It happened so fast – what was that? That uncomfortable feeling. It makes you feel crazy. It makes you feel like you have no choice but to meet its demands – a matter of life and death, even.
These feelings are normal. They’re called urges; a very natural by-product of having a human brain. You’re not alone in your crazy – we all get them.
Urges in and of themselves are not a problem – but what you do with them can be. That’s because urges motivate you to show up in a way that’s often inconsistent with who you want to be, and counter-productive to what you want to create in your life.
What are urges?
Urges are negative emotions that pretend to be useful (but aren’t). They’re well-intentioned tricksters that pretend to be important, so you’ll pay attention to them.
Urges are your primitive brain’s way of using discomfort to move you away from where you are, and towards what it thinks you want. Back in the day when life was simpler, urges were helpful because they gave you critical information for survival, such as being hungry or full.
Now, however, urges are more like brains gone wild.
Urges for broccoli are helpful for survival – urges for ice cream are not
The brain gets just the right amount of dopamine from broccoli to motivate you to eat a nutritional meal. The brain evolved to desire broccoli, a natural and nutritional food.
Ice cream, however, contains an unnatural and intense amount of sugar, causing your brain to produce an unnatural and intense desire for it. This intense dopamine response in the brain creates an intense urge for ice cream.
Your brain thinks you want ice cream – but you don’t, from a survival perspective, because it’s not nutritional. By reacting to the urge for ice cream and eating the ice cream, you’re behaving in a way that’s inconsistent with what your body really wants (nutrition).
Reacting to urges in the search for a life partner is not helpful
The brain behaves the exact same way for anything else you decide is important, like a life partner. When you tell your brain you want to find a life partner, it gets to work trying to find you one.
This is great news, except that the primitive brain needs constant supervision. It only knows life and death. When you say something is important, it assumes you mean you need it to survive. And survival is scrappy and desperate – probably not how you want to be showing up with potential partners.
Urges create a scarcity mindset
Urges are rooted in survival, and survival is rooted in scarcity. When you decide you want a life partner, your brain might try and motivate you with, “Shit, I better hurry up, time is running out.”
This creates an urge, which can cause you to show up as desperate. Your brain is trying to motivate you towards finding potential partners, but in a way that’s inconsistent with how you want to go about it.
It’s also counter-productive to what you want. Desperation either attracts men you don’t want (the needy, clingy type), or repels men you do want (who don’t want a desperate woman).
Urges make you seek men you don’t actually want
This also shows up as the thrill of the chase. The brain gets a dopamine hit from catching a big fish. The harder the chase, the better. You don’t actually want these men; you’re enjoying the thrill of getting them.
You’ll know it’s the primitive brain’s urges that are motivating you, because as soon as you get them, you won’t be interested anymore.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with this – it’s just counterproductive to what you want, if what you want is a life partner.
The only way out of urges is through them
So what to do with urges? Allow them. You don’t have to act on urges; you ultimately have control over your actions.
The first step is to allow the urges and feel them all the way through. Yes, this will be uncomfortable. But it will dissipate, and eventually disappear completely.
Once you allow your urges, you will have the space available in your brain to intentionally decide what you want.
I’d love to help you work through your urges. I help successful women work through uncomfortable emotions like this in my program, Find Your Life Partner. Schedule a free consultation today, and we’ll chat about your specific situation, and how I can help.