In this article
One word. You probably say it to yourself dozens of times a day without even noticing.
“I should feel better by now.”
“I should be further along in recovery.”
“I should be able to handle the supermarket.”
“I should have caught myself faster.”
“I should feel calm.”
Sound familiar? Yeah. This one’s for you!
We actually cover this in the program under what’s called cognitive distortions, the thinking patterns that feel completely logical but are quietly skewed or distorted.
And “should” is one of the sneakiest ones, because it disguises itself as discipline or motivation. Like you’re pushing yourself to be better.
When actually, what it’s doing is adding a layer of pressure to a nervous system that’s already kinda cooked.
So let’s talk a little about that today.
What “Should” Is Actually Doing
Every time you say “should,” you’re communicating that reality isn’t measuring up to how it’s supposed to be. There’s a gap. Things aren’t the way they should be.
And that gap, that sense of wrongness about the present moment, is itself a source of stress.
For anyone dealing with anxiety, this matters a lot.
Because what is anxiety, really? A sensitized and dysregulated nervous system stuck in a loop, treating ordinary situations as threats and staying on high alert.
And what does “should” do? It adds more judgment, more pressure, more signals that something is wrong right now. Which tells the nervous system… exactly that.
Something is wrong. Stay on guard.
So when you tell yourself “I should feel calm by now,” and you don’t feel calm, you’ve just added self-criticism on top of anxiety. Two problems instead of one. The anxiety itself, and then the judgment about having it.
And that extra layer? It’s resistance. Just in a quieter, more socially acceptable costume.
The Recovery Trap
The place I see this most is in the recovery journey itself, and it’s where it does the most damage.
People come in already pretty beaten up. They’ve been struggling, maybe for years.
And then they start learning, start applying the steps, and when things don’t shift as fast as they expected… “I should be further along. I should have this figured out by now. I should be handling this better.”
And right there, without realizing it, they’ve made recovery into another thing to fail at.
It’s not that the expectation is unreasonable. It’s that no matter how true the “should” might feel, saying it doesn’t get you any closer. It just adds more water to the bucket.
“I should feel calm after doing the steps.”
Well, the steps don’t produce calm on demand, and expecting them to does the opposite of what we’re going for. The intention or expectation never is calm.
“I should have caught myself faster.”
Maybe you could have, in hindsight. But you caught yourself eventually, which is all that matters, and criticizing the speed just makes it harder to catch yourself next time.
The more conditions you place on how recovery is supposed to look, the less room you leave for it to actually happen.
“I Get To”
Here’s the reframe, and before you roll your eyes at it being too simple or too cliche, just give it a second.
Replacing “should” with “get to” is a genuine shift in how you’re relating to something.
I’ll use myself as an example. I make YouTube videos. I’ve got a camera, a decent background if I say so myself, the whole setup.
And I could tell myself “I should be making more videos. I should be posting more consistently. I should be doing more for the channel.”
And that framing, every single time I think about it, puts pressure on it. Makes it feel heavy. Like there’s no room for life to happen or for things to go sideways.
I could, instead, say: “I get to make videos.” I have this platform. I have things I genuinely want to share.
I have people watching who are exactly where I was a few years ago. I want to create more of this. I’m able to. So I’m going to.
Same action. Completely different relationship to it.
One leaves you dreading the thing. The other makes you want to actually sit down and do it.
The Four Questions
When “should” shows up, I find it really useful to run through a simple set of questions instead of just trying to replace the word.
First: “I get to do this.” Is that true? Okay.
Second: do I actually want to do it?
This one matters, because sometimes the answer is genuinely no, and if you don’t want to do something, knowing that is useful information rather than a failure.
Third: can I do this right now, am I actually able?
Because sometimes the “should” is about something that’s just not possible in this moment, and all the pressure in the world isn’t going to change that.
And then fourth, if you’ve got through all of that: you’re just going to do it.
Decision made. No drama.
What these questions do is turn a demand into a decision. A demand is imposed from the outside, it has no flexibility, it leaves no room for deviation.
A decision comes from you, from what you actually want and what you’re actually able to do, and it’s a lot more sustainable.
Jemma
I want to tell you about something that happened in one of our group calls, because it shows this playing out in real life in a way I found really beautiful.
Jemma is one of our program members. She’s a dog sitter, and a while back she had a dog in her care that passed away.
It was an accident, painful, and she had to deal with the owners, with her kids who were also grieving, with her own feelings about it, all at once.
And her brain, as brains do, kept going to: “I should have done something differently. I should have been more careful. I should have noticed something was wrong.”
She caught it. She stopped it. She took the lesson from what happened, yes, the thing she could actually learn and use.
And then she let the rest of it go instead of letting her brain drag her down a rabbit hole of self-blame that wasn’t going to change anything or help anyone.
The grief was still there. Of course it was. She allowed that. But she didn’t pile “I should have” on top of it. She didn’t add an extra layer of resistance to something that was already hard.
And that, right there, is what this skill looks like when it’s actually working. Not just in anxiety. In all of it.
The One You Can Control
Last thing.
You can’t say “I should feel calm” and make calm appear.
You can’t will your nervous system into a regulated state by telling it it should be there already.
The feelings aren’t within your control. The timing of your recovery isn’t fully within your control. The speed at which your nervous system learns isn’t something you can force.
But your response always is.
And “should” applied to things that are outside your control is one of the more exhausting things you can do to yourself.
Because you’re generating all this stress about a gap between reality and expectation, and you have no way to close that gap directly, so the stress just… sits there. Making everything heavier.
So catch it. When you notice “I should,” stop for a second. “I get to.” Do I want to? Can I? Am I going to?
And if the “should” is about how you feel, or how fast you’re recovering, or how well you handled something last Tuesday, give yourself a little grace.
You’re doing this while already managing a sensitized nervous system. That’s not nothing.
The extra pressure was never going to help. Letting it go a little bit might.
This article is for education and is based on lived experience. It is not medical advice and does not replace a doctor or therapist. If you have new or changing symptoms, get them checked by a doctor. If you are in crisis, contact your local emergency number.
