Woke up this morning wired and tired, like I’ve been in a room with a static-y TV blaring all night. This is what too much thinking & false urgency feels like in my body. I have many practices, but sometimes life knocks me off-course. Once you start to feel balance, any imbalance feels extra-bad (which is good news!). I was so glad to wake up to this… to have the path back to ease so beautifully and carefully distilled.
I think that wired yet tired feeling is something like the signature of our digital era. I also love that term false urgency, despite how stressful (and, at times, intoxicating) it feels. I hope your day is smooth and easy from here, maybe there's still cozy snow out there, which I've been jealous of.
As someone who’s lived in her head her entire life, this essay is incredibly helpful. I will be digesting it for quite a while. Deeply grateful to you.
The move from substances to productivity to thinking itself as the underlying mechanism makes sense. The object changes, the tightening doesn’t. And the description of that tightening landing in the body is such an important bridge. It keeps this from becoming another abstract philosