Time-starved

I have heard many stories of people who were deprived of food during an oppressive time, either the Holocaust or a personal situation of intense poverty, later being unable to moderate their instincts to hoard food. L'havdil, I think I may be suffering from trauma of a similar sort with regard to time.

For a lot of complicated reason involving the schools that I have attended (elementary through college), my mother's personality (i.e. the way I was raised), and my incredible inability to do anything quickly, I have a long history of deprivation of free time. By "free," I mean time in which there is actually nothing I am supposed to be doing. As a result, any time I do have even vaguely "to myself," I try to drag out as long as possible, even when it is completely self-destructive to do so. And time that is not really my own to do what I want, I take anyway. I am a time-cleptomaniac.

This is the explanation I've developed for why I'm late to everything. It's not because I'm not conscious of the time, because quite the opposite is true. I go crazy if I don't have a watch on my wrist that I can consult every 30 seconds when I'm on a tight schedule. I do care, and I don't mean to be inconsiderate and make people wait, nor do I like to make a grand entrance. In fact, I desperately hate it. It makes my insides curl up every time I have to walk in late somewhere or apologize for my tardiness. But no matter how far ahead I start to get ready or how well I plan, ten to one I will be late anyway -- because some compulsion made me stay just a few minutes extra to do one last thing before I left. The time is there, and I can't resist using it, even if it's not really available. It doesn't matter how trivial an activity I use it for, or if I waste it entirely.

Of course, the same motivation is at the root of much of my procrastination. Granted, there are many things I put off doing simply because I dread doing them -- but in many other instances, it is not the avoidance of productive activity but rather the hoarding of non-work time that holds me back. That's counter-productive, of course. It's irrational in the extreme, because if I'd just get my work done I'd have time that's truly free. But my psyche can't be bothered with logic, it seems....or maybe it's just been too conditioned to the understanding that that particular logic is flawed: No matter how diligently I work on something, it will never be done before the next task needs to have already been started. So why work diligently?

And, as if you can't tell by the time-stamp on this post, I do the same thing at night, when the appointment to which I'm making myself late is with my mattress. I can be exhausted, or need to get up early the next day, or simply know that it would be better for me to keep a reasonably normal schedule...but I will still sit up, perhaps doing something meaningful while my brain is still capable and then continuing with mindless drivel after that. It's not because I have any underlying fear of going to bed, because I have insomnia once in a blue moon and nightmares even less frequently. Generally I sleep like a log, starting from about 10 minutes (or less) from when I lie down. No, it's because I can't bear to give up whatever it is I'm doing to go to bed, even if whatever that is is nothing.

I know all this, and yet the compulsion is just as strong as ever. How to fight it????