Feel Like You're Always In A Rush? Hit Play

Episode 71

Have you ever found yourself rushing to do something or rushing get somewhere when you really didn’t actually need to rush? You weren’t running late, there wasn’t a timeline, no one was waiting on you and yet you felt this urgent need to move faster. If so, this episode is for you. 

We all have default patterns, default ways of responding to the world around us because of our past lived experiences. Join me for a conversation about why these patterns take hold, but more importantly what it looks like to begin to rewire and repattern these default responses if they're no longer serving you. Hit play to learn more!

Here's the 3 takeaways:

1.  Catch: Notice this week anytime you feel rushed when you might not need to be?
2.  Challenge: Pause, and ask “can I slow down?” (& know that your brain will immediately scream "NO!"at you, pause again, maybe asking, "but what if we just try?")
3.  Change: Do differently. Maybe you keep driving, doing the dishes, or walking but can you do  just 1% slower, with 1% less urgency, 1% less tension. If you do differently enough times, and things work out, you reset your baseline responses.

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Transcript

Welcome to regulate, and rewire and anxiety and depression podcast where we discuss the things I wish someone would have taught me earlier in my healing journey. I'm your host, Amanda Armstrong. And I'll be sharing my steps, my missteps, client experiences and tangible research based tools to help you regulate your nervous system, rewire your mind and reclaim your life. Thanks for being here. Now, let's dive in. 

We all have default patterns, these default ways of responding to the world because of our past lived experiences. In some cases, for better or for worse, some of us have these default patterns, default ways of responding to situations that we may look at and be like, Yeah, I would consciously choose that I like that I show up this way, in these kinds of situations. There are some of us who have these default patterns, be it avoidance or urgency always being busy, go go go, that we look at and we say, Ah, I feel frustrated that that's the way that I show up in so many situations. And then there are probably even more of us that have these default ways of being or acting, showing up in the world, that we are unaware that we're unaware that this pattern exists. It's just kind of the way that we are and the things that we do. There's a lot of talk about rewiring or re patterning our brain, our nervous system. But what does that actually mean or look like? 

For today's conversation, we are going to specifically take a look at this default pattern of urgency. And as I often do, I am going to share this through a recent experience in my life and how I am working through this catch challenge change of noticing an old pattern of urgency that's no longer serving me. So to help you get clear on whether I am directly talking to you or not today, I've got a question. I want you to think for a moment on if you have ever found yourself rushing to do something, or rushing to get somewhere when you really didn't actually need to rush. You weren't running late. There wasn't a timeline for that thing or that place. No one was waiting on you. And yet you still had this urgent need to move faster. 

Well, let me share with you a story. Last Friday, yeah, last Friday was a Google employee and Family Day at the Washington DC Zoo. For those of you who don't know, I worked at Google out in California, as did my husband. That's where we met. And I left Google after working there for five years to run Rise As We full time. And my husband transferred to the Washington DC office. So he still works for Google. So back to the zoo. We were heading to this employee event at the DC Zoo. We get there and the parking lot of sold out. All right, it is what it is. We'll have to find parking elsewhere. But again, because this is Washington, DC, parking is an absolute nightmare. So I tell my husband hop out, take our two boys to that event, go hang out with your co workers. I'll figure out parking and just meet you there. Again, because it's DC, three full parking lots later, I find parking, it's about a mile away. So I park and then I set my GPS to direct my walk back to the zoo. The GPS says, I think it's like point nine miles, you'll get there in 18 minutes. And my immediate thought was, I bet if I jog, I'll get there faster. And without a second thought off, I went. I'm a couple blocks into this jog. When I think what are you doing? Like, you are not in a sports bra. You don't have your running shoes on. You're healing plantar fasciitis, like why? Why do you need to get there faster? And the second I asked myself that question. I froze. I stopped running. And I was like, I don't know. I came up blank. There was literally no reason for me to be in a hurry. Was I excited to be at the zoo with my boys. Yeah. But I was gonna get plenty of zoo time. Whether I walked there and got there in 18 minutes or I jogged there and got there in 12 No one was waiting for me. The boys were fine. My husband was fine. I'm sure they were all having a great time. 

