Feel like a rush
Effects on Your Body and How to Manage It
Always in a rush? You may have hurry sickness. Luckily, there are ways you can learn to step back and slow down.
If you spend most of your day racing to check items off your to-do list and feel agitated when anything tries to slow you down, then you may be dealing with hurry sickness.
You may walk fast, talk fast, and probably think that there isn’t enough time in the day to get things done.
With the demands of modern life, most people are in a rush much of the time. But when you start to juggle too much at once, it can have repercussions and may signal it’s time to slow down.
If you’re always on the move, you could be experiencing what cardiologists Meyer Friedman and R.H. Rosenman call “hurry sickness.”
Hurry sickness, coined in their 1985 book “Type A Behavior and Your Heart” isn’t an actual medical condition, but it’s known as a sense of excessive time urgency.
You may constantly feel rushed or anxious and have a feeling of urgency to get things done when there’s no need.
When you’re chronically in a hurry, it can mentally and physically affect you. In fact, Friedman and Rosenman found that hurry sickness was a component in type A personalities and may lead to stress-related heart issues.
A 2010 study that consisted of 442 people in Basra, Iraq, found evidence that people associated with Type A personality had a significantly increased chance of hypertension.
The first step to slowing down is learning how to recognize when you’re moving too fast.
Here’s what hurry sickness may look like:
- rushing through tasks
- feeling irritable when there’s a delay
- interrupting or talking over people
- running through your “to do” in your head
- treating everything like a race
- always feeling behind schedule
- continuously multi-tasking
- always having a sense of urgency
The overwhelming anxiety and stress that you feel from taking on too much may play a role in how you mentally and physically feel.
When this happens, you may notice physical health effects, such as:
- fatigue
- headaches
- low immune system
When you’re always in a hurry you’re more likely to neglect your self-care practices, which can contribute to the physical and mental symptoms you may feel.
When your brain is programmed to constantly be on the go, the sheer thought of slowing down may seem impossible. Consider these strategies to help you get out of the habit of rushing to get things done.
Embrace mindfulness
Consistently pushing yourself to meet a deadline or get things done even when it’s not necessary can put stress on your mind and body. Mindfulness can help focus your attention on the here and now.
When you’re used to multi-tasking, you’re used to completing several tasks at once which could mean your mind is going in a million different directions. Mindfulness will help you focus on the present moment, one task at a time.
If you experience an overwhelming feeling while multi-tasking, consider directing your awareness to your breath and your thoughts.
Thoughts may come and go and that’s okay, if you feel safe you can observe your feelings without judgment.
This mindfulness strategy is always available to you and may help you focus on the present moment. Mindfulness takes practice, but in time you’ll get there.
Practice self-care
Spending your day always in a hurry may also mean that you’re neglecting your self-care.
It can be helpful to build self-care into your everyday routine. While your new goal may be to not have as many tasks on your plate, consider treating self-care like you would a doctor’s appointment and pencil it into your schedule.
You can use this time to do things you enjoy, whether it’s getting a massage or being with friends. Doing what brings you comfort and rest is completely up to you.
Prioritize your tasks
Ask yourself, “what is time-sensitive and what can wait?” Prioritizing your tasks may be hard at first, especially when you’re dealing with hurry sickness, and you feel like everything is equally important.
But in time, it will get easier.
Try and focus on the essential things and set aside or delegate the other things that are trivial or don’t need your attention right away. You’d be surprised at how many things you can pass off to other people or that aren’t that necessary.
Set boundaries
If you have a hard time saying no when someone asks you to take on something, then you should consider setting clear boundaries for yourself.
Accepting more responsibilities than you can handle might be what led you to experience hurry sickness. To manage this and adopt a slower living lifestyle, being persistent with setting boundaries for yourself may help.
Consider the following tips to help you establish clear boundaries:
- learning to say no
- being assertive
- taking on only one task at a time
Think about saying yes to the things that you want to do, and no to the things you don’t.
When you treat everything like it’s an emergency even when it’s not, you’re putting stress on yourself, which can lead to feelings of mental and physical exhaustion.
Consider practicing the following strategies to help you slow down.
- mindfulness
- self-care
- prioritizing
- setting boundaries
If you feel like it’s too hard to break free from your patterns on your own, know you’re not alone and people are there to help and support you.
Consider speaking with a therapist to help you put together a plan to cope with hurry sickness and create a lasting change in your life.
Effects on Your Body and How to Manage It
Always in a rush? You may have hurry sickness. Luckily, there are ways you can learn to step back and slow down.
If you spend most of your day racing to check items off your to-do list and feel agitated when anything tries to slow you down, then you may be dealing with hurry sickness.
