Not Everything That Feels Urgent Is Urgent: Telling the Difference Between Real Urgency and Anxiety

An uncomfortable email arrives and you feel like you have to answer right now. A text goes unanswered and you need to know why. You remember a small task and it has to be done before you can sit down. Urgency can feel like important information, but sometimes it's anxiety in a very convincing disguise.

In this final episode of our September series on our relationship with doing, I bring the month together by looking at what sits underneath so many of these patterns: urgency. We explore how thoughts and physical sensations reinforce each other, why our brains get so good at "handling it" to find relief, and how to tell the difference between actual urgency (about the situation) and emotional urgency (about the discomfort the situation creates inside us). This isn't about ignoring what matters or swapping urgency for avoidance. It's about creating enough space between the feeling and the action to realize you have a choice.

In this episode, we explore:

• The difference between actual urgency and emotional urgency, with real-life examples
• "Open loops" and why unresolved things feel so hard to leave alone
• How we create activity when we can't create certainty
• A favorite CBT question: Am I responding to a fact or a prediction?
• False deadlines, or "discomfort deadlines," and the questions that expose them (According to whom? By when? What happens if I wait?)
• Urgency vs. avoidance vs. regulation, and what flexible responding looks like
• Why so much healing is learning we can survive an unfinished moment

This week's Healing Experiment:

Identify one false deadline. When your brain says "do it now," ask what the actual deadline is. If there isn't one, create a small intentional delay (10 minutes, 30 minutes, or until tomorrow) and notice what thoughts, body sensations, and fears show up. Then ask: Is this urgency giving me useful information, or is it asking me to make discomfort disappear?

This week's takeaway:

Not everything that feels urgent is urgent. The feeling is real, but it doesn't have to be an instruction. Sometimes the most regulating thing you can do isn't fixing the problem. It's discovering that you can wait.

Resources mentioned:

Visit my Healing Library at heal.jessicacolarcolcsw.com to find:

• Your Personal Care Plan (free worksheet): a way to care for yourself that takes your actual capacity into account
• Nervous System Regulation Plan: a self-guided resource for understanding your nervous system more deeply
• Why You Can't Stop: my 7-module course for going deeper into the patterns we explored all September

Catch up on the September series:

Why You Can't Stop • Why Rest Doesn't Always Feel Restful • You Don't Have to Earn Rest • Nervous System Regulation Isn't the Same as Being Calm

Connect:

📩 Sign up for the newsletter at healingismyhobby.com

📷 Instagram: @healingismyhobby

▶️ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@healingismyhobby

🩺 Clinical website: jessicacolarcolcsw.com

📷 Instagram: @jessicacolarcolcsw

🎵 TikTok: @jessicacolarcolcsw

urgency and anxiety, emotional urgency, false deadlines, discomfort deadline, anxiety disguised as urgency, fact vs prediction, CBT for anxiety, cognitive behavioral therapy, intolerance of uncertainty, tolerating uncertainty, open loops, reassurance seeking, checking behaviors, overthinking, high-functioning anxiety, productivity anxiety, compulsive productivity, people pleasing, nervous system regulation, nervous system activation, can't relax, urgency vs avoidance, anxious texting, waiting for a text back, emotional regulation, mindful pause, therapist podcast, mental health podcast, Healing Is My Hobby, Jessica Colarco LCSW

Have you ever noticed how convincing urgency feels? You get an email that makes you uncomfortable, and suddenly you need to respond now. Someone seems a little off with you. You need to figure out why now.

You remember something you forgot to do and you need to take care of it immediately. You don't know how something is going to work, so you start researching, planning, checking, thinking, trying to solve a problem that technically hasn't happened yet. And none of these things look dramatic. You might not describe yourself as panicking. You might say, I need to handle this.

But here's the question I want us to explore today. Does it actually need to be handled right now? Or does it feel like it needs to be handled right now? Because those are not always the same thing. Sometimes urgency is information, and sometimes urgency is anxiety wearing a very convincing disguise. Today we're going to learn how to tell the difference.

Hi, welcome back to Healing is My Hobby. I'm Jessica Calerco, a licensed clinical social worker and CBT therapist. And this is the podcast where we get curious about the patterns that shape how we think, feel, cope, and heal, both inside and outside the therapy room.

We have spent the entire month of September talking about our relationship with doing. We started with why you can't stop and looked at what happens when productivity starts feeling like safety. Then we talked about why rest doesn't always feel restful. We challenged the belief that you have to earn rest. And last week we talked about why nervous system regulation isn't the same as being calm. So today I want to bring all of that together by talking about something I think sits underneath a lot of these patterns.

