Cartoon Chill

If you rely on this too much you are at ever increasing risk of it not working anymore, very abruptly, at a really horribly inconvenient time. 

You are also at risk of it working less and less over time when you have no other coping mechanisms in place. 

And finally even if it continue to work, you are doing continual damage to your ability to handle non-crisis situations! And increasing the chance that you will start unconsciously turning everything into a crisis. 

All three of these options are Sub-Optimal, to say the least. 

Oh, you wrote that paper in a week no problem? Now it’s not a crisis until three days before.

That worked okay? Now it’s not a crisis until the day before.

That worked out too? Hey, now the crisis point isn’t until *the day of*.

This is how I ended up writing a 30 page PhD level literature review in 12 hours—and presenting on it the next day—during finals week. And you know what? That sucked! It almost just didn’t happen!

Because at some point, your brain is going to just believe nothing is a crisis anymore. It fails to recognize pain. And pain is important, because it’s a sign that something has gone deeply, deeply wrong. If you believe that nothing is a crisis, *you will not know you’re in a crisis situation until you’ve fallen off the cliff of what is possible*. You will not recognize the pressure you’re under until it’s crushing you, and possibly not even then.

And this doesn’t just affect your work or school; you don’t recognize these signs in your relationships either, and it primes you to be able to take whatever others may do to you. It’s not even that it lowers your self esteem and makes you believe that you deserve it—you literally just cannot recognize when situations are harmful anymore. Have you ever told someone a “funny” story from childhood and they look at you and reply “holy shit, I’m sorry you went through that?” Yeah, that’s your whole life now.

Owl whisperer