So why was I in such a hurry? And this is a small example from my everyday life of how I found myself slipping into an old pattern of urgency in a moment where it was entirely unneeded. This is also an everyday example of how being more aware of my default patterns allows me to be be more conscious about whether I continued to fall into them or try something different. Whether I continue to reinforce old patterning old wiring, or try to repattern and rewire something new. And that's what I chose to do, I stopped jogging, I paused to catch my breath. And then I proceeded at a steady paced walk, making extra effort to be present with it. I made eye contact. As I walked by people, I noticed flowers, I saw a really awesome bike on some apartment balcony. 

Because of my past lived experiences, my nervous system is so wired, it is so used to focusing on getting to the next task, the next place the next thing as fast as possible, that I am rarely in the moments that are actually happening. And so I got to with my awareness of this pattern with the opportunity that I had by catching myself in this pattern in the moment, I used this as practice to slow down to just be in it to be in those moments, because there really was no need to rush anywhere. Because here's the thing, by choosing to walk by choosing to slow down, and then seeing that everything still worked out. This is how my nervous system learns that it's safe to slow down. This is how it learns that urgency isn't needed in everything. And this is how we rewire and repattern our responses when we consciously and consistently catch and choose differently, until that new way becomes more familiar. And eventually the new default or a much quicker alternative way of showing up in that situation. 

If enough times I catch myself rushing, choose to intentionally slow down and the world doesn't end, my nervous system gets more and more and more evidence that it's safe to slow down. Also, the more familiar my nervous system becomes with that way of being and the more often it's going to allow me to be there. And our clients experienced this all of the time in their own unique ways. One of the most common ways is feeling like they can't rest until everything is done. And then everything never gets done. So they never get to rest. Just last week, I supported three different clients struggling with this in a single day. And I want to unpack this more in next week's conversation. So if you're like, oh my gosh, that's me. Next week is specifically your conversation. 

But for today, I want to stick with exploring this default pull towards constant urgency to talk about the what, what is urgency, the why, why do we have this default pattern? Why might you experience this, and how to shift this pattern if it's no longer serving you, using a process I call catch, challenge and change. And before we can catch one of these patterns, it can be helpful to understand a little bit about what's behind that urge in the first place. So let's start with defining or unpacking, answering the question, what is urgency? It's not complicated. If there's urgency to a situation, it feels like a pressing issue. It feels like you have to respond quickly. And from a biological perspective, when we are in a constant state of urgency, it keeps our body's stuck fight or flight. And this keeps hormones like cortisol and adrenaline pumping through our system making even more things feel even more urgent, it's tough to relax, it keeps us in motion. And over time this exhausts the system, it's going to lead to burnout, it overloads the stress bucket. And it takes a very real toll on our mental and physical health. 

And when it comes to all of our default patterns, again, sticking with urgency, there's almost always both a top down and a bottom up component. So what I mean by that a top down component would be where you think a thought based on a belief based on your past lived experience. And when you think that thought it sends a message to your body, we're urgent release those hormones do that thing. 

So for example, maybe you have this thought of I have so much to do and it all needs to get done before the baby wakes up from their nap. That thought just push the adrenaline buttons. This is what we call top down activation, your thought triggered this physiological stress response. Or its bottom up that bottom up can come from a nervous system that's just stuck in the on position all the time you live in fight or flight you're always feeling activated. That's the default state. That's how you've learned to exist in the world. And if your nervous system is always stuck in that sympathetic response it is always going to be sending messages of urgency up to your mind. Your state determines your story. When your body is in a fight or flight state, you're going to have urgent thoughts overthinking your brain is going to be racing. 

We also can have more acute bottom up physiological stressors are activators that create that urgency that could be something as simple as caffeine, caffeine kickstarted your system, throwing that urgency, gasoline up into your thought how you're filtering the situation in front of you. For most of us, it's both. And I want to point out this bidirectional flow of top down and bottom up to illustrate that when we are trying to rewire when we're trying to repattern these default ways of being that are not serving us in our everyday life, it can be really helpful to work in both directions. 

So from a top down perspective, what thoughts and beliefs are there that we can catch, challenge and work to change over time. Also looking at what habits like caffeine consumption or an overbooked calendar could help me soften the activation that fuels this urgency in my everyday life. What I think is at the heart of urgency for so many of us is this productivity based self worth. And I in part, know that that resonates with a lot of you because that is one of my most downloaded podcast episodes on this entire show is my episode on productivity based self worth. And when we think about this, society is constantly reinforcing and rewarding, busyness getting more done, equating it with success and enoughness. What we need to know is that our nervous system is shaped by experience. It is wired and rewired by feeling safe, or unsafe. And we attach ourselves to patterns, roles, thoughts, emotions, and adaptive responses that were necessary for safety, survival, early attachment, my productivity based self worth first came, because at one point, I felt more safe, more seen more accepted as a result of doing more. My default pull towards urgency comes from experiencing this felt sense of urgency. 