Urgency. That internal feeling that says, do it, answer it, fix it, check it, figure it out, make a decision, take care of it. Don't leave this unresolved. And if you're someone who is responsible, productive, anxious, conscientious, high achieving, or simply very used to being the person who handles things, you may be so accustomed to responding to urgency that you don't even realize you're doing it.

The feeling shows up and you act. Today we're going to practice putting something in between those two things. One of the tricky things about anxiety is that it often presents itself as information. It doesn't necessarily say, hi, I'm anxiety. It says, you need to figure this out. You need to make sure.

You need to respond. Something isn't right. You shouldn't leave this unfinished. You need to know what that means. You need a plan. And when our body is activated, those thoughts can feel incredibly believable. That's because thoughts and physical sensations reinforce each other. You have a thought, what if something's wrong?

Your body responds. Maybe your heart speeds up, your chest tightens, your stomach drops, you feel restless. And then your brain notices the physical activation and says, see, this must be important. So you learn something. You check, you fix, you research, you send the text, you make the list, you solve the problem, and eventually you get some relief. Which means your brain learns, good thing we handled that.

And now the next time urgency shows up, you're even more likely to respond quickly. Not because you're doing something wrong, because your brain is very good at learning what brings relief. Now I want to be really clear. Sometimes things actually are urgent. If it's a safety issue, an emergency, a medical concern, a true deadline, or something that genuinely requires immediate action, then yes, respond.

we're not trying to train ourselves to ignore important information. The goal isn't nothing is urgent. The goal is I want to get better at distinguishing actual urgency from emotional urgency. Actual urgency is about the situation.

Emotional emergency is often about the discomfort the situation creates inside us. For example, your child is injured and needs medical attention. That's actual urgency. You send someone a text and they haven't responded for two hours, and you suddenly need to know whether they're upset with you. That's probably emotional urgency.

Your boss tells you something needs to be submitted by noon. That's actual urgency. Your boss sends you a short email and you immediately feel like you need to write back with a three-paragraph explanation because they're worried they're unhappy with you. That's different. A bill is due today. That's actual time-sensitive information. You receive a bill that's due three weeks from now and suddenly can't relax until you've paid it, checked the account, checked it again, and added it to three different lists. Maybe that's worth getting curious about.

Again, the behavior itself isn't necessarily the problem. Pay the bill,

the email, make the plan. The question is: am I choosing to respond or am I responding because I can't tolerate the feeling of leaving this unresolved? Our brains genuinely like resolution. We like knowing. We like answers. We like completed tasks. We like things wrapped up.

And when something is unresolved, it can create what I sometimes think of as an open loop. There's something hanging there: a decision, a conversation, an unanswered message, a question, something you need to remember, something you don't know yet. And your mind keeps coming back to it. Did they answer? What am I going to do? Should I check? Maybe I should handle that now.

What if I forgot? What if this happened? For someone who uses productivity, planning, checking, or problem solving to regulate discomfort, closing those loops can feel really good. Complete the task. Relief. Get the answer. Relief. Receive reassurance. Relief. Make the plan. Relief. But here's the hard part: life contains open loops.

People don't always respond when we want them to. We don't always know how something will turn out. Decisions sometimes need time. Problems don't always have immediate solutions. Other people have feelings we cannot fix. There are seasons of life where we simply don't know what's next. And if our nervous system has learned, uncertainty means act.

We can spend a tremendous amount of energy trying to close loops that aren't ready to be closed.

This is such an important distinction. Sometimes we can't create certainty. So we create activity. Think about that. You don't know what's going to happen. You can't control the outcome. You can't make another person respond. You can't guarantee that everything will go according to plan.

But you can do something. Research, make another list, ask another person what they think. Google it, check again, reorganize, prepare, plan, send another message. An activity can create a temporary sense that we're moving toward control. And sometimes that's useful.

Preparation can be absolutely useful. Planning can be useful, but sometimes we're not really solving anything anymore. We're trying to change the way uncertainty feels, and uncertainty is uncomfortable. If you've listened to the rest of this month's episodes, you may already recognize where we're going with this. The goal isn't to eliminate uncertainty. It isn't to make yourself perfectly comfortable. It's to increase your ability to experience uncertainty without automatically turning it into an embrace.

emergency. Here's one of my favorite cognitive behavioral questions. When you notice urgency, ask, am I responding to a fact or a prediction? A fact is a deadline is tomorrow. A prediction is if I don't get ahead on this tonight, tomorrow is going to be a disaster. A fact is they haven't responded to my text. A prediction is they're upset with me.

