If you have repeatedly tried strategies to overcome procrastination and it did not resolve the problem, EMDR therapy may help. EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is a type of psychotherapy that is effective in treating a variety of psychological difficulties. While it was not specifically designed to treat procrastination, EMDR can help with procrastination by addressing the underlying beliefs that may be contributing to it in the following ways:

• EMDR can help to identify and process stuck and unhelpful beliefs that hold you back by targeting specific memories, thoughts and body sensations that contribute to the procrastination behavior. This can be any formative event when the belief unhelpful belief developed. For example, being compared to a sibling and told that they are better than you or that you will never be able to achieve the same or being told as a child that any grades that are not the highest is not good enough or you did not work hard enough, etc.

• EMDR can also help to develop new, positive beliefs about our capacity and expectations to replace rigid and unhelpful beliefs. For example, substituting beliefs such as ‘I’m going to let people down if it’s not perfect’ with beliefs such as ‘I can do it’ and ‘I’m doing it for myself’.

• EMDR can prepare you for future challenges that you will be facing by looking at those future situations or tasks and reducing the intensity of the paralysis we feel to take action and increasing our trust in our abilities and our trust in dealing with the situation if the outcome is not what we expected.
So, if you struggle with procrastination, you have repeatedly tried behavioral strategies and it has not worked, there is a chance that beliefs that have been developing throughout your life are the culprit. EMDR is one of the ways in which you can overcome procrastination.