Doh! Moment

I signed up for a daily digest from FLYLady. If you've never heard of her, go check it out. She's brilliant and gives you the daily tools of how to get out of CHAOS (can't have anyone over syndrome). It's a new perspective (to me) and tools on how to keep your house and life in order just 15 minutes at a time. It's not an elaborate system and you don't have to invest a dime. You start right where you are and develop new routines that will have your home always 15 minutes away from company ready......without killing yourself.

Anyhoo, I get a daily digest of e-mails with the Daily Flight Plan, inspirational stories, testimonials etc. I had an AHA moment today. The copied and pasted e-mail is below:

"procrastination is passive-aggressive behavior TOWARDS OURSELVES. When we procrastinate, we set ourselves up for failure, so then we beat ourselves up for having failed (whatever form "failure" takes in that context---maybe it's failing to make an appointment on time, or not picking our children up when we said we would, or not having enough gas to get somewhere.) When we procrastinate, we are engaging in passive-aggressive behavior towards ourselves. Now, I know a lot of us have experience passive-aggressive behavior from friends, family, and acquaintances, and many of us are able to spot the behavior in other people, but I'm not sure that we recognize it when we engage in that behavior towards ourselves.

From http://www.depression-guide.com/passive-aggressive-negativistic-personality.htm
I copied this definition:

Passive aggressive disorder is applied to a person who, when demands are made upon him for adequate performance, responds with some form of passive resistance, such as procrastinate, dawdling, stubbornness, deliberate inefficiency, pretended forgetfulness and unreasonable criticism of people in authority.

Passive aggressive personality disorder is a chronic condition in which a person seems to acquiesce to the desires and needs of others, but actually passively resists them and becomes increasingly hostile and angry.

So: when we procrastinate, we are setting ourselves up to become hostile and angry with ourselves. We put off doing things....why? to punish ourselves? To prove to ourselves that we're inadequate, failures? Or because we're martyrs, to prove to ourselves that there's no way that [all we need to do] can be done in [the amount of time we have to do it in]."

I tend to work well under pressure and deadlines. But....I'm a procrastinator. I never even considered that as passive aggressive behavior. What an eye-opener this is.