“False Urgency”

Back in 2001 I broke my wrist.  I had gone down to rescue a car that was partway up the driveway.  The weather was freezing rain, and the ice on the driveway was pretty serious, which was why my friend couldn’t get the car all the way up.  After I’d been to the hospital, got a cast, struggled with getting on with only one hand — it was my right wrist, so I had to learn to write with my left hand among other things — I gave some thought to how did I come to do such a stupid thing.  I thought about the car, it wasn’t going to die from being left on the driveway overnight, it wasn’t going to get hit by someone else coming up the driveway, there was plenty of room, so why did I feel that it must, must, MUST be brought up to the top.  I thought about what a fuss my father would have made about something like that.  I saw that I had created urgency where there wasn’t any.  Later, as I learned more about PTSD, I realized that that feeling of urgency was always there, whether or not it was justified by current circumstances.  I started naming it as “false urgency” so I could choose not to rush out and do whatever it was.

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