Subjective Urgency: Therapy When You're Not In Crisis
- 4 days ago
- 2 min read
Most of what gets said about when to start therapy assumes a moment of high pressure or big change that would make it very clear that support is required. For all the other moments in life, it is difficult to define when and why therapy would be needed.
The idea that help requires a crisis disregards the fact that life itself can be pretty tough, and that we can be not quite well even when everything is absolutely fine. Most of us know the feeling of carrying something heavy that yet does not qualify as a problem. Also, most of us know the frustration of repeating patterns that hurt, even if we were able to get to a point in life that is truly fulfilling. Finally, there is the universal sense that something is missing but is impossible to name, or that life is smaller than it should be. None of this is a crisis. All of it looks like a great reason to be in therapy.
Urgency and Subjective Urgency
In clinical work, these experiences can be even more significant than the presentations that announce themselves clearly, because they point to something in the person's structure rather than to something reactive to the circumstances. They are telling you how you are organized, not just how you reacted to what happened lately.
This moment of conclusion regarding something about who you are is urgent, but not in the same way as a crisis. We call it subjective urgency: the pattern that has been organizing someone for decades and shaping almost everything about how they experience connection, conflict, intimacy, and themselves in relation to others is suddenly breaking or raising a question.
We are talking about reaching a threshold, not a breakdown. The person who is functioning but decides to get therapy usually has just decided to sit with discomfort and take a deep look at it. What therapy offers them is the space to see the patterns that have been running in the background, to find the desire they have deferred or lost contact with, to understand the history that is still operating in the present.
The idea that therapy is for those who are falling apart keeps a large number of people from getting something beautiful and crucial at the moment it would matter most. This person, who is doing okay but also carrying something, is the reason why Real Talk Clinical Psychology offers same-week sessions, always.
Subjective urgency is, for us, as urgent as any other urgency.
Real Talk Clinical Psychology is a doctoral-level group practice in Houston, Texas, offering psychodynamic and psychoanalytic therapy in four languages. We accept BCBS, Aetna, Cigna, and United Healthcare. Learn more at realtalkpsychology.com.
