“Abra Kadabra! I’ll Write My Paper by Class”: The Inescapable Doom of Magical Thinking

Ironically titled, “Disappear Shame,” the last entry in my “Blog Posts in Progress” folder is dated 06.01.26. 

Ahem.

For a conscientious practitioner who committed to a weekly blog, that date is a potential shame-maker for sure. But in mid-July, I decided I wasn’t going there. Instead, I looked for what my unplanned hiatus could teach me about my learners’ experiences with difficulty motivating. Because that was what was happening - I simply couldn’t motivate myself.

Instead, I observed myself following the procrastination behavior trajectory I’ve watched my learners suffer for years:

At first, excuses: “Oh. . no one expects anything in the summer,” or “I’ll shift to every other week/third week/once a month” or “If my family would just let me get something done!” 

Next, mendacious bargaining, “Too busy now, but once I finish X, I will sit down and write today without fail.” “When we get back from the weekend, I’ll work on it first thing.” “No one really reads my stuff anyway, so I’m not that accountable.”

After that little lie, the Universe laughed as I was shocked to run across a number of readers in vivo. OR what’s worse, I met people struggling with academic anxiety, leading me to encourage them to subscribe: “I’ve got a lot of information about your situation in my blog (which I am currently avoiding and lying to myself about.)”

My thoughts then shifted to self-analysis: “It must be all those years in the classroom that make it difficult for me to work in the summer.” (Lie lie lie) “I’ll feel like writing once the school year starts and I see my learners more often.” (Actually, somewhat true). “I don’t care why, the reality is I’m not writing this blog at the moment and I’ll likely get back to it in the fall.” (Finally, some truth.)

With the exception of my last bit of self-talk, all of my internal task-avoidant fidgeting falls under the umbrella labeled Magical Thinking. Formally, the APA defines magical thinking as “the belief that events or the behavior of others can be influenced by one’s thoughts, wishes, or rituals.” For people with unmanaged OCD and/or anxiety, magical thinking can be roughly summarized as “If I don’t do X, I will be unsafe.”

The magical thinking I observe in both my procrastinating learners and my own summer retrospective leans a bit more toward lying to oneself. To rephrase the above definition, for procrastinators, magical thinking is “the belief that doing something can be influenced by wishes”; i.e.: somehow, X will happen because I really want it to even though I have no realistic plan of action to accomplish it.

Magical thinking often occurs when a desired task is perceived as lengthy, difficult, or likely to be judged harshly. 

You’ll recall that without exception, my anxious learners’ neurospicy brains are highly intelligent and possessed of a track record of high achievement. Even if they don’t struggle with perfectionism, they invariably set their bar very high. Perfectionists, of course, set their standards even higher. 

The problem with unrelenting standards is that you inevitably don’t meet them, so instead of feeling proud of accomplishments, anxious learners with high expectations focus on the flaws and how it’s not “good enough.”  For example, in most colleges, an A is a 93 or above. A person with reasonable expectations gets a dopamine blast of pleasure when they earn a 93 in a course. “Yay! I got an A!” My learners see the deficit of 7 points below a 100, negating their brain’s desire for positive reinforcement. 

After repeated cycles of a negative feedback loop from perceived failure to meet unrelenting standards, a learner’s brain associates challenging tasks with pain, so it unconsciously chooses avoidance. At the same time, this high achieving learner - drawing on a history of success at academic tasks - is socialized to challenge herself. Magical thinking results. 

If I’ve decided I need to climb a 10,000 foot mountain, looking up from the bottom easily convinces me that the experience will suck. So why would I want to do it? Especially when my brain is likely not to reward me with a good feeling when I get to the top because somehow there will always be some better way someone else might have done it. My option: violate my high standards and accept my limitations or tell myself that somehow I’ll magically do it.

We help anxious learners break the magical thinking cycle when they understand that lying to oneself and then avoiding a task causes internal pain associated with assured failure. Magical thinking is another way of beating yourself up, nurturing the avoidance vortex, raising the likelihood of future avoidance. 

The antidote, of course, is breaking a task down to achievable bits, then making an readily accomplished plan of action. Each completed mini-step of the action plan creates a little dopamine shot, which motivates the next step. The achievement is moving forward on the action plan. The task-related goal takes care of itself. 

Engulfed in magical thinking, you can’t create an action plan, so you won’t achieve your goal. Watching myself think magically this summer was useful. Owning it and reserving an afternoon actually made it happen. 

Yay me!