Hello friends, recently I had done a survey, and the majority had wanted me to prepare a video about overcoming the habit of procrastination. Today’s talk will be about this. The habit of procrastination, sometimes the situation turning into this procrastination trouble, can make our lives very difficult. Generally, if we constantly show procrastinating behaviors like “I’ll do it later, I’ll handle it later,” this can make our lives difficult. For example, you are studying for the university exam. Instead of studying regularly every day for the exam, if you are constantly procrastinating, it is very difficult for you. Sometimes there may be assignments you need to do at a workplace. Emails you need to send, presentations you need to prepare. “I’ll do it later. I’m tired now, let me sleep a bit, I’ll do it later.” Generally, with this procrastination behavior we obtain small pleasures and I do not go over it much. Actually, in the background, in the sense of the unconscious, in the sense of the subconscious, there are different different reasons for this. When I look at it from a holistic perspective, both as a physician and as a psychotherapist and hypnotherapist, behind procrastination there may be biological reasons: it may be anemia, it may be not being able to sleep well, it may be good nutrition? It may be that the intestines do not work well, it may be dysbiosis, depending on the change in the configuration of the bacteria in the intestines. Of course, these affect the whole system. Because we do these behaviors to our brain. It is very, very important that our brain is well nourished and that blood flow is good. If you have anemia, if you have vitamin deficiencies, it is important that these are completed. Also, in some diseases, these behavioral problems can appear, according to my observations. Just as I mentioned a little earlier, anemia, hypothyroidism, thyroid diseases have difficulty taking action. Because their metabolism slows down. Sometimes, in the background there may be depression, there may be hidden depression, there may be an anxiety disorder. These can prevent a person from taking action by making them feel negative emotions. And when we look at the background more holistically, as psychological reasons there may also be behavioral habits. There may be cognitive, mental distortions; there may be patterns that have become habits in the subconscious. There may be existential problems. From the perspective of holistic psychotherapy, I think working on all of them is beneficial.
Those who show procrastination behavior are divided into several sections. There are those who constantly procrastinate and forget what they do. There are those who do nothing. And there are those who procrastinate and are aware that they procrastinate, and knowing this, feel guilty and feel bad. And there are those who constantly procrastinate and leave it to the last minute. The last-minute people. All of these actually have a meaning in our unconscious. They have learned patterns. The most important part of these patterns is actually the structures we obtained in our childhood. Inside us, you know, I talk a lot about it, our ages zero to five are very important. In these ages zero to five, in zero to three, we obtain our personality and our character from our mother, father, our parents, and also with what is transmitted genetically, what we call temperament, we obtain in my zero to three years. In the part of ages two to three, there is the most important part of our personality. Here we call it the separation and individuation period. We call the age zero to one the attachment period. In this attachment period, did the child experience a secure attachment with the mother? Or is it anxious? Is it an insecure attachment? This is very important. At ages two and three, after this attachment, the separation period comes. The child needs to separate a little from the mother. In order to be able to be an individual, to be able to become free. Generally, our parents sometimes do it here. Of course, they do it without knowing. Understanding these is very, very important. For example, if the child experienced a secure attachment with the mother in the first year, then when they start crawling, around ten, twelve months, they start moving a little away from around. Because there is a strong sense of curiosity. With this curiosity, they try to understand the environment, but on the other hand they also look at the mother. Because she is the love object, the one who feeds them, what will she say to this? Here we have a concept in psychology that we call the good enough mother. There, the mother needs to say, of course, “my child, play your game, come whenever you want, I am here.” But if the mother says the opposite, “where are you going, what are you doing? Be careful.” A situation of not being able to separate emerges in the child. Or the mother does not even need to say it. Even with her looks, she can turn the child back from what they are doing. The child returns to the mother. Believing that the mother will cut her love and interest. But the mind also stays on the toy. In this situation, an ambivalent structure develops. They returned to the mother. They gave up their own personality, their own wishes, and returned to the mother. They returned to the safe harbor. But the mind is on the toy. Or they went to the toy despite all these negative attitudes of the mother. This time, they may feel guilty because they abandoned the mother. These create a lot of distress and the child carries these negative emotions they experienced in China to their later life. We call this developmental arrest in psychotherapy. They experience a stuck point there. In summary, if in our zero to three years we had a secure attachment in zero to one year and could separate and become an individual between two and three years, our life becomes much easier. We build our personality. Between three and five years is also a period that we call the oedipal period, in which sexual identity develops, the child no longer only with the mother, but the father also comes into play, and the child learns the three-way relationship, learns the triangular relationship, develops sexual identity and completes personality. Therefore, the first five years of our life are very, very important. Now I want to connect this to procrastination. Procrastination has many reasons. In the cognitive sense, in the sense of our mental thoughts, in the behavioral sense, but especially in psychotherapy, in the dynamic sense, there are some meanings in the background in the subconscious. And it may overlap with the behaviors and emotions we learned in our childhood. Procrastination behavior can be an escape. The subconscious works like “where you find food, stay; where you see a stick, run.” That is, it tends to approach the good and move away from distress, and it can work like a structure that can go toward inaction, toward immobility. Now you need to do something. You need to prepare for the exam. Or you need to prepare a presentation. For this presentation, for the exam, you need to work for months. For the presentation, you need to work for a while. But at that moment, watching television or doing something else is more enjoyable. In short, we get our reward immediately with what we do. But we will get our reward related to the exam maybe six months later. So the unconscious can have a structure that wants to get the reward immediately. We may be feeling different emotions about the exam or about the thing we want to do. Some personality structures, especially perfectionist personality structures or narcissistic personality structures, when they think “everything should be complete, everything should be under my control, everything should be perfect,” and when they believe they cannot do it, they may show procrastination behavior. Because everything is complete and perfect. It cannot happen immediately. Maybe just like when we put one brick every day and build a huge building. When we study one or two hours every day, we can win the exam six months later, so to speak. We can reach the big piece by rewarding ourselves in small steps. I also want to remind this. Sometimes a person may procrastinate because of the anxiety they experience. Like “what if I can’t succeed, what if I am criticized,” instead of doing it with this, they may choose not to do it at all, to choose inertia. Especially the front part of our brain, the part we call cortex, is the part that works with willpower and focus. In some people, there may be a lack in the behaviors of delaying pleasure, postponing pleasure. The more developed our front brain region is, the more developed the prefrontal is, we can delay pleasures.