Often as a child, we were always me and my three siblings were enrolled in multiple extracurricular activities. We had a dad who worked 10 to 12 hours a day. So it was just my mom's responsibility to get all four of us to all of these places after school. And acknowledging this isn't a criticism of anyone or anything. But, of course, we were always running late. Of course, we were always rushing from one place to the next thing, there's no way there's no no schedule was ever meant to accommodate one adult, running four kids to multiple extracurricular activities every single day. And because I didn't ever have a reason to pause and reflect on whether a jam packed schedule was helpful or necessary. And because my nervous system, and all of our nervous systems will always default to known dysfunction over unknown well being. And because society kept giving me praise, for how much I could fit into a 24 hour period, I kept going, I kept over committing, I kept my schedule, color coordinated, never with more than a 10 minute gap from waking up, till going to bed, over functioning became my default to the point where I didn't even realize it was over functioning at all, until my system completely shut me down into what got labeled and medicated as depression. 

So for me, unlikely for you, it's not rocket science, why you default to being in a rush into this pattern of urgency? The question now becomes how, how can I how can you shift these patterns, because I am here to promise you that if you feel stressed and rushed more often than you don't, it is only a matter of time, before your system burns out and shuts down. Your anxiety isn't a disorder, it is physiological order. Based on your past lived experiences and your current life circumstances. Your symptoms always make sense. This constant signal of urgency GO GO GO is either telling you, we haven't learned how to turn off our fight or flight response. Or it's telling you there's too much in your life that you actually need to rush to get it all done. And a tool like medication may make that feel easier to manage. But if nothing changes, about this core belief that you have to do more to be worth it or nothing changes about how you live your daily life. It is never going to be enough to feel good in your daily life. 

So back to this question of how do we shift and I am going to share this from both that top down that thought based perspective as well. Well as a bottom up, illustrating why we need both. So in this top down, you can work on better understanding the beliefs behind your behaviors and your responses. You can do that through journaling, you can do that through talk therapy, where you can catch challenge and change your thoughts. Catching the thought of, I need to get there or I need to do this faster, challenging it with questions like, do I? What evidence do I have that I might be okay, if I don't rush, if I don't do more or do faster, I love to kind of roleplay or imagine what somebody else who doesn't have my past lived experience or my default patterns or my trauma. So in this challenging process, I think what made somebody else who doesn't have this default pattern of urgency think in a situation like this? What might somebody else do in a situation like this? I know for sure there are even some of you listening. Who would never look at your GPS and think, Well, if I ran, I bet I could shave five minutes off of that. With top down therapies. There's also something like hypnotherapy that aims to shift beliefs on a more subconscious level. And then the change comes from doing differently. And changing this belief is going to help you to do differently in your life, you might notice the urge to say yes to more. But since you've challenged that belief that your worth is tied to your productivity, you may pause and instead say no, brilliant, you do this enough times. And you get the proof that your life doesn't fall apart. When you do it gets easier and easier and easier to move slower or do less. 

But here's the thing. There's no amount of challenging this belief in talk therapy or with subconscious reprogramming, that will get rid of urgency if you are still living a life that's biologically urgent, overbooked, over caffeinated, overstimulated, because 80% of this Mind, Body conversation originates in the body. And the body doesn't speak this logical or verbal language, but an experiential one. So how do we catch challenge and change bottom up in the body. For me, this is looked like enough somatic work to open up that line of communication between my mind and body to begin with, because for over a decade, in order to operate at the level that I did, for that long, I had to completely ignore my body's signs and signals of fatigue, there was a lot of disconnect and dissociation there. 

In the specific zoo example, I shared that it looked like catching myself literally running, noticing that tension, that body in motion and recognizing I didn't really want to run. And there was this mixed felt experience of I have to rush but I don't want to. And this is what allowed me to pause and challenge this way of showing up in the situation. And then what reinforced safety in slowing down was being intentional throughout that walk. Because while I was walking multiple times during that 18 minute walk, I felt the urge to run again, I felt the urge to rush again. And it's being in conversation with my body, noticing that urge that I was able to pause, deepen my breath, look around, open my vision field, all of these things that helped my body to relax and regulate, allowing me to keep walking. And to choose a new pattern and to build in some a felt sense of safety within that new pattern. And then when I did get to the zoo, I took a moment to pause in that situation to see my boys running around having fun to reinforce to my system. Look, you slow down and everything, in fact, isn't just okay. It's great. 

