Oct 31, 2025
Task Avoidance Putting off tasks due to overwhelm, fear of failure, or perfectionism. Task avoidance isn’t always laziness—it’s often emotional protection in disguise.
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Task Avoidance Putting off tasks due to overwhelm, fear of failure, or perfectionism. Task avoidance isn’t always laziness—it’s often emotional protection in disguise.
Sometimes when we are afraid we have to center ourselves. Take deep and slow breathes, remind yourself who you are, and where you are. Feel the world beneath your feet and know you are connected to earth and it will hold you steady. Now go make that phone call you’re avoiding, I see you.
Guys, I bought SOTR literally the day it came out but my task avoidance popped up and now I’m annoyed because my brain doesn’t wanna read 😒
i have noticed that when i have an important task that i keep neglecting, the reason it never gets done is because the way i want to resolve it is not the way it needs to be resolved. for example, i put off dealing with the roaches in my apartment (bad, upsetting) for months because i wanted to get rid of them myself (ocd brainworms i.e. feeling like i'd be "in trouble" for a problem that existed before i even moved in) when the correct action was to let the apartment complex deal with it since it was their problem. my fear of "getting in trouble" prevented me from taking action on something that had been bothering me for months.
a similar roadblock is feeling like i need to do another task first, like cleaning out my car before taking it to get necessary maintenance. "oh no," says i, "the maintenance guys are going to judge me for my untidy car." they probably will but so what. they'll still change my oil and rotate my tires because that's what i'll be paying them to do.
not to sound like a millenial therapist but the common element here is shame. i don't want other people to see me fail at performing the role of a functioning member of society, so i invent myriad obfuscating rituals to prevent anyone from ever seeing me do anything incorrectly. ironically, the rituals prevent me from participating in society.
could this have had something to do with my batshit insane upbringing? find out next time on adult children of post-communist parents!
I set so many alarms and reminders.
Alarms to get up. Alarms to tell me to go to bed. Alarms to time my lunch break. Alarms to remind me I'm making tea. Calendar reminders to put the bins out and to pay bills. A timer to go off to make me start a task. A timer to make me stop a task.
And yet I am still able to snooze them all.
why does no one care to help me manage my adhd? why does everyone insist i can do things just because it's possible? what if it's not possible? what if it could have been better and fulfilling instead of half-baked and disappointing?
at the end of the day, when i fail at succeding and meeting standards, they'll blame me for not trying hard enough when it was them who never even tried to help me help myself... no matter how many times i asked. when i eventually cry about it, they come back to me later to ask if i'm feeling better so that they can go back to ignoring the issue without guilt.
what is so hard about caring? what is so hard about believing in my struggle?
i want to want to give up, but i can't. i want to give up because none of this makes sense, and i'm shit at it, but i can't because it won't make sense either way.
life, i don't know how to fit into it, but i'm here. i have to figure it out little by little. even if that unfortunately means disappointing everyone and myself. even if it means getting looked down for being something they don't want to understand.
Anyone else suffer from task avoidance to a truly absurd degree, even for shit you actually really want to do and find fun?
Like for me it's so often like want to partake in the divine act of creation in any way whatsoever? Task avoidance. Track down that slasher flick you've been meaning to watch on your laptop and watch it? Task avoidance. Message that friend you haven't spoken to in a week that's been missing you? Task. Avoidance.
Better scroll through Tumblr for 6 hours instead 🙃