This blog post today is going to be about urinary urgency. And a few different tips that you can try to incorporate into your life to get some control back.

So urinary urgency is a very strong urge to go to the bathroom. It kind of just hits you in the face, and it comes out of nowhere. It may be associated with urinary frequency. So that is having to go to the bathroom a lot. Or urge incontinence, which is actually peeing your pants because you’re not able to make it to the bathroom. It doesn’t necessarily have to be associated with those. But it may be.

So if you are someone out there who is struggling with this, what are a few different things that you can do to start to get some control back over your bladder?

We want to think about freeze, breathe and squeeze. So what that means is that we’re going to remain calm. That’s step one (freeze). We want to decrease that input to our bladder. We want to calm our nervous system. So we’re going to stop whatever it is we’re doing. We’re going to sit or we’re going to stand and we’re gonna freeze.

And then we’re gonna breathe. So we’re gonna take five, really good, full, calming breaths. You’re gonna breathe in and breathe out. Take five breaths.

And then step three is the squeeze. You’re going to do a pelvic floor contraction. So you’re going to close and you’re going to lift your pelvic floor and hold for a beat, and then relax. You’re going to do five pelvic floor contractions.

So that’s the freeze, breathe and squeeze. And then  follow that up with something to distract yourself. So going back to work, playing with your kids, whatever tasks you were doing prior. Distract yourself. And those things can help decrease that urge.

So those are a few different tips that you can try to incorporate in your daily life to help with urinary urgency.