This is how we learn that urgency isn't needed in everything. It is by feeling the urge to run or catching yourself running or driving faster than you need to or feeling tense. Choosing to soften, choosing to slow over and over and over again in these small ways in our daily life. Until we learn. It's safe to do that. And if enough times I catch myself rushing, or actually what I've noticed happens more often is I catch myself rushing my son, I catch myself rushing my four year old when I don't really need to. But if I catch this rushing and intentionally slow me down, slow him down, slow us down and see that the world doesn't end. The more familiar my nervous system becomes with the experience. That slowing down is safe, and I am not there yet. I am not a person who is often unhurried or would describe my existence in the world as easeful. But I do have hope and trust in this process of repatterning my nervous system, and healing anxiety and depression, that I will be able to experience a life that is more useful and unhurried. And I'm really, really looking forward to that. And in almost the most cosmically comical way, I wrote the outline of for today's podcast at a cafe near my house. 

And as I was walking home, I caught up to two gentlemen who were walking quite slow, they were having a very leisurely stroll in conversation. And it was only when I was able to mirror my pace, too, their's that I realized I was speed walking home. Here I was, having outlined a podcast about this default pattern of urgency, and then immediately start to speed walk home, to step into a pattern of urgency when I didn't need to, and I wouldn't have caught it. If it wasn't that I was able to mirror my pace to theirs. As I took that as an invitation to slow down. I let my mind think and explore like, what is it? What is it like to move through the world in such an unhurried way. And I found myself a little emotional, realizing that this is a gift that I want to give myself, it's an experience I deeply want. And what feels sometimes more importantly to me is, this is a gift I am desperate to give my children. And I hope that they don't even know that it's a gift I've given them. Because that sense of rush or urgency, every moment of every day isn't ever patterned into them. And the only way that that can happen is if I repattern it in me. And that's also my wish for you is that you also can experience a life that feels less hurried, less urgent, and more filled with presents, and ease. 

And next week, we will explore another element to that, that is so common with individuals struggling with anxiety, anxiety, that often leads to depression, because we don't know how to slow down. Looking at this pattern of why it is so hard to rest, why we feel like we can't stop doing until it's all done. But then it's never done. And we're just always tired. And that is going to be a natural extension from today's conversation. So let's sum up today with our three tangible takeaways. And I've organized these into catch, challenge and change. 

Number one is catch. This is my invitation this week to put a little extra intention into noticing. times you feel rushed, you have that felt sense of urgency. When it's not needed. Maybe you're rushing to a doctor's appointment, you're not late for you're rushing to get chores done, that you don't necessarily need to get done fast. 

And that leads to TAKEAWAY NUMBER TWO. The number two is challenge with that moment of awareness with that catch, can you pause and ask yourself? Why am I rushing? Can I slow down? And know that when you ask your brain if you can slow down, it's likely gonna immediately scream no at yo. Pause again. And ask, well, what if I try? What if we try? 

And then that's number three, which is change. Do Differently. Maybe you keep doing but you do slower? If you're doing the dishes, and you feel that sense of urgency with the dishes. You can keep doing the dishes, but can you wash them a little bit more slowly. Bring more intention to them, bring more presence to them. Make it less about getting to the next thing and more about being with the thing that you're doing? Can you move just 1% slower? 1% more mindfully noticing maybe the temperature of the water? If you're driving to your doctor's appointment, can you drive five miles per hour slower? Or maybe just have 1% less tension in your body? If you're walking, measure your pace to the pace of those around you. Could you slow down and know that as you do differently enough times and survive you're nervous them will naturally repattern it will naturally accept and acknowledge that this experience of doing different of doing slower, can also be safe. 

All right, friends. That's what I have. I'm excited to have an extension of this conversation next week. And I'll see you then. 

Thanks for listening to another episode of The regulate and rewire podcast. If you enjoyed what you heard today, please subscribe and leave a five star review to help us get these powerful tools out to even more people who need them. And if you yourself are looking for more personalized support and applying what you've learned today, consider joining me inside Rhys, my monthly mental health membership and nervous system healing space or apply for our one on one anxiety and depression coaching program restore. I've shared a link for more information to both in the show notes. Again, thanks so much for being here. And I'll see you next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai