Re: Depression, Anxiety, or other Mental Health Conditions
Posted: Wed Feb 02, 2022 12:22 pm
JT986M2 wrote:This is quite a specific question that I'm wondering if anyone else has experienced something similar.
I'm currently under a fair bit of pressure at work at the minute - new(ish) role, high workload. The world will keep on moving if I don't get my tasks complete though, if you know what I mean. Anyways, over the past few weeks I have found that when I become too overwhelmed with work I essentially give up on what I should be doing and procrastinate instead. In those situation (one that I'm in right now) I know I have a lot of work to do, but it's almost as if procrastinating - or doing something else entirely - is my brain's coping mechanism.
This is different to procrastinating on projects back in University since there isn't really one big looming deadline. It's almost as if my brain is going:
Then once I've done something else for a while, I'll get back to it.
The above is not something I've come across before, but I have noticed my attention span in general is suffering recently. So I'm wondering if it could be a symptom of depression or anxiety? I don't have prolonged depressive episodes, but I can move in and out of those episodes quite quickly. Since they don't persist I've never really reached out to the Doc for help. This particular 'symptom' (if it is one) could cause bother in the long-term though so I just wanted to see if anyone else has experienced anything similar?
As someone with anxiety issues who also had a very similar situation at work I don't think it's got anything to do with anxiety it's more likely burn out. When you're under a lot of pressure constantly but you know it's not something super important your brain will want to do anything else to relax just a little. I think personally you should procrastinate if you feel like you need to. Step away for 5 minutes and do something fun for a bit or the burn out is going to get worse and you'll feel like total gooseberry fool. I've been there and you don't want that.
As long as you can still get everything done by the time it needs to be done a little bit of procrastination/lack of attention towards work isn't necessarily a bad thing. I'd argue it's more healthy. I'm not an expert but I don't believe our brains are built to cope with extreme work pressure like that. It will struggle to concentrate in those situations I think that's normal.