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You know what needs doing. You have known for three days. The task sits there, the deadline gets closer, and the afternoon goes somewhere else.
Procrastination is one of the most common concerns we hear about at our Ottawa practice, and it affects students, parents, employees, professionals, and business owners alike. It rarely has much to do with laziness or motivation. Procrastination is usually a form of avoidance behaviour. We put something off because it feels overwhelming, boring, uncomfortable, or hard, and avoiding discomfort has never been easier than it is now. Our phones offer endless distraction seconds away, so we scroll, check messages, watch something, or find another task whenever the first one starts to feel bad.
We have written before about the psychology behind procrastination and why the pattern forms. This post is about what changes it.
Avoidance behaviour and the procrastination cycle
Avoidance works, at least for a few minutes. Put off something stressful and you get immediate relief, and your brain notices. Over time it learns a rule: when something feels uncomfortable, get away from it.
That rule builds a loop.
Task → discomfort → avoidance → temporary relief → guilt → more discomfort → more avoidance
Eventually it costs more than a to-do list. It reaches your confidence, your sleep, your work, your relationships, and your sense of being in charge of your own days.
People tell us what that sounds like from the inside.
- “Why can’t I just get things done?”
- “I’m so unmotivated and lazy.”
- “What is wrong with me?”
None of that is a verdict on who you are. It is the sound of a pattern that has been running long enough to feel like a personality.
Procrastination is an emotion problem before it is a time problem
At Resiliency Clinic in Ottawa, we look past the behaviour itself. Telling yourself to try harder or be more disciplined treats procrastination as a scheduling failure, and that is not usually what it is.
Our therapists see it as emotion regulation. The thought of starting a task produces real stress in the body. What happens next matters. When we reach for a distraction or decide tomorrow will be better, we get quick relief from that discomfort, and the relief teaches the body to run again next time. This is why replying to one email can feel genuinely frightening. The body has started reading a mundane task the way it would read a grizzly bear.
That framing changes what therapy works on. Resilience is not brute strength, it is psychological flexibility, and the skill being built here is approaching rather than avoiding. Facing the discomfort directly, in small and deliberate doses, is more effective than working around it.
This is also why procrastination and anxiety so often show up together. Avoidance is what keeps anxiety going, and the same pattern that sends you away from a task sends you away from anything else that feels like a threat.
What this looks like in therapy
Therapy for procrastination and avoidance usually involves:
- Managing anxiety and the difficult emotions that start the loop
- Working with perfectionism, which keeps many people stuck before they begin
- Testing negative and self-critical thoughts against evidence
- Improving motivation and follow-through
- Breaking overwhelming tasks into steps small enough to actually start
- Building emotional regulation and distress tolerance so discomfort stops ending the attempt
- Changing the habits around phones and distraction that make avoidance automatic
Much of this draws on cognitive behavioural therapy, which looks at the thoughts driving the avoidance and tests whether they hold up, and on acceptance and commitment therapy, which builds the capacity to feel discomfort and move toward what matters anyway. Avoidance patterns also come up often for people managing ADHD, and we have a separate page on ADHD support. Which approach fits depends on the person, which is why Michelle Sorensen, registered clinical psychologist and founder, reads every new inquiry herself and matches each client to the right clinician.
Koby Anderson, Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying), works with this pattern directly. He sees adults who find themselves stuck between overthinking and procrastination, alongside anxiety, depression, and the internal pressure of perfectionism. His approach combines cognitive behavioural therapy with elements of dialectical behaviour therapy, which gives you practical tools to challenge the thoughts that stall you and break the cycle. He then works from an existential frame, so those tools connect to what you actually value rather than sitting on a list of techniques. Koby holds a Master of Education in Counselling Psychology, has authored more than eleven scientific publications, and works in a style that is calm, collaborative, and focused on results.
Nobody leaves therapy having stopped procrastinating forever. What changes is the gap between noticing the discomfort and running from it, and what you are able to do inside that gap.
Starting is the small version of the work
Nothing has to be sorted out before you ask for help. Noticing that avoidance is costing you something is already the first move away from it.
If you are in Ottawa or anywhere in Ontario or Quebec and procrastination, anxiety, or overwhelm keeps getting in the way, therapy can help you understand what the pattern is protecting you from and build practical skills to move through it.
Our clinic is on Prince of Wales Drive, just south of Hunt Club Road, with parking behind the building. We are open Monday to Friday, 8:00 to 19:00, and we are accepting new clients. Sessions are available in person in Ottawa or virtually across Ontario and Quebec, in English and in French, with sliding scale fees.
Book a free 15-minute consultation and we can talk about what would help.
This post is not a replacement for professional psychological services.