You may walk fast, talk fast, and probably think that there isn’t enough time in the day to get things done.
With the demands of modern life, most people are in a rush much of the time.
But when you start to juggle too much at once, it can have repercussions and may signal it’s time to slow down.
If you’re always on the move, you could be experiencing what cardiologists Meyer Friedman and R.H. Rosenman call “hurry sickness.”
Hurry sickness, coined in their 1985 book “Type A Behavior and Your Heart” isn’t an actual medical condition, but it’s known as a sense of excessive time urgency.
You may constantly feel rushed or anxious and have a feeling of urgency to get things done when there’s no need.
When you’re chronically in a hurry, it can mentally and physically affect you. In fact, Friedman and Rosenman found that hurry sickness was a component in type A personalities and may lead to stress-related heart issues.
A 2010 study that consisted of 442 people in Basra, Iraq, found evidence that people associated with Type A personality had a significantly increased chance of hypertension.
The first step to slowing down is learning how to recognize when you’re moving too fast.
Here’s what hurry sickness may look like:
- rushing through tasks
- feeling irritable when there’s a delay
- interrupting or talking over people
- running through your “to do” in your head
- treating everything like a race
- always feeling behind schedule
- continuously multi-tasking
- always having a sense of urgency
The overwhelming anxiety and stress that you feel from taking on too much may play a role in how you mentally and physically feel.
When this happens, you may notice physical health effects, such as:
- fatigue
- headaches
- low immune system
When you’re always in a hurry you’re more likely to neglect your self-care practices, which can contribute to the physical and mental symptoms you may feel.
When your brain is programmed to constantly be on the go, the sheer thought of slowing down may seem impossible. Consider these strategies to help you get out of the habit of rushing to get things done.
Embrace mindfulness
Consistently pushing yourself to meet a deadline or get things done even when it’s not necessary can put stress on your mind and body. Mindfulness can help focus your attention on the here and now.
When you’re used to multi-tasking, you’re used to completing several tasks at once which could mean your mind is going in a million different directions. Mindfulness will help you focus on the present moment, one task at a time.
If you experience an overwhelming feeling while multi-tasking, consider directing your awareness to your breath and your thoughts. Thoughts may come and go and that’s okay, if you feel safe you can observe your feelings without judgment.
This mindfulness strategy is always available to you and may help you focus on the present moment. Mindfulness takes practice, but in time you’ll get there.
Practice self-care
Spending your day always in a hurry may also mean that you’re neglecting your self-care.
It can be helpful to build self-care into your everyday routine.
While your new goal may be to not have as many tasks on your plate, consider treating self-care like you would a doctor’s appointment and pencil it into your schedule.
You can use this time to do things you enjoy, whether it’s getting a massage or being with friends. Doing what brings you comfort and rest is completely up to you.
Prioritize your tasks
Ask yourself, “what is time-sensitive and what can wait?” Prioritizing your tasks may be hard at first, especially when you’re dealing with hurry sickness, and you feel like everything is equally important. But in time, it will get easier.
Try and focus on the essential things and set aside or delegate the other things that are trivial or don’t need your attention right away. You’d be surprised at how many things you can pass off to other people or that aren’t that necessary.
Set boundaries
If you have a hard time saying no when someone asks you to take on something, then you should consider setting clear boundaries for yourself.
Accepting more responsibilities than you can handle might be what led you to experience hurry sickness. To manage this and adopt a slower living lifestyle, being persistent with setting boundaries for yourself may help.
Consider the following tips to help you establish clear boundaries:
- learning to say no
- being assertive
- taking on only one task at a time
Think about saying yes to the things that you want to do, and no to the things you don’t.
When you treat everything like it’s an emergency even when it’s not, you’re putting stress on yourself, which can lead to feelings of mental and physical exhaustion.
Consider practicing the following strategies to help you slow down.
- mindfulness
- self-care
- prioritizing
- setting boundaries
If you feel like it’s too hard to break free from your patterns on your own, know you’re not alone and people are there to help and support you.
Consider speaking with a therapist to help you put together a plan to cope with hurry sickness and create a lasting change in your life.
Life in a rush or a bit about urge addiction Important to know
I have one good friend, a wonderful person and an avid workaholic. All in work, all in solving constant production problems (and not only). A friend can talk about her work with rapture, for hours (her work is interesting, so communication often turns out to be very informative). Looking at her, I never tire of being amazed at her pace of life, constant planning and discipline. Recently, I began to notice that topics not related to work began to cause her irritation and discontent. In situations where it would be possible to relax and unwind, a friend began to feel uncomfortable, somehow fussy. I see that she is in great tension, and what is happening to her seems to be a manifestation of urgent dependence. I tell her about it, describe the symptoms. To which I get the answer: “Yes, this is not about me at all! Nonsense! There is no such dependence at all. Well, I think that means I got it right, because denial and downplaying problems is the clearest manifestation of any addictive behavior.
