The Myth of 'I'm Too Busy to Change'
I hear it a lot.
“I know I need to do the work. But I just don’t have time right now.”
“I’ll come back to therapy when this project finishes.”
“Things will calm down soon. Then I’ll focus on myself.”
If that sounds familiar, welcome to the club.
Being too busy to change is one of the most socially acceptable forms of self-sabotage. After all, who could fault you for having a lot on your plate? But here’s the uncomfortable truth: life is not going to hand you a perfect window for personal growth. In fact, your nervous system may be quietly making sure that window never appears.
Why busyness feels safer than change
For those constantly on the go, busyness can become addictive. It serves as a convenient distraction from what’s going on underneath the surface.
When you are always moving, there is no space to sit with uncomfortable feelings. No room to confront parts of yourself you’d rather ignore. No time to reckon with what success has cost you or with the gaps that no achievement seems to fill.
The nervous system plays a big part here. If your body is used to operating at a high level of arousal, that is, when it’s in a state of either fight, flight, freeze, or fawn, slowing down can feel dangerous. Stillness may trigger old patterns of anxiety or fear. You may even find your mind creating more tasks or commitments to avoid having to be still.
In this sense, busyness is not about time management. It is about safety.
How this shows up in practice
I see it all the time. Clients who genuinely believe they cannot add anything more to their schedule yet will push through another late-night email session or agree to another social obligation they don’t want.
They will tell themselves, “I’ll prioritise therapy once this quarter is over,” or “I’ll slow down after this next milestone,” or even “I’ll stop smoking/binging/spending/drinking when …” You fill in the blank here, as we’ve all been there. Months pass. The pattern continues.
The truth is, waiting for life to become perfectly manageable before you address the deeper work is like waiting for the sea to become perfectly calm before you learn to swim.
What can you do about it?
First, start by getting honest with yourself:
Are you using busyness to avoid uncomfortable truths?
What would slowing down or letting someone in bring up for you?
What parts of you are being protected by staying too busy?
Second, recognise that change does not require vast amounts of free time. It requires intention. Some of the deepest shifts happen in small, consistent pockets of reflection and in learning to listen to what your body is telling you.
In my work, I use approaches such as Internal Family Systems (IFS) and Brainspotting to help clients safely access the parts of them that equate stillness with threat. We build the capacity to tolerate space, to befriend stillness, and to step off the hamster wheel, one deliberate step at a time.
Final thought
If you are telling yourself you’re too busy to change, I invite you to consider whether that story is protecting you more than it is serving you.
Therapy is not something you do when life slows down. It is what helps you meet life as it is, with more choice, more calm, and more courage. Ready to learn more about yourself? Book in a call here.
