The Psychology!
The urgency and checking reflex, relates to most people who are responsible and care about outcomes.
Threat-monitoring, relief-seeking and checking behaviour is driven by responsibility sensitivity and anticipatory anxiety to stay on the right side of any consequences external to the control of the person.
Most people have experienced this and know the feeling even though they’ve never put words to it.
Imagine your scenario, you’re doing your daily thing whatever that is and out of nowhere something just enters your thoughts such as an email you sent or a payment you made or something as simple as forgetting to do something.
Then you feel a little lift or rush of energy, a sense of urgency which is not exactly panic nor is it a fear but it’s more like a vigilant nudge in the ribs that says, I need to check this.
At first you just push it away and put it off because you’ve got other things to do but it’s got an intrusive persistence to it, like a slight pressure. It’s not dramatic but it’s quite strong and then you’ve got a balancing point to wrestle with, do it now or do it later.
But its dominant over your thoughts and takes over, it’s hard to ignore. Can you reassure yourself and say it’s probably fine, I’m sure it’s OK but the thought doesn’t drop so you have to check it.
Whatever it is, you log into your bank account or you open your email or you pull out your paperwork and scroll through your calendar or your message list. You may have to open cupboards and drawers and dig out some documents or paperwork or open up files and check that your notes match, and then you find confirmation that you were right all along which is – that you were wrong earlier and everything is OK.
But then something interesting happens in your awareness and that pressure or sense of urgency just disappears and the energy lowers to nil and you move on with your day and that’s the end of the matter.
BUT, and this is a big but . . . .
Most people will move on and never think any more about this until the next time it happens, and it will happen again because it’s a pattern you’re familiar with. In many ways it feels normal, it feels like bookkeeping or reality checking with a responsibility to it because you don’t want the consequences or the outcome to stress you out! But what you’re not paying attention to is that there is a reoccurring pattern beneath the surface, just underneath your radar.
This pattern is called threat-monitoring followed by relief-seeking checking.
Now you’re familiar, and it shows up in all kinds of simple and ordinary situations daily or weekly and something’s prompting you to check things like, did you miss a deadline or having to go back to re-read a message to see if it sounded wrong, to see if that person’s tone was really the way you thought it was but dismissed at the time.
Now you’re saying oh yes, I know that – how many times have you misread the tone in an email, it was abrupt maybe or it was rude or dismissive, or you need to confirm a tax date, and was the bill was paid on time or you might have failed to declare something to HMRC or even checking at the payment that left your bank account to see that they were correct, no mistakes were made or even money was taken that shouldn’t have been. Most people do this but each person’s situation differs.
This is not OCD as some people might think, it’s not the same as obsessive checking either. You’re not doubting your reality, you’re just stuck in a loop system or a reoccurring intermittent on and off loop. You’re not checking the same thing 10 or 20 times a night like with OCD. Most of the time one check is enough and once you’ve checked you’re done.
So, what’s actually going on?
To put it simply at the most basic level, the brain is doing what it evolved to do over its evolutionary lifetime. It scans for potential threats and not just physical danger but social and financial, legal and practical consequences which could scare you or cause you anxiety or stress which you’ve had in the past or anything that could come back to haunt or bite you later.
Your brain doesn’t wait for any proof as it works fast on possibility. What if I overlook something? And this is enough to trigger that check it now response!
And worse than this is the accompanying feeling and it’s always that feeling which is charged with an electrical energy, what if I overlook something plus that feeling!
This is enough to trigger a flighty type response!
That response isn’t always anxiety in the usual sense however it is of the same ilk and it comes from the same fight or flight energy but it is better described as motivational energy, a sort of push for you to act and act now without delay
No, act now without delay, NOW and it’s almost speaking to you with that feeling which you’ve had many times before, that something needs to be dealt with now, so it doesn’t turn into a problem later or you don’t have to experience that stomach turning consequence for not paying attention.
This is what responsible and caring people do mostly. Conscientious and organised, responsibility orientated people like this that tends to be strongest with.
These types of people are the people that pay their bills on time, follow the rules and keep good records or don’t like unfinished or loose ends. Does this sound like you?
This same issue that makes someone reliable and responsible also makes them sensitive to unfinished business or tasks and chores.
When your mind detects a possible loose end, it raises the signal!
Here’s the important and crucial part:
After you’ve checked, you feel the relief and it’s this relief your nervous system learns. What it learns is that checking reduces that discomfort and that feeling which it produces in the first place so a hook or loop is formed for you to do it again and again.
This doesn’t mean that checking is wrong or should be avoided, that is not the case, it just means the body quietly connects the dots and the next time a similar thought appears in your mind and your system may raise that signal a little bit more keenly or faster, a little louder.
