Procrastination

Kim is in a profession supplementary to medicine, working in the Psychiatric Service.  She had chosen to embark on a course of training to qualify, in addition, as a psychotherapist registered with the UK Council for Psychotherapy.  The training course required that she herself be in personal psychotherapy throughout the two years of the course. 

This proved to be useful in more ways than expected.  Kim began the course, which, among other things, required that she complete a number of written assignments.  To her surprise and dismay, she found that, try as she might, she was repeatedly finding excuses not to do the written work required - despite having carefully scheduled the time for this.  Finally, she found on one occasion that she had spent the planned work time watching a television programme she hadn't even wanted to watch and decided that she should bring the problem to her weekly session with her psychotherapist. 

A number of different approaches to the problem were tried, over several weeks, with limited success.  Then the therapist suggested a short session of Provocative Therapy, explaining a little about what this would involve.  Kim agreed to this, and seemed to be excited and intrigued by this unusual approach to therapy.

During the short, time-limited PT session that followed, the therapist sided strongly with the 'problem part' - suggesting that not doing the work was completely appropriate - and, using the language patterns of Provocative Therapy, linking to the problem increasingly bizarre imagery - which the client found both fascinating and somehow disturbing.

After the session, Kim said she had found the session hugely enjoyable, and not in the least threatening, despite the 'gross!' (her word) imagery that had been used. 

A few days later, she was going, with her partner, to visit her partner's mother for the weekend.  For the first time ever, she took textbooks with her, and made the time to study while away.  At the next session, she reported, with evident satisfaction, that she was now looking forward with real anticipation to having 'the opportunity to do some concentrated academic work' because she would be spending the weekend at home.

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