I had an "Ah Ha" moment this morning (about the whole veg on TV/avoidance the last couple nights) while convincing myself to stop hitting the snooze and get up. It's become even more clear as I typed about it.
Dr. H. and I have talked about it some so I don't know why it seemed to "click" more this morning or why I thought of it on my own instead of having Dr. H. remind me about it.
I realized that not only are the papers late but after Monday, in my mind, I've also now officially missed two deadlines on both of them. And I've been feeling like crap about it. So it's not so much that I don't want to sit there and figure out how to put the things together and what goes in and what stays out, and avoid sitting there moving a paragraph one place and then changing my mind and moving it back.
It's that I don't want to sit here and be reminded about how awful I feel. I don't want to feel like an idiot for having missed the two deadlines in the first place, so I'm avoiding the thing that's going to put it in my face the most - the papers themselves. When I sit down to work, it's acknowledging and facing the truth that I haven't finished them yet - hence the need to work on them. So that can tap into all that baggage I've been carting around: negative self talk and feelings about these specific papers and this semester about being a loser, a failure, not smart (contrary to IQ test results, if I were I wouldn't struggle) and an irresponsible, undependable person and/or liar because I'd said I'd have them turned in by a certain day and I haven't.
Those tap into doubts about ability to live into this call I've wrestled with from the beginning. I returned to Church in April 1998 and first recognized a call in December 1999. Are you kidding? It's only been a year and a half, I just started my spiritual journey and haven't finished reading the Bible. When I got here in August 2003 I hadn't read church history or theology. I came mostly with my faith, and with some life experience and prior education.
Anyway, the whole writing/avoidance thing is weird because it's the reverse of what you'd think it would be. You'd think that sitting down to work on it would make you feel good (sometimes it does - I was feeling better after making some progress the other day). That it would tap into thoughts of: Hey look, I'm able to do this, I'm making progress, etc. and that you would avoid the avoidance because that's when your conscience is sitting on your shoulder yapping at you about everything else you need to be doing.
But instead it's kind of the reverse and becomes a viscious cycle.
Something happens and you don't finish the paper (it was hard to pull together, were being too thorough or perfectionistic, you had too many assignments or responsibilities and couldn't juggle them all, you got sick, etc). Then you're frustrated about whatever made you late and feel bad about missing the due date. Then you try to work on it, but don't get far because in addition to the original issue you also now feel bad about not finishing on time.
Because you made such little progress you now feel a little worse. Then you can't bring yourself to work on it. So you find yourself working on other things (because that one is late already, why not work on this other thing that's due), or doing housework, or getting sucked into the TV or internet as a distraction and avoidance of how awful you feel. But the longer it goes, the worse you feel, and you don't want to feel bad.
It's mentally and emotionally painful, and tiring (takes a lot of energy). But it's subtle because you're not even all that aware of it, it's kind of going on in the background. When you go to sit at the computer and then feel like you don't have it in you to do it right now, you decide to watch TV for a while hoping to regroup and be able to do some work after a little break.
You're thinking you're just tired or not inspired or motivated at the moment. You're not aware of all the baggage underneath it all. All you know is that it's getting harder and harder to do the damn thing and you're getting more and more stressed and frustrated about it, and that doesn't help matters either.
So! Now that I've recognized how awful I've been feeling (crying in the shower the other day should have clued me in, but I attributed that to stress and frustration), and know that it might get worse, maybe that can help me push through.
If I know when I sit down I may feel like I don't want to do it right now, can't do it right now, I can expect it and try to acknowledge it as baggage, give it a nod and try to set it aside. I think Dr. H. said once to see if you can just do something anyway - just start somewhere. So maybe I can type something, even if it's stream of consciousness or something I'll delete later because it doesn't flow or fit, just to get through the writers block and on track.
My sister called to check on me and when I told her about the viscious cycle she said that that was happening to her with grading, etc. and she'd finally figured it out a couple years ago so now she does everything she can to do her grading as soon as she has papers and exams, so she doesn't fall into that. Said maybe once I finish one thing I'll feel better, try to do the easiest one first.
Well this is really long and I have to leave soon to meet Advisor.
I'm feeling good about this though, to recognize and finally be able to put more words to what happening. :) I hope it helps me get to work.
Woo Hoo!
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