It’s not because you’re anxious or suffer from OCD or have fears or phobias although some do, but it’s because it worked so well the last time It was a call to action and you responded to the internal system, powering up and that’s what it’s doing when you should be able to power it down.
Over time through repetition this will turn into a reflex which means thought equals urgency, equals checking resulting in relief!
A sort of dopamine loop is set up and the end result or the relief simply just feels good!
And to repeat myself, this isn’t a disorder it’s just a learning loop and because you may never have studied this or are not familiar with it you succumb to it.
And specifically, that your money or admin, taxes, savings, bills and deadlines or official letters not only carry consequences but these are specific areas where mistakes have consequences and they often don’t allow for room for explanations or excuses even if they are legitimate, you know that these things will bring simple consequences especially HMRC or taxes that haven’t been declared and so on.
Your mind treats them seriously. A small tiny insignificant uncertainty can trigger a strong, must deal with it now response!
And here’s another thing to watch!
The same happens within relationships of any kind within communications such as, did that message sound wrong? That could be an email or a text or even a message post online. How many times did you go back and remove the post from social media or recall the email which is now gone or did you forget to reply or not received an expected reply or have I upset someone; did I offend someone? The checking might just be internally mental instead of physical but the loop is the same!
What makes this tricky and edgy is that the checking is often rational as opposed to irrational, as you are making sure things are correct for all the right reasons. You could even say this is your authentic self, kicking in and you’re not inventing any problems. That’s why people struggle to explain why it bothers them so much without sounding scaredy cat or a worry wart!
This issue isn’t the action itself; it’s the tone of the action.
Your checking is driven by a calm choice, it feels fine. When it’s driven by a pressure or a sense of urgency it feels itchy or scratchy like something’s pulling at you or nudging you in the ribs until you act upon it and each individual who experiences this knows the feeling. You don’t like being nudged around by your internal alarm system even if they are just mild little prompts, they still feel uncomfortable.
There’s also another supple effect too and that is when every spike of urgency is immediately resolved by you, your system never learns that it’s safe not to act right away. It’s got a, I must act upon it now drive and the system never learns it’s OK.
There’s a reset button, a bit like Groundhog Day where the mind just keeps returning back to the same place to produce the same response to a similar or same scenario.
The next time the non-thinking part of the mind never says oh it’ll be alright because I learnt that from the last time, it actually learns and does the opposite and it never learns that uncertainty can exist or rest for a while without consequences.
This does not mean you should ignore your responsibilities or avoid checking important things, it means there’s a difference between necessary action that must be taken and automatic relief seeking behaviour.
It’s important to understand this pattern and become familiar with it because it isn’t about stopping the checks, altogether it’s about recognising when the urgency is informational versus when it’s just a learned reflex or habit.
Sometimes the most useful move isn’t to check immediately but to pause briefly and let the energy settle and even a short delay can change the strength of the energy moving forward.
How to solve it!
By saying to yourself, thank you to that part of the mind that is producing this energy (subconscious). Thank you for letting me know but I’m NOT going to check it now.
I’m going to wait for three minutes and it doesn’t matter how much energy rises, I’m letting you know that I’m thanking you for retraining me; to slow it down so the strength of the energy that is being produced within me is getting less. And I thank you for weakening the loop instead of strengthening it.
There is a Japanese technique that instructs you to do the following. Sit in the fire and feel the flames rise around you.
So, the next time there is an urgency, take a deep breath and become aware of the muscles in your body relaxing, as opposed to calling to an action.
Allow your shoulders to drop take deep long slow breaths and become aware that you are the feeling the sting or the pain or the sense of urgency, sit with and feel it as you will retrain to some extent the subconscious mind to slow the response down.
If you act upon it instantly every time, you are training that part of the mind to produce it faster and quicker and more effectively which is the very thing you don’t want.
Sometimes feeling the flames and the sting rising around you teaches your mind you are no longer jumping to it, hence the term sitting in the flames allows you to do the one thing you never do which is just be with the discomfort and feel it.
Acknowledge to yourself with a thankyou and with a feeling of gratitude that you’re not chasing the relief anymore. You are just powering the system down so that you’re no longer slave to it.
Even a very short delay can change the frequency or the tone of this energy to check and the loop weakens instead of strengthening.
Do this and you’ll see the change in due course and suddenly out of nowhere the next time it happens, you’ll notice there is a space between receiving the signal or sense of urgency and you’ll notice you’re not acting upon it even if your heart is beating fast.
Your end goal isn’t to switch it off completely although that can be done using various techniques but at this stage this is just your first introduction to making changes which you can do on your own.
Once you see this pattern work, it loosens some of its grip and that the signal next time becomes just a signal not a demanding command.
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