A fact is I made a mistake. A prediction is this is going to become a huge problem and everyone is going to think I'm incompetent. A fact is I don't know what the outcome will be. A prediction is if I don't figure this out immediately, something bad is going to happen.

This doesn't mean that prediction is impossible. CBT isn't about telling yourself everything is fine, nothing bad will happen. It's about recognizing the difference between what you know and what your anxious brain is forecasting. Because we behave very differently when we treat predictions like facts. Another thing anxiety is very good at creating false deadlines.

The email doesn't need a response until tomorrow, but internally, now. the decision doesn't need to be made this week, but your brain says, figure it out tonight. The kitchen can wait until morning, but something inside you says, you can't go to bed like this. You don't need to know the answer yet, but your brain says, keep thinking until you figure it out.

There isn't an actual deadline. There's a discomfort deadline.

this discomfort to end now. And once you start recognizing false deadlines, you'll probably see them everywhere. I need to solve this. According to whom? By when? What happens if I wait? Those questions can be surprisingly powerful. Now I know some of my very responsible listeners are probably thinking, Jessica, if I start.

Telling myself everything can wait, I will never get anything done. Remember, we're not swinging from one extreme to another.

We're not replacing compulsive urgency with avoidance. There's a difference between I am intentionally choosing not to respond yet and I am avoiding something I actually need to address. Let's say there's an uncomfortable email. Avoidance might look like refusing to open it four days because you don't want to deal with anxiety. Urgency might look like responding within 90 seconds before you've even had time to think.

Regulation might look like I read the email, I noticed that I'm activated, there is no emergency, I'm gonna take 20 minutes, think about what I actually want to say, and respond when I'm more grounded. That's flexibility. Neither immediate reaction nor complete avoidance. A choice. This has really been one of the themes underneath our entire month: creating space. The feeling says.

Do something. And instead of immediately obeying it, we pause. Not forever. Maybe 30 seconds, maybe five minutes, maybe an hour. Long enough to ask what exactly feels urgent right now? What are the actual facts? Is there a real deadline? What am I predicting will happen if I wait?

And do I need to take action or do I need to tolerate some discomfort? That last question is a big one because sometimes action is absolutely needed. And sometimes what we need is the ability to let ourselves feel uncertain, unfinished, uncomfortable, or temporarily misunderstood without rushing to make the feeling disappear.

And actually, I want to pause here because this idea of asking what do I actually need right now connects with something I've created. I have a free worksheet called Your Personal Care Plan. And I created it around the idea that I think gets missed in a lot of conversations about self-care. The way you care for yourself needs to take your capacity into account. Because what you have available on a day when you're feeling energized, connected, and relatively regulated may be completely different from what you have.

available on a day when you're overwhelmed, depleted, or stretched really thin. and personal care shouldn't become another list of things you have to accomplish. You don't need another routine to fail at.

You don't need 10 more things you're supposed to squeeze into your day. Sometimes the question is simply: given the capacity I actually have today, what would support me? That's what your personal care plan helps you begin exploring, and it's completely free. You can download it at my healing library at heal.jessica calarco lcsw.com. And while you're there, take a look around. I've been building this library so there are different ways to work with things we're talking about here on the podcast. You can start with the free personal care plan.

There are additional self-guided resources, including my nervous system regulation plan. And if you decide you're ready to go much deeper into the patterns we've been talking about all month, you also can find my seven module course, Why You Can't Stop. But you don't have to start with the biggest thing. Start with what feels useful, start with what feels doable, start with what you actually have capacity for right now. Again, that's heal h e a l dot jessica colorco lcsw.com.

And I'll put it in the show notes. Okay, let's get back to urgency. Let's imagine you send a text to someone you care about. And normally they're pretty responsive. A few hours go by, nothing. Your brain starts filling in the blank. Did I say something wrong? Are they upset? Was my text annoying? I wonder if I should send another message. Maybe I'll check whether they've been online. Maybe I should reread what I sent.

Your body gets a little activated.

Now there's an urge. Do something. This is the moment. First, what are the facts? I sent a message. They haven't answered yet. That's it. What am I predicting? They're upset. I did something wrong. This means something about our entire relationship. Is there an actual action required right now? Probably not. What happens if I wait? I feel uncomfortable. And there it is.

