How to Transform Procrastination Into Action to Prevent Its Impact on Healing Our Vaginismus

Procrastination is what we tend to end up doing when we are living with vaginismus.

We postpone everything

from finding another gynecologist who is more understanding and caring,
to say YES to new opportunities which will help us move forward in our healing journey,
to consistently dilating.

Do any of these resonate with you?

Think about the impact of postponing things when it comes to healing vaginismus; the effects can span years!

That’s what we are going to discuss today: we’ll have a closer look at procrastination then talk about how we can transform it into action.

But before we get to that, are you new here? Then you’ll have to check out these other helpful blogs that I’ve written to help you overcome your condition.

and of course, you should join our EXCLUSIVE Facebook Community “Yes We Can Cure Vaginismus Together” by clicking here!

Oh and, you can download here your FREE Vaginismus Cure Guide based on my personal experience and research!

Shall we begin, dear?

I want to start with an AHA moment we had together with a lovely woman from our Facebook community.

We had such an open and warmhearted conversation together about our experience with vaginismus.

She wanted to learn more about my signature program, which helps women overcome their condition.

While we were talking about the program which was active at the moment to enroll in, she said: “Wow, it’d be awesome to get closer to myself; to get to know my habits, and most amazingly, learn how to transform them into the ones which serve me for the better.”

While saying that, her voice was calm, slow, and mindful.

Then immediately, another voice showed up very vividly. It was hard not to notice it because the voice became hectic, faster, and louder, it said:

“What if I can’t achieve!”
“What if I can’t succeed, what if I am a failure?!”

She was talking very quickly, jumping from one sentence to another without a pause. Until I invited her to pause for a moment. I asked her to repeat her sentence aloud one more time, but mindfully.

Her voice became slower, and she said: “Wow, I do this to myself all the time. I literally sabotage my actions like this almost every day!”

That was a beautiful AHA moment for us.

Her one side was saying the transformation would contribute to her life tremendously, so HELL YES to it! But the other side of her was dominating over that voice and almost convincing her to say, “OH NO!”.

We kept talking about the program, and I told her that there would be another program starting within two months.

Then, her self-sabotaging voice showed up again a little calmer this time, and she said, “OK, then, I’ll enroll next time.”

Look what happened: the habit of postponement arose! As soon as the two of us started to talk about and understand her reasons for “why not now”, she became aware of the procrastination and changed her mind to “HELL YES I’LL DO IT!”

Let’s dive into this habit a bit deeper.

Why do we procrastinate?

Procrastination is a habit, dear, from which we can luckily transform its pattern.

It can be the outcome of stress caused by fear most of the time, (especially when it comes to healing our vaginismus, dear).

We can also see glimpses of this habit in our day to day lives.

Here is the definition of procrastination found from UPMC HealthBeat. The site describes procrastination as “the avoidance of work or necessary tasks by focusing on more satisfying activities that are due to a chemical in the brain.

Procrastination boils down to a battle between the limbic system and the prefrontal cortex.” UPMC HealthBeat continues to explain that: “The limbic system is a set of brain structures containing the pleasure center, while the prefrontal cortex controls planning and decision making. Since the prefrontal cortex isn’t as “developed and thus weaker, so often the limbic system wins out, leading to procrastination.”

I know, it might sound a little bit scientific, but what I want to address here, that it’s just an automatic reaction happening without us knowing most of the time.

Despite this, when we procrastinate, a battle starts within us. We end up feeling guilty, blaming ourselves and eventually feeling stuck.

How do we transform the tendency of procrastination into action to prevent us from feeling stuck?

What a beautiful question 😊

I want to share with you my three steps to do it!

But first, I invite you to think about a moment in which you delayed a task to do, most preferably any task concerning your vaginismus.

To get the most benefits out of this exercise, you may want to read through the steps first, and then apply them to your own examples.

Bring your attention to a difficult task that you’ve already delayed recently.

#Step 1: Acknowledging the tendency of procrastination

Just before you attempt to procrastinate, I invite you to acknowledge:

what you tell yourself at that moment: word for word,
what kind of language do you use for yourself? Are you blaming, attacking, victimizing, pitying?
what volume is your voice on? tenor, soprano? (just kidding 😊 but just notice how loud you are)
Where your stress level is: tune in with your heartbeat, is it faster than just before thinking about the task?

#Step 2: Asking questions to help you understand the real reason for your procrastination more clearly

Then, I invite you to ask yourself these questions with compassion:

“Is it real?”
“Why?” or “Why not?”
“What would it look like if you had ten times more courage to do it, how would you feel about it?”

In doing this, we have dug up the stories we have created around our condition, and broken them down into smaller, easier to understand pieces, so that we can see how real they are.

Observe your answers very mindfully, dear. It’s like investigating with curiosity, without judging your answers.

#Step 3: Focusing on the starting point of the task and seeing it as a new experience

Let’s give an example here:

Let’s assume that you already work with dilators, but you don’t dilate regularly, which you know that you’re supposed to.

You find yourself saying that “I don’t want to dilate anymore.”

Then you apply Step 1 and 2, and you figure out that you have a fear of being disappointed by not inserting the dilator fully as you did before.

Now, I want you to say this out loud or as loud as you would like:

“I’ll start anyway. It is going to be my new experience. I might insert it fully or half or tip it. In each case, it’s OK! I’ll work on it for a specific amount of time and see how far I can go this time.”

Imagine the shift in your mindset if you would say this to yourself genuinely, my dear?

Think about how your experience would evolve if there would be no expectations on it.

Even if you don’t feel like saying it genuinely in the beginning, keep doing it, dear! As we repeat the same behavior over and over again, it becomes our NEW HABIT!

So it’ll help us transform our habits for the better tremendously, dear.

We shouldn’t underestimate the confidence that we’ll get after we actually START to do the task, because it will no longer be another heavy burden on us!

“You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”

Martin Luther King Jr.

You can download my free vaginismus cure guide from here if you haven’t yet.

If you found this article helpful, then come and join our free online community Yes We Can Cure Vaginismus Together, if you haven’t yet.

I talk more about these topics and in more detail.

Let’s meet there. Let’s grow together.

E-mail: petek@yeswecancure.com