Body Double

The real reason you’re not getting that thing done

When my granddaughter Ruby was a toddler she learned to ask for help. I remember it as a pivotal moment, when her frustration at being unable to complete a task shifted with that word. Help, or, as she said it then “hep.”  Sometimes she made it into a couple of syllables, with a tune like a yodel. You don’t have to do it all on your own, others can help.

Over the years, I’ve gotten better at asking for help. If the problem I’m trying to solve needs more resources, capacity or skill than I have, I can ask for help. Check. Help, in that equation, is something you ask for when you lack skill, like little Ruby yodeling for assistance turning on the garden hose to fill her small blue watering can.

Recently, I found myself stymied by a series of tasks. But I didn’t think I needed help because I knew how to do the tasks. I just wasn’t doing them. My narrative was that the problem I needed to solve was my procrastination.

I consider myself to be a very disciplined person. I need to be – I work for myself, I have a number of different creative projects going on at any one time. Discipline and organization are critical to my success, and I pride myself on having both. So, when something important sits on my to-do list – a to-do list which, I may add, is a highly organized, tiered and categorized thing of beauty – it is unusual.

I was avoiding a whole series of tasks related to self-promotion. I have a book coming out next spring, and I need to up my social media game. My podcast partner Eugene and I are trying to get new content into the world. I know how to do this. The story I told myself about why I wasn’t was that I was lazy.  

I felt bad about it, which increased the negative energy around the tasks, which made them harder to approach, which made me put them off, and then I felt worse.

Last week, I was talking with a friend who offered to help with some of the onerous items on my to-do list. It was a simple thing – she has expertise that I lack, she’s interested in building some new skills, and she offered to help with something that would take her much less time and effort than it would take me.

Of course, I said yes. I was surprised by the extent of my relief. And then I realized that I had been wrong about what was happening. I wasn’t procrastinating. I was stuck. I was at an emotional impasse and didn’t know it. I didn’t lack capacity, I needed company.

I often talk about honoring our resistance by getting curious about what might be keeping us from making a decision, taking an action, or completing a task. Because I wasn’t identifying my stalling as resistance, I didn’t get curious about it at first. If I’m honoring my resistance, what do I find?

I grew up with a very difficult mother. She needed to be the center of attention, and any activity that turned the spotlight on another person, including her children, was considered a threat, and treated as such. Very early on I internalized this. I like the spotlight, and have hardly avoided it, but an old part of my psyche recognizes it as a threat. I’ve puked in the bathrooms of green rooms, gotten physically ill before walking onto various stages, and had emotional hangovers after even small successes.

I’ve known this for a long time. I’ve had lots of therapy. But I was still surprised to understand that what I was labeling as procrastination was actually intense emotional resistance to completing a task that might get me attention, which often brought up intense discomfort.

My oldest friend, Mary Virginia, is a mental health professional, and she told me that getting help from my friend was a tool that some people with ADHD use called “body doubling.” It means having another person around when doing a task. The body double can be an emotional support, accountability partner, or they can act as a grounding energy.

As humans, we’re built to be in community, which means we usually did things with other people around. Hunting, gathering, raising children, eating, building, farming were often done in community. Little kids learned how to participate in the work of the community by watching people do the work of the community and joining in as appropriate. We’re not meant to work on everything alone.

Ruby, who is now 5, is learning how to climb trees. She’s a good climber, she has the capacity to climb, but there’s a tree in my backyard that is a bit daunting. When she climbs she wants me to spot her. Mary Virginia is a rock climber and Ruby knows MV wears a harness when she climbs, so Ruby calls it “harnessing” when I put my arms underneath her arms to catch her if she falls. It’s the climbing down that gets her, edging her feet down the trunk to find a foothold she can’t see. I don’t carry her, I just accompany her. And she scampers up and down the tree.

I didn’t need instruction, or education or even for someone else to do the work for me. I just needed company, the harness of another person nearby for support. My negative narrative that I was somehow lacking in self-discipline didn’t move me forward, it just kept me stuck in the cycle of self-recrimination. Company and companionship are what actually helped.

In a “physician, heal thyself” moment, I understand now that I’ve coached a number of clients through this same process, identifying something else that was causing a stuck place and reframing their negative narrative around that impasse. I didn’t know about the body doubling concept then, but I understood the dynamic of needing another person’s presence to do your best – that’s the cornerstone of executive coaching, after all.

Is there any place you have a negative narrative that might really be a signal of some old emotional hurt or fear? Is there something you know how to do and have the capacity to do that you can’t bring yourself to check off your to-do list? Is there someone who can help you? Do you have narratives around how and why and when you get to ask for help? Do you need company, accountability, specific interventions in the arc of a task, emotional support or reassurance that someone’s got you if you fall?

The other word Ruby learned when she was a toddler was “uppy.” Which meant that she needed support right now, and wanted to be picked up. A scary thing, or a fall, or a moment and she’d call out “uppy!” Which is also a good reminder that we don’t just need help, we sometimes need emotional