So what is urge addiction? It is a dependence on constant lack of time, on a state of constant employment. Here are its main manifestations:
- The desire to constantly control and plan time. Such a person constantly looks at his watch, his life is often divided into short time intervals;
- Acceptance of almost all requirements related to work (including the willingness to work and solve work issues in free time and holidays).
- Ignoring your basic needs, as well as needs related to family, children, etc. Often, the consequence of urgent dependence is a deterioration in relationships with loved ones.
- Loss of the ability to enjoy the present and concentration on the constant solution of current tasks and problems. In fact, a person constantly thinks either about the future (what tasks still need to be solved) or about the past (mainly about failures).
- Anxiety about the future and fear that time is running out. At the same time, the realization of one's goals and desires is postponed to an indefinite future, “someday”.
In fact, such a state of a person can be described by the words "constant race for time." Gradually, such reactions are fixed in human behavior and become pathological, leading to the appearance of a wide range of problems (constant emotional stress, irritability, sleep problems, dissatisfaction with oneself, depression, impaired concentration, psychosomatic diseases, problems in the family, etc.). Urgent addiction affects both men and women of different ages, fields of activity, at different stages of career growth.
In many ways, the manifestation of urgent dependence in a large number of people is associated with the requirements and stereotypes of modern culture. Ideas of success related to the implementation of a large number of tasks in the shortest possible time are broadcast from almost all sides. Our time is also characterized by a large "influx of information", as a result of which it is difficult for many people to determine the most important tasks and cases, a neurotic need is formed to take on everything at once. Over time, exhaustion sets in, and the consequences of urgent addiction become more pronounced.
A natural question arises: what to do with it? To begin with, it is important to note: this condition definitely requires help! Urgent addiction therapy includes:
- Correction of emotional and physiological disorders;
- Teaching self-management skills for the fear of being unemployed;
- Revision of value, motivational and personal guidelines;
- Optimization of family relations, assistance in resolving family conflicts.
And remember: the less neglected the problem, the easier and faster it is to find ways to resolve it.
The article has been checked, the medical information is correct
Tarkil Nina Zinonovna
Candidate of Psychological Sciences, clinical psychologist
all specialists
5 of 5
In continuation of the article “12 signs that your life is not “your” life”, I decided to write about one more sign - about haste. How I missed him then, I have no idea!
But haste and haste are almost the main enemies of modern man.
We do not live, we are in a hurry, we do not live, we are running, and through the dust raised by our running around, one can see monotony and emptiness. In our haste, we do not have time to live.
For some reason, many people think that the number of tasks performed and the speed of their implementation are evidence and a guarantee of their quality, as well as the quality of life of the person himself.
In modern society, it has long been established that speed, haste and a high pace of life are evidence of success and success.
But at the same time, many of these "successful" people live long ago having lost the feeling of satisfaction with life and the work done. Constantly boiling in a cauldron of eternal haste, fuss and haste, they say to themselves: “I feel like a squeezed lemon”, “I am like a hunted animal”, “the more I do, the more I feel empty”, “I get so tired that everything I want less and less of something from life.
Haste is a very voracious animal! It eats up time, that's why life runs past a person. He only feels that "the days are falling fast like leaves in autumn."
Haste eats up strength, hence the feeling of dull fatigue, with a complete loss of joy from the work done.
Haste eats attentiveness. Therefore, a person, diving headlong into things, trying to do them as much and as quickly as possible, notices little around him. The events of life flash by at great speed, giving rise to meaninglessness and monotony in life.
Haste eats up positive feelings and emotions, pleasant thoughts and contentment. But it breeds negative ones, especially feelings of transience and disappointment.
If you are in a hurry, you will never be happy and satisfied with your life. Haste and vanity are the enemies of happiness. And what kind of happiness and quality of life can we talk about if fatigue and emptiness have dug in and taken root in the soul?
Haste negatively affects both physical and psychological health. It is she who is to blame for the fact that stress is one of the most dangerous enemies of modern man.
Have you ever asked yourself why this happens?
And the voltage is to blame. There is too much of it. This is the pernicious effect of the excess effect, which I already wrote about in the article “The Yerkes-Dodson Law and Motivation Management”.
The effect of excess can also be called the "paradox of purposeful efforts." The more we want to achieve the goal, to do more things, to achieve high results, the more the tension grows, the more it grows, the less strength and more negative emotions, and this leads to losses in the effectiveness of actions.
