Making the connection between urgency and violence opened my eyes to the many ways I can contribute to peace within me and around me. 

A friend once commented to me, “When I give in to urgency, I do violence to myself or to others.” I quickly realized that by “violence,” she meant “any kind of harm.” I’ve remembered her words more times than I care to count.

Some examples of urgency-related violence are easy to spot. Years ago, for example, I overslept on the morning I was supposed to take friends to the airport. They called to ask where I was. My then-husband, who was awake and dressed, tore off in the car to pick them up. He hit an icy patch at an intersection a few blocks from our house. The resulting smash-up cost $2000 to fix. I saw that my screw-up had fueled his urgency.

In that instance, we were lucky no one was hurt. I have often hurt myself, though, when I’ve worked myself into a pressed, hurried, urgent state. I’ve literally walked into door frames, or cracked my shin on a coffee table. It’s as if my urgency causes objects to harden into obstacles—the polar opposite of the feeling of ease and flow I get when I refrain from pushing and trust how things are unfolding.

More examples of urgency

Keeping my friend’s words in mind over the years, I recognized countless examples in my own life of unnecessary urgency and the violence it generates. Some will be familiar to you; others may surprise you. All of them will, I hope, heighten your awareness of this pattern.

• Forcing myself to respond to a request, a comment, or a situation before I’m ready. I’ve gotten myself in hot water with this one. There’s an urgency to respond, especially if a situation is conflictual. But I’ve found I can do violence without meaning to–to myself or to the other person—if I don’t take my time and wait to respond until I’m ready.
• Trying (typically without fully realizing I’m doing so) to force another person to do something I wish they would do. This is all too easy to do when I don’t have a Plan B. I end up approaching the person with an energy of demand. In effect, I’m foisting my urgency onto them. This never goes well. Even if I get what I want now, I’ll pay later. People hate being pressured or forced. They won’t forget it.
• Putting “shoulds” on my to-do list. This is a subtle but powerful form of violence against myself. It sets up a dynamic in which I’m telling myself I should get to things that I know perfectly well I won’t have time (or don’t have willingness) to get to. I put myself in a bind. The violence here shows up as chronic tension.
• Fielding phishing attempts. Scammers routinely inflict the violence of urgency on their victims, using social engineering—the perception of familiarity—to get past people’s guard. For example, I get emails every week saying I’m about to lose access to my website. Even though they’ve already been routed to my spam folder, my nervous system gets a jolt.

Unhealthy urgency comes from our parts

Urgency can be real, of course. If I discover my house is on fire, I have to call the emergency responders now and get out. If I discover my bank account has been hacked, I need to take action immediately. However, I’ve observed that for every instance of true urgency, there are many more instances of me being hijacked by a part of me that thinks things are urgent when truly, they aren’t.

“A part of me” is, by definition, a partial self. It’s not all of me. It can’t see the whole picture. Instead, a part gets laser-focused on the “problem” at hand. Then it attempts to address it without taking in all the consequences on me, or on others. That’s what my friend meant when she said that urgency can so easily lead to violence.

The best antidote to urgency is simple (though not easy.) Pause. By remembering to pause, I enter a state of dual awareness. That is, I become aware of my own thought processes. From that place of awareness, I can question the reasons for my urgency. I can recall past instances (and their costs) of rushing ahead. I can think of a Plan B.

Highly sensitive people (HSPs) are known for our thoughtfulness. We ponder, consider, and, yes, pause before acting. But we are also environmentally susceptible. We are sensitive to the energy around us (and to our own inner energies). We can get hijacked if we aren’t careful, and because we are usually so good at pausing, we aren’t accustomed to having to work at it.

Fortunately, you can program yourself to recognize situations like the ones I’ve described here. Then you’ll have a better chance of putting on the brakes before taking actions that do violence to yourself or to others. In a world that feels increasingly violent, this is no small thing. Even better, it is 100% under your control.

Photo by Mathew Schwartz on Unsplash

Note: This newsletter is 100% human. I wrote it with no AI assistance.