Recognizing the issue(s)

So I had another talk with the PhD psychologist today at the UU. One of the things that we discussed was identifying when I am filtering, overgeneralizing, magnifying, or having polarizing thoughts as these ten to result in negative thoughts and emotions which leads to more procrastination and worse psychological state overall. First, a bit of background (also, I have a latent class analysis running in the background so technically I'm working right now):

Filtering is simply focusing on only the negative details while ignoring the positive ones. You "filter" out the good so you're only left with the bad. Case in point: we're in the middle of a big building process for a new level above our house. It's a big project that's had a major impact on our lives, but the result has been above what we expected. It's huge, and looks great. But..... the contractor removed our upstairs toilet a month ago, the electrician needs to finish up in the pantry so we can clean up and start using it again, and they put way too much grout in the pebble stone tiles that we wanted behind a toilet defeating the purpose of spending a bunch of money to have them there. If I had to rate the final product, I would say an 88/100. So really good, but I keep on complaining about the above details since I'm not paying attention to how good everything else is. 

Polarized thinking is thinking things can only be 0% or 100% with no middle ground. A paper is either great or bad. Work is either done or not. This really impacts me when I start to think about getting tasks done as I hate doing a little bit of work here and there, even if that's the only real option. I can either sit and focus on writing for 4 hours or there's not enough time so why bother starting?

This filtering and polarization is related to my tendency to overgeneralize things. One thing doesn't work out so everything is going poorly. One bad comment and the whole article is garbage. One bad meeting and my supervisors don't like me. This makes it really hard for me to hear and accept criticism of myself and my work. 

And finally, I tend to magnify how big a task is. I see the smallest task as some sort of big thing that will require lots of time and effort to complete. It doesn't really matter how small or insignificant it is, I'll magnify it either in my mind or in my work expectation until it's a massive mountain to climb.

What these four distorted patterns of thinking result in are negative feelings and generally shitty ability to perform. I can't imaging what it must be like working with me, a chronic, lazy procrastinator who will always find something else besides the important stuff to be busy with. But let's focus on how these things interact. 

None of these patterns of thinking is unique or independent of each other. In fact, they often work together in a crappy synergistic collaboration which makes it difficult for me to get things done. Let's take an ordinary example: I have a simple task to review a paper for a colleague. I see this as a long and complicated task (which it is not)[magnifying]. I tell myself that it will take a long time to complete so I need at least 4 hours in a row to focus on it in order to review it properly (it won't and all they want is your feedback, there's no assessment criteria)[polarized thinking]. The last time I gave comments on an article, I got a snide remark back so I feel like my work isn't up to standards [filtering, overgeneralization]. So now, I have a task which I think is huge and will require a lot of time to complete, and my previous experience wasn't positive so I'm nervous about criticism this time because I don't think about the good comments I've received and only want to turn in a good review. 

Now, what the psychologist described as happening in this situation is that I face a fight or flight response: I can either fight through all of the bad feelings and reasons to not do something, or I can run away (procrastinate). I usually choose the latter. This is an immediate protective response to a stressor and potential negative feelings that unfortunately results in long-term harm. I basically trade off the immediate gratification of not having to deal with the bad feeling for the long term (and worse) damage that the procrastination leads. Feel good now, deal with later then.

This is something that really haunts me almost every day. It's partly being a bit lazy, but I don't mind work once I'm into it. The magnifying is also something that my wife has mentioned as a major hurdle she sees in me. I'd like to work on being able to recognize when I'm experiencing these kind of inhibiting thoughts to see if there isn't a way to get past these barriers. I think the psychologist just sent me something in my email to help me do just that!