In addition, on this basis, the effect of a cycle often develops, when a person is constantly in a state of business nervousness, he cannot calm down, and all his thoughts and feelings constantly return to business and worries.
And the worst thing: haste and haste subjugate a person, he becomes nervous, loses control over the situation, and now it is not he who manages affairs, but actions control a person.
Hence: maybe you have little time, not because you don’t do enough and don’t exert yourself enough, but just the opposite, you are too zealous, you strain too much!?
What to do? Well, you can do nothing, live as you used to live. That's what the majority does. Why even more strain and change the situation? And so cares up to the throat, and then get rid of the fuss!
But something can still be done. Below is a list of recommendations, the observance of which allows you to cope with the rush and chaos in your life, or at least reduce them to a tolerable minimum. Try to do at least some of them regularly, and your life will begin to change. So…
How to stop rushing
and at the same time at the same time to manage more than
9000
Be aware that the excessive pursuit of happiness and success scares away happiness and success. They are drawn to slowness and thoroughness. Happiness does not need to be sought, it is formed within us as a powerful experience of harmony with ourselves and the world around us.
This experience arises in response to openness to the world, in response to the ability to live a full life, and not just a life saturated with business and worries, in response to the ability to accept life as it is, in response to the ability to learn from one's own problems .
- Stop the moment and observe the little things
To get rid of the extreme fixation on your affairs and problems, you need to learn to be distracted and switch your attention to the little things. Look for what you usually do not see in the abyss of everyday affairs and worries.
For example, watch carefully how the leaves of the trees flutter, how the snowflakes fall, how the rain beats on a rusty window sill, listen to the ticking of a clock, watch the foam on the coffee or the crumbs on the table. ..
It all sounds silly ! But this is the law of switching attention: if you have been focused on something very large, important and significant for a long time, then only something seemingly very small and insignificant can relieve stress.
It is necessary to develop the habit of finding meaning in such imperceptible trifles, and then your life will become richer and fuller. After all, our deeds and problems are not our life, and we are not our deeds and problems, we are something more.
- Ask yourself the following questions more often : what is happening to me now? What I feel? Why do I feel this way?
Working with feelings, their awareness and clarification help relieve unnecessary tension, teach you to treat yourself, your feelings and thoughts more consciously and productively (you can learn about the technique of developing self-understanding in this article).
- No matter how trite it sounds, but plan your day, and plan it, combining rigid and flexible planning.
This will allow you to avoid chaos, unnecessary haste and fuss and treat the performance of things without excessive fanaticism: if something remains unfulfilled, then it’s necessary, then do it another time.
- Don't push yourself too hard, 80-90% out of 100 is enough.
It has already been discussed above that excessive efforts do not really help to achieve the goal, but only interfere, generate unnecessary tension.
Mark Levy, in his book Genius Made to Order, cites the example of a group of sprinters, quoting Robert Kriegel, a well-known coach-psychologist for world-class athletes.
After the first race, the coach noticed that all the athletes were too tense and tense. Instead of further motivating them to complete the race as quickly as possible, he suggested that they relax and give their second run about nine-tenths. Mark Levy writes:
“The results were amazing. To everyone's surprise, every athlete ran faster the second time when they weren't pushing too hard.
And one runner even set an unofficial world record. … The same is true for other activities: without extra effort, you will achieve more in any area. Logic tells us that we must give at least 110% to get ahead of the competition. However, I have found that when we give 90%, we usually get better results.”
Knowing the effect of giving up super efforts and putting it into practice, you will slowly be able to do more and get rid of the monotony of life and obsession with business.
- Work with frequent and short breaks.
For example, every 20-25 minutes of work, take 2-3 minute breaks, during which observe your condition, do 2-3 breathing exercises or close your eyes and alternately imagine several pleasant and relaxing images. Watch them, immerse yourself in them, live these images for at least a few minutes.
- Do not neglect holidays.
Many use them to finish what was not completed on weekdays. But at least one day off per week must be mandatory. At this time, it is better to disconnect from everyday affairs, taking up, for example, a hobby.
But just don't turn a hobby into a job that implies some kind of planned result! A hobby is a hobby for the soul, it is a process that does not require purposeful and volitional effort. The result, of course, is important, but it is secondary, because in true creativity, passion, self-expression and meaning are of great value.
That's it. I hope now you know how to overcome haste and fuss, and that you have already decided for yourself how to stop rushing, how to do more and how to have time to live.
See you in the next post. Stay tuned for blog updates.
In the next article I will talk about a very effective method of psychological self-help.
I wish you good luck and good mood!
© Denis Kryukov
Read along with this article:
8 mistakes that prevent you from doing everything
Psychological exercise or how to make your day successful
Why is it so difficult to change your life (part 1) and (part 2)
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