It’s been several months since my last post, and the reason is very simple – I’ve consciously taken on way too much work, and some of the fun but (currently) unprofitable ventures like this blog have ended up taking a back seat for a while. The last week or two I’ve been feeling like I should get a post out, and I was dutifully working on a post entitled “How to Consciously Handle Overload” (coming soon).

Trouble was, I have spent most of the last 3 months feeling massively conflicted over what my priorities were supposed to be, and I ended up spending most of my time nibbling away at all my projects, moving them all forward in tiny increments everyday – not an optimal way to get anything done!

Then I realized… I was full of “should”!

I had spent almost half a year working on things I felt I should be doing – I should write that speech, I should finish that website, I should empty my inbox (still not done!). I didn’t really do anything I wanted to do, other than occasional recreational activities, the rest of the time was spent hammering away at my to-do should-do list.

The end result of 6 months of should? A happy boss. Happy clients. An unhappy me!

When I realized how negative and dis-empowering it is being full of should, I set out to discover more about this condition…

Shoulditis

Published by the Scramblejam health information team, September 2008.

This factsheet is for people who suffer from shoulditis (commonly perceived as being “full of should”), or who would like information about it.

Shoulditis describes the condition where the mind and heart feel heavy – caused when the sufferer feels they have a great deal of responsibilities, goals and tasks that they should do in life.

About Shoulditis

Shoulditis is a symptom of feel overburdened with responsibilities and things you feel you need to do. Exact figures are unknown, but surveys indicated about 140 million people worldwide may be affected.

Shoulditis typically manifests as chest pain or tightness, feelings of lethargy, mental feelings of distractedness – especially when you you have a lot to do. It may feel like you’re being pulled in several directions at once. Shoulditis is especially likely to occur during acute procrastination. Anger or stress also tends to make it worse.

Shoulditis is commonly felt as a background condition, where subtle symptoms affect quality of life – on occasion sufferers may experience flare-ups, where the condition becomes intensely painful and debilitating. During flare-ups the pain doesn’t usually last for more than a few hours and subsides fairly quickly after resting, or when the symptoms are masked with procrastination, or indulgence in “comfort habits”. As well as the pain, you may feel breathless, sweaty and have a sense of fear. It can often be controlled, and even eliminated,  with a combination of lifestyle and psychological changes.

Types of Shoulditis

There are three main types of shoulditis, which can occur individually or in combination:

Behavioural Shoulditis

Behavioural shouditis is the most common of the main forms of the disease. The symptoms manifest when the sufferer is faced with low-level behavioural choices that they feel they should make, choices they may face regularly, on an everyday basis.

For example:

• I should pass up that Chocolate Éclair
• I should get up when my Alarm goes off, rather than hit snooze
• I should put this DVD back on the shelf – I don’t need it
• I should choose the healthy salad at lunch
• I should go to the gym this morning

Individually, the negative consequences of each poor choice are negligible – It’s the cumulative effect of all those shoulds that causes chronic sufferring, and the long-term debilitating effects that can ensue.

Unique symptoms: Tightness of the chest, eye and head-rolling, fist-clenching and subvocal muttering.

Performance Shoulditis

Performance shoulditis is triggerred under high pressure situations – Delivering a complex report for a superior, landing a client contract, delivering a speech or buying a gift for a spouse. The demands one is placed under by the situation cause extreme anxiety, and fire off a number of highly-specific, performance-related shoulds (usually with catastrophic results implied for failure).

For example:

• I should land this contract, or my boss will fire me
• I should buy my wife a nice gift, or she’ll think I don’t love her
• I should talk to girls at this party, or I’ll be alone forever
• I should ask my boss for this payrise, or I’ll never afford the mortgage

The high-pressure situations that cause performance shoulditis are demanding enough without the additional psychological burden of dealing with all these shoulds. Performance-related shoulds are the most debilitating, because they not only divert attention from the task itself, they cause damaging distractions by highlighting the potential negative consequences.

Unique symptoms: Anxiety, sweaty palms, increased irritability and perceived physical weakness.

Future-focused Shoulditis

Commonly experienced by people who have a lot of goals and aspirations for the future, that they feel they should be working on. Sufferers tend to spend a lot of time daydreaming and considering their desires for the future, all the while subtly reinforcing a negative self-image.

Future-focussed shoulds tend manifests in the following pattern:

1. What I want in the future
2. Why I haven’t got it now

For example:

• I want to run my own business > for now I need the stability of a regular salary
• I want to be slim and healthy > I can’t exercise because of job demands
• I want to find the man of my dreams > I’m too shy to date at the moment
• I want to be a millionaire > I have to concentrate on making ends meet
• I want to be successful > I have to organize my life first

Future-focussed shoulds have a subtle negative influence – They pay-offs of staying at the current position are more positive than the perceived risks of taking action to realize those future desires. Sufferers are often very skilled at defending their lack of action, to themselves and others, even though their life is less fabulous than it could be if they did get started.

Unique symptoms: Melancholia about life, sighing, complaining and wistfulness.

Moving forward with Shoulditis

Shoulditis is a common illness, affecting a great number of people worldwide – Despite this, it is not recognized by medical or psychiatric practitioners, and to date there is no known cure.

Anyone who believes they are sufferring from shoulditis is recommended to develop their own programme of self-treatment in order to overcome the condition.

The Scramblejam programme for self-treating for Shoulditis:

1. Recognition – Now you understand shoulditis, you can begin to notice it’s influence in your life – When you are having an episode, what type it is, and the effect it has on you.
2. Desire – Once you have identified a particular should in your life, you can move past it and “find the want, behind the should”. This is not easy, and may take a great deal of soul-searching to find an answer, but once you understand why you feel a particular should, you are in the best possible position to affect a permanent cure for that particular outbreak.
3. Focus – When you understand why a particular should occurs, you can focus on treating the cause, rather than the symptom. This may mean creating a strategy to overcome a particular mental block, like self-discipline of confidence; It may also mean learning to accept somthing you’ve always fought against (such as a negative belief about yourself or others).
4. Choice – Shoulds do not disappear overnight, but once a strategic treatment has been created, you can choose to action that strategy, rather than succumbing to the feeling of should. Repeating the choice every time the should appears will lessen the likelihood of recurrence and will eventually cure you of that particular effect.

Do you suffer from shoulditis? Are there untreated shoulds in your life, which keep you from enjoying your existence more fully? It is our sincere hope that this guide will help you discover the insidious effects of shoulditis, and help you find a cure.

For more information on the research, diagnosis and treatment of shoulditis, please make sure you subscribe to our feed to get the latest developments as they occur.