Escaping the Urgency Trap: Making Decisions Without Panic

Spam Filter For Your Brain - Episode 150

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This is a podcast for those moments when we think that our problems are urgent.

And most of us, I am so including myself in this, quite often tell ourselves that our problems are urgent because it gives us some kind of control, often in situations that feel quite out of control. And the key clue is that sense of urgency, that feeling that we can take an action to take away our emotions. If we do the right thing, then we're going to stop feeling this icky, uncomfortable what's going on.

Uncertainty feels a lot like danger to our brains. And we want to get out of there as soon as possible. And it's very instinctual to try and move away from this in any which way that we can. So, we think that if we just make the right choice, we'll be able to stop feeling rubbish. But often, the problem is that we're also telling ourselves that if we don't make the right choice, everything will go horribly wrong.

I have a few escape letters out of trapping yourself in this little spiral. And firstly, it is noticeable that we are trying to act our way out of a feeling, when actually our feelings come from our thoughts. And when we're trying to act our way out of a feeling, it is a really big clue that we have an emotion going on for us, which is being caused by a thought that we haven't yet looked at. We're just trying to get away from it. We don't want to look at it yet. We want to get out of there as soon as possible.

The next thing to notice is the idea that if we think that if we make the right or the wrong choice, we're not going to have to feel all of these horrible feelings and life's going to be rosy on the other side of it because we won't have to feel this awful stuff.

Whether you feel that awful stuff or not is basically down to the way that you talk to yourself. And whether you make any which decision or not is not going to dictate the way that you talk to yourself. Making an active choice about whether you're really horrible to yourself or not will dictate how you talk to yourself. So rather than thinking about making the right choice to avoid feeling bad, I want to reverse engineer it a bit and consider, "It's not about knowing what the right thing to do is." It's about knowing that no matter what happens, I won't be too hard on myself.

If we know we won't be too mean if we get it wrong. There is more of a chance that we can actually tap into what we feel is the right answer. And just like reemphasising, there's no right answer. There's never a right or a wrong answer. We never know. You will never know what things you have avoided or may have won if you'd made a different choice than the one you did because you didn't make that choice. One of my favorite sayings is that you never know what worse luck, your bad luck saved you from. The choice that you don't make doesn't happen. So we can't know whether it's the right or wrong thing. It's just the thing that happens. And how are you going to speak to yourself about that?

But we can explore how this sense of urgency, this sense of panic, can masquerade as responsibility. It can feed into this idea that if we do the right thing, we'll be the good, responsible people who've taken agency over our emotions, and we have made the right choices, and then we will be rewarded with not feeling icky.

And it doesn't work like that, however much I might wish for it. For you is this idea of building tolerance for that ick. Building tolerance for discomfort rather than reacting to the urgency that will. I mean, frankly, it safeguards us in all areas of our lives, not just our emotional life.

I have a friend who got scammed out of quite a lot of money online recently, and he was tricked into thinking it was his bank calling him. He's a savvy chap, and people are getting cleverer out there with how they make these wily ways to convince us that they are the real deal. And, and I think many of us have elders in our lives and many of us, it crosses our minds to worry about how they interact with all of these, not only the old-fashioned scammers, but all of these new ways of tricking people into handing over their personal details so that people can be impersonated and defrauded. And the one thing that I always try and remember, when I speak to my dad about it, and I also try and remind myself, is if I feel like I'm being rushed, if I feel like I have to make a decision urgently, to try and notice that that's what's going on and that something might be afoot here. And we can easily apply that not just to Internet scammers, but also to ourselves. If it feels like there is a heady sense of urgency, what's really going on here? Is it a feeling or is it actually death? I mean, you know, if there's a vehicle rushing towards you, step out the road for sure. But there are very few emotional situations that are that highly paced that our safety is in danger.

But our brain loves to tell us differently. And pausing to notice really will give you a wider emotional literacy to be able to manage the rest of your life and to be able to make choices with more of a clear head rather than a running away head.

How long we are willing to sit in discomfort really does give us a toolkit to be able to manage our lives with a sense of direction and focus that is more aligned with our values and more aligned with the things that we want to have in our lives. Because we're not trying to escape something, we're trying to move towards something.

And being willing to sit in that I don't knowness isn't the same as constantly searching and reaching and running over all the ideas in your head for an answer. It is about trying to acknowledge what a feeling feels like, an emotion feels like in your body, and go, yeah, this, this is uncomfortable. I'm not enjoying this. But I'm also willing to allow it to be here in order for me to be able to take some steps that are hopefully gonna stop us staying stuck in the same old patterns that we're trying to break.

Sometimes I do an exercise which is sitting down and thinking about something that I'd like in my life, a brilliant example, is to tell more people about the podcast. What would I need to be willing to feel in order for me to put myself in a place where I'm talking about the podcast? More to people. Am I willing to feel embarrassed? Am I willing to feel ashamed? Am I willing to let people think I'm being a bit salesy? Will I allow myself the discomfort of people thinking I'm boring or a know-it-all? I worry about these things, noticing them and then letting them go. That's what's preventing me taking action towards getting closer towards the things that I want. If I was willing to experience that stuff, what then? What could be possible for me then? Because most of the stuff that we dream about is the other side of us not sort of hesitating and shrinking and pulling ourselves back from not willing, being willing to feel a feeling, or not wanting other people to think a particular thing about us.

What's possible for you when you do allow that? What feels like the urgent need to escape from someone thinking something about you is preventing you from getting you closer to where you want to be, more of the stuff that you want in your life.

So on that subject of talking about the podcast, you want to share this with just one friend? It would mean the world to me. Honestly, I love this little podcast.

I'm guessing if you're around here too, you kind of like it as well. The audience is not massive and I treat it with such reverence and care. And I hope that my. My dulcet little tones in your ears is. Is a joy to you every week. And I would love to be able to share some of these little nuggets with more people. If you find it valuable, you might consider sharing it on social media. Maybe you'd like to tell a friend about it.

Just each one of these things just makes a huge difference to how we can kind of get more agency out into the world with more people feeling at ease with what's going on in their brains. And that's why I do this stuff, so that people can have a little bit more control and joy in their minds, and we can all stop battling our inner demons quite so much. Maybe you've got a mate who you think could really do with less battling of their inner demons. Point them this way and hopefully I will treat them with the cherished reverence and love that I treat the rest of you lot.

And hopefully you've enjoyed this episode. It's been useful, and I'll speak to you next week. It.

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