When Everything Feels Urgent: How Clarity Protects Your Mental Health

There was a period in my career when every email felt like an alarm bell. I’d rush from one task to the next, scanning my inbox, checking my phone, and mentally rehearsing conversations that hadn’t even happened yet. Deadlines blurred together until it felt as if my entire day was one long, uninterrupted emergency.

One morning, my professor told me that Task A needed to be done first—and that Task B had priority. I remember smiling and saying “of course,” while silently wondering how both could come first. It was a minormoment, but it captured the deeper problem: everything felt urgent, yet I had no real control over what mattered most.

Initially, I mistook this constant reactivity for productivity. I told myself I was just managing a heavy workload—until I noticed that I couldn’t focus on anything for more than a few minutes. I’d reread the same paragraph over and over. My thoughts jumped ahead to the next problem before I’d finished solving the current one. Even at home, my mind kept racing.

It wasn’t a dramatic breakdown; it was more like a gradual loss of clarity. The calm, deliberate part of me—the one that could see the bigger picture—seemed to go offline. In its place came a version of myself that was always reacting, never choosing.

That morning, I saw how the very processes I’d studied in the lab were playing out in my own mind. Understanding stress on paper was one thing—living it was something entirely different.

How Constant Urgency Hijacks Your Brain

When we feel that everything must be done right now, the body shifts into survival mode. The brain sends signals that trigger the release of stress hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline from the adrenal glands, preparing us to react quickly rather than think deeply. In short bursts, that response can be beneficial—it sharpens focus and gives us energy. But when the sense of urgency never stops, the process starts to work against us.

Under chronic stress, the brain’s alarm center, the amygdala, stays active while the prefrontal cortex—the part responsible for reasoning, planning, and perspective—loses influence. It’s like having the volume turned up on emotion and down on clarity. Decisions become reactive, attention narrows, and small problems begin to feel like crises.

What made it worse was not just the workload but the sense that I had no real say in how to handle it. The brain interprets lack of control as a threat, activating the same stress circuits that respond to physical danger. In a hierarchy, that feeling can quietly take hold: decisions are made above you, yet the pressure to deliver rests squarely on you.

I knew all this from studying the biology of stress in the lab—from experiments on how the brain reacts to challenge and recovery—but experiencing it firsthand added a whole new dimension. I could feel how my thoughts were being pulled toward the next demand before I had finished the one before me. That constant state of readiness kept my body running on adrenaline long after the workday ended. It also made recovery nearly impossible; my brain never got the signal that the danger had passed.

In hindsight, it wasn’t the workload itself that did the damage. It was the combination of pressure without control—and the missing pause to decide what truly needed attention. Without that pause, urgency became my default setting, and clarity faded into background noise.

How to Rediscover Clarity When Everything Feels Urgent

Clarity didn’t return all at once. It started with a small act of resistance: I stopped immediately responding to every request. When a new message came in, I forced myself to pause—just long enough to take a breath and ask, Does this truly need my attention now?

At first, that pause felt uncomfortable, almost rebellious. The habits of urgency ran deep, and so did the belief that slowing down meant falling behind. But genuine clarity demanded more than reflection—it required choice. Every time I decided what mattered most, I was also deciding what could wait. In practice, that sometimes meant saying no—or at least not now—to a task someone else considered urgent.

Of course, saying no isn’t always an option. Sometimes priorities are set above you, and refusing feels risky or impossible. In those moments, clarity helped me look for alternatives, such as asking for help, renegotiating deadlines, or breaking projects into smaller tasks and delegating duties. Even when the answer had to be “yes,” expressing what I needed to succeed—time, resources, or support—was a step toward reclaiming control. Neuroscience confirms this: any action that restores a sense of agency helps calm the brain’s stress response.

Clarity, I learned, doesn’t come from doing less—it comes from doing what truly matters, with awareness instead of urgency. And when that mindset takes hold, stress begins to lose its grip, and focus returns almost naturally.

Recovery Lessons: Restoring Mental Balance

What I eventually learned is that recovery isn’t a single moment of relief—it’s the gradual return of perspective. Stress narrows our vision until all we see are problems. Clarity opens that view again. It allows us to distinguish which tasks, thoughts, and emotions truly warrant urgency.

From a neuroscientific view, this makes sense. The prefrontal cortex—the brain’s center for planning and reflection—needs periods of calm to function well. When we step out of constant reaction mode, even briefly, we help the brain restore balance between focus and emotion. That’s why short breaks, mindful pauses, or even a few minutes of quiet can do more for mental health than another burst of effort.

But recovery also depends on how we relate to ourselves. Instead of judging my stress as weakness, I began to treat it as information—a signal that my brain and body were asking for space. The moment I stopped fighting it, the tension eased a little. And that slight relief allowed me to think clearly again.

Over time, I realized that clarity isn’t just the opposite of confusion—it’s a kind of self-compassion. It reminds us that we can’t control everything, but we can always choose how to respond. That awareness, more than any technique, protects mental health in a world that constantly demands more.

Moving Forward: From Urgency to Clarity

Looking back, I don’t see that stressful period as a failure but as an education. It taught me something that no textbook ever could: that clarity is not a luxury—it’s a lifeline. When we understand how stress distorts our thinking, we can respond with compassion instead of self-criticism. That simple shift changes everything.

There are still days when everything feels urgent, but they no longer define me. I’ve learned to recognize the signs, to pause before reacting, and to protect the space my mind needs to stay balanced. That space is where perspective lives—where choices are made, priorities are set, and calm slowly replaces chaos.

Clarity doesn’t erase life’s demands. It simply reminds us that we can meet them one at a time, with our full attention and a steady breath. And when we do, the mind begins to quiet, the body relaxes, and a subtle but powerful feeling returns: control, not over everything, but over ourselves.

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About the Author: Erwin van den Burg, PhD, is a neuroscientist who helps people reduce stress at work and create conditions where chronic stress hardly occurs. Drawing on his research into how stress affects the brain, he founded Stressinsight.

Photo by energepic.com: https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-sitting-in-front-of-macbook-313690/

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