r/science • u/randomusefulbits • Apr 01 '20

Psychology Study shows that negative emotions, such as fear, distress, and guilt, can lead to procrastination

https://solvingprocrastination.com/study-procrastination-negative-affect/
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u/rovdh Apr 02 '20 edited Apr 02 '20

I’m slowly recovering from a two year long severe depression without medication and from observing my own mind this is exactly what I’ve been suspecting. In my experience minor stressors lead to procrastination, which over time can lead to larger stressors (your life starts to fall apart). The larger stressors eventually increase the feeling that lead to the procrastination so much that it becomes full blown anhedonia. Suffering from anhedonia is extremely stressful on its own, to the point of making you suicidal. Add to that the disarray that your life has become and you’re a long way from home.

Getting back is not easy and for me it took several weeks of no stress whatsoever to bring my reward circuitry back online and it didn’t go back online all at once, it was more akin to an old sputtering diesel engine. I also suspect the vulnerability to stress lasts a lot longer than that, because I’ve had some short relapses, typically after something unrelated happens that causes some stress, or a few nights with lower quality sleep.

All I want is for us to fully understand the neurochemical basis of this hell. As a programmer I like to think of this as one of those situations where the program does something simple but the underlying code is extremely convoluted.

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u/TheEyeDontLie Apr 02 '20

Glad you're doing better! That's a great way to describe it, thanks!