to my self worth, I stopped telling myself I “should” do such-and-such. Instead, now I ask myself if I’m worth doing it for (with the implied, “yes, I am!”). The shift in perspective has been transformative, and this article you’ve written helps drive this point further home for me. Thank you!

This makes a lot of sense, but I’d also love to read about how CEN and Procrastination intersect with ADHD and the Rejection Anxiety that often comes along with ADHD.

Thank you for your very encouraging articles Jonice, they lift my spirit. For many years I was married to a very controlling man, but even after divorce, I still waited for him to return, although he left me for someone else. Well procrastination comes in here, because I realise that I used this waiting to prevent a dream of moving to a beautiful place near my sister, and maybe find peace and love. It has taken 20 years to finally put this into operation, and my house is up for sale! Scared yes, but at 70 it is now or never. My lovely mother, was unable to show feelings to us because my father was cruel and controlling to her.

I am an only child of parents who were so busy brainwashing me into liking what the liked with regards to music, clothing, furnishings, etc. that I was discharged from making my own choices. I was an old soul at a young age. They were also perfectionists. As a result, my procrastination stems from being a perfectionist and overachiever. I am totally exhausted just thinking about everything on my to list before I even start. I have been trying to take small baby steps so I don’t get so stressed out. Unfortunately, I never realized how manipulative and controlling they were until my late 50’s. I feel like my life was more their life than it was mine and it’s very depressing. Thank you for your books. Some parts are upsetting as they reopen old wounds that were buried so deep. Thanks again

I have struggled with procrastination my entire life (61 years old), and unfortunately, there have been professional consequences for my delays, inaction, and procrastination. There was definitely a lot of structure, rules, chores, and discipline while I was growing up, but there was little emotional involvement, encouragement, or recognition from my mother…never felt I measured up in her eyes. (My father was more engaged, but he was very passive, so my mother dominated everything.) I’ve tried lots of the recommendations for overcoming procrastination (lists, reminders, schedules, timers, etc.), but nothing has ever worked…thanks for offering comments and advice that really makes sense. Now I just need to not procrastinate and actually work on applying it!!!

I am so glad you didn’t decide to leave this topic for later Jonice !

Hi Jonice tried to use your coupon code to sign up for the Introduction to CEN webinar but told it had expired. I had only just received your email about it! Quite disappointing 🙁 Is there any way to sort this? Thanks

SO TRUE. People would tell me how smart, talented I was, but parents ignored all this, and mother’s favorite saying was : “You think you’re so smart! Well, if you knew just half of what you think you know, you might know something”. (IQ was 126 before 16 yrs. of university and 4 degrees later). I never realized how this reception by less educated, probably jealous parents, created me as scapegoat to my siblings and other family members. Today, I’m 75 and now understand what happened (early in life) to keep me disconnected from most people, not truly believing in or appreciating myself, and depressed for most of my life. Diagnosed as bi-polar II at @age55. Now doing well emotionally, after new understanding of unintentional (generational) abuse from parents (long deceased).
Loved your books and recommend them to others who love them, too. Thanks for you wonderful work !!!

Hi Jonice
This one on procrastination really hit home for me! It’s about making decisions, not hesitating so much and finally helping me to feel responsible for my own happiness and life!

Sometimes I am reluctant to begin something because I’m not confident I can do it all or do it perfectly. I’m beginning to be able to do something half way. For instance cleaning out part of the inside of my car when I don’t have enough time to do both front and back seat areas or picking up the clutter in a room when I don’t have time or energy to dust and vacuum that afternoon as well. Even completing part of a task gives some satisfaction and energy to do more later or the next day. It’s even better when somebody notices and comments on it.

Excellent insight and really does make a ton of sense
Thank you Dr. Webb

I had far to much discipline and consequences for not following the rules. Very strict father and house ran with military precision. And a mother who criticised me a lot. Don’t remember any encouragement to do stuff. My procrastination is always about starting things/finishing. I find it much easier to stop things. After reading your article and the link to the other one I’ve concluded that I need to encourage myself/reward myself for attempts at starting things. I have never ever been able to stick with my physio exercises for my bad back. I have rarely even started! So, I will attempt this again now and see what happens. Thank you. PS the reason I found you in the first place was because I googled procrastination. I do hope this works for me!

Thank you Dr. Webb. I felt like you were describing my life exactly. I can’t tell you how many weekends I felt like Lisbeth. Procrastination is something I’ve struggled with all my life. I usually get whatever I need to get done completed – but at a huge price of guilt, anger and anxiety. Yet I repeat the same process over and over. I’m 51 with a very successful career but I am filled with self-doubt, imposter syndrome and lack of motivation. Thank you for this blog. I never realized procrastination was a form of self-neglect and tied to CEN. I just thought there was something wrong with me and that I was lazy. Having ADD on top doesn’t help! Thank you again. Ron

Makes a lot of sense! Thank you for this post. Just a heads up, the link to 3 Things Exercise is not working on my iPhone.

Lately, more than ever, I have been procrastinating more and more. The more I thought about something I was avoiding, the more I avoided it. And, I couldn’t figure out WHY!!! Your message, therefore, was especially welcomed. I shall keep the 3 things in mind as I go about my life. Hopefully, since this has been explained, I can correct this unwelcome behavior that has persisted throughout my 74 years. Thank you, Jonice!!

Recently I participated in riding competition, first time in my adult life! I had also 2 years ago a dangerous near-accident situation with horses. So I had a lot of this bubbling nervous, worried chat, energy and emotions just before the competition. My friend (!?) said to me, in a judgemental and irritated tone “could you just for once focus on something/someone else than yourself!”. I felt very hurt and offended. Once again, I felt as a cen person, I was not known, not “felt” by other people. She doesn’t even know “my story” (cen childhood etc.).
Irony is, I wasn’t even so much focusing on myself actually. I was worried for example I will screw up the competition, and then what other people, THEY, will think (or feel).
I have tried to follow your advice Jonice. I paid attention to my feelings, shared and expressed them. (I think in that moment being aware of my emotions was critically important, because horses can infallibly pick that vibe from humans anyway and act accordingly!). And then when I did that, I became judged and wronged, she made me feel I’m somekind of a self-absorbed egoist. It hurts. I’m not. As a cen person, I’m typically NOT focusing on myself at all. Now I don’t know what to think about all this. She made me feel I did something wrong, or worse, that I “am wrong”. Jonice, is there actually in real life situations, where indeed it would be better to distract and focus on “something else” (than my own emotions)?

Very Good Information.
I really appreciate it. I have been struggling with this again a d not understanding why I don’t have any discipline. Tracy

Where in your book do I find the 3 things exercise?