Sometimes the problem isn't that we don't know what to do, we know exactly what to do. Wait. We just don't like how waiting feels. And learning to tolerate that feeling without immediately seeking reassurance is a form of regulation. This also shows up all the time with productivity. You sit down after work and suddenly remember, I need to order that thing.

I should answer that email. I need to put that appointment on the calendar. I should switch the laundry. I should look up that hotel. I should make that list. And because each task is small, you tell yourself, I'll just do it really quickly. But then one thing becomes another thing, and suddenly the nervous system never gets a chance to transition out of doing mode. So one experiment you can try is simply asking: Does this need to be done? Or does this need to be done now? Those are different.

Questions. Maybe it does need to be done. Great. Write it down. Give it time. Let your brain know you're not forgetting this. We're just not doing it right now. Sometimes externalizing a task is enough to help an open loop feel contained. I think there's something bigger underneath all of this. A lot of healing is learning that we can survive an unfinished moment. The text hasn't been answered yet. I can wait. The decision hasn't been made yet. I can wait.

Someone might be disappointed with me. I don't have to immediately fix it. There are things left on my list. I can still stop. I'm feeling anxious. I don't have to solve the anxiety before I continue with my day. I don't know exactly what's going to happen. I can still be okay in this moment.

We're not pretending uncertainty feels wonderful. We're learning I can feel urgency without automatically becoming urgent. That's a very different thing. So here's your healing experiment for this week.

to identify one false deadline. Just one. Notice a moment when your brain says, do it now. Answer now. Fix it now. Figure it out now.

And ask yourself what is the actual deadline? If there isn't one, create a small intentional delay. Maybe 10 minutes, maybe 30 minutes, maybe until tomorrow. Choosing something appropriate to the situation. And during that delay, notice what happens, what thought shows up, what happens in your body?

What are you afraid will happen if you don't act immediately? And then ask, is this urgency giving me useful information or is it asking me to make discomfort disappear? You may still choose to take action, and that's completely fine. The experiment isn't about refusing to do things. It's about discovering whether you have a choice. Because this is our final episode of September, I want to zoom out for a minute.

We've spent this month asking a lot of questions. Why can't I stop? Why doesn't rust feel restful? Why do I feel like I have to earn a break? What does regulation actually mean? And now, why does everything sometimes feel so urgent?

Underneath all of those questions is something I hope you're beginning to notice. A lot of patterns we judge ourselves for make sense when we understand what they're doing for us. Maybe staying productive gives you relief. Maybe being useful helps you feel secure. Maybe staying busy keeps difficult feelings at a distance. Maybe checking reduces uncertainty. Maybe fixing helps you feel more in control.

Maybe immediate action helps you escape the discomfort of waiting. Understanding that doesn't mean we have to keep doing it. It means we can stop treating the pattern like a character flaw and start seeing it as information. Because once we understand the pattern, we have more choices. And that's what I really want for you. Not perfectly calm, not a perfectly regulated nervous system, not an empty to-do list, not a life with no stress.

More choices. And if you've been listening this month and wondering where to go next, I want to make that really simple. You don't have to do everything. If you're just beginning, start with my free, your personal care plan. If you want to understand the nervous system more deeply, explore my nervous system regulation plan.

Before I go, I also want to make sure that you know there are a few other ways we can stay connected between episodes. You can visit the Healing Is My Hobby website at healingismyhobby.com. That's where you can read my blog, explore more of what we're talking about, and sign up for the newsletter. You can also find me at Healing is My Hobby on YouTube and Instagram. And if you're interested specifically in my clinical work as a therapist, you can visit my clinical website at Jessica Calarco LCSW.com. You can find me on Instagram at Jessica.com

LCSW and now I'm on TikTok at Jessica Calarco LCSW. So whether you want the podcast and blog, free resources, more clinical mental health content, are you ready to dig deeper with one of my self-guided resources? There are lots of ways to continue the conversation. And you certainly don't need to follow me everywhere. Choose the place that's most useful to you. I'm going to leave you with one sentence this week.

Not everything that feels urgent is urgent. The feeling is real. The activation is real. The discomfort is real. But you don't have to automatically treat the feeling as an instruction. Pause. Look for the facts. Notice the prediction.

Check the actual deadline and ask yourself, do I need action right now? Or do I need to give myself permission to be uncomfortable for a little while? Sometimes the most regulating thing you can do isn't fix the problem. it's discovered that you can wait. I'm Jessica Kalerico and this is healing is my hobby. And remember, healing doesn't have to be your whole life. It can just be something you keep practicing along the way. I'll see you next week.