You accidentally hit your finger with a hammer. What’s your first reaction? And then: what do you do next? Do you try to resist pain, talk with someone to shift focus, or try hard to not feel it at all?<ul><li>FIGHT: grit one’s teeth and resist</li><li>FLIGHT: distracting ourselves</li><li>FREEZE: cutting ties with a body part / dissociating</li></ul>

What's your response to bodily sensations?

It does not mean that you suddenly start enjoying your pain (as with the hammer and the finger), or turning suffering into some mystical masochism. It’s about accepting that you are who you are.

Accept who you are.

From a distance, procrastination looks like a time management problem. There is growing evidence that it is rather an emotional management problem — a flight response. Instead of facing the problem, we evade it. And how do other fear responses work? Here we go:<ul><li>FIGHT: last-minute deadline crunch (“I will never surrender!”)</li><li>FLIGHT: procrastination (“let’s keep it at a temporal distance!”)</li><li>FREEZE: staring at the “chapter 1” of an unwritten report, piece of code, or email</li></ul>

Procrastination is an emotional management problem.

One example of such integration is the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_stages_of_grief">5 Stages of Grief </a>model. While it might be not a universal one, it turns out that these stages map beautifully into fear responses:<ul><li>Denial → flight</li><li>Anger → fight</li><li>Bargaining → fight/flight (or maybe <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/addiction-and-recovery/202008/understanding-fight-flight-freeze-and-the-fawn-response">fawn </a>)</li><li>Depression → freeze</li><li>Acceptance → no fear response!</li></ul>

The 5 Stages of Grief model.

Similarly as with our body — what do you do with difficult emotions? From small conflicts and frustrations to deep wounds from unsatisfied childhood needs, worst traumas, and feelings that bother you on a daily basis?<ul><li>FIGHT: anger / pushing</li><li>FLIGHT: distracting oneself</li><li>FREEZE: numbness, depression, learned helplessness</li></ul>

How do you handle difficult emotions?

What are you afraid more of — loneliness or being in chains? Do you under- or overreact? What annoys you more: a partner being unresponsive, or too pushy and controlling?<ul><li>FIGHT: chasing and checking (anxious attachment style)</li><li>FLIGHT: needing space, avoiding difficult subjects, ghosting (avoidant-dismissive attachment style)</li><li>FREEZE: learned helplessness, hopelessness, or depression</li></ul>

What's your attachment style?

Next time try to… focus on the sensation. In a mindful way, observing and experiencing, but not judging. It won’t make the pain disappear, but it will make it less troublesome.

Try the mindfulness way.

When a deer sees an incoming car, it freezes. For us, it looks stupid. But for the deer, this instinctive reaction seems to be the best. And it would be the best reaction if the car were a predator…

Understand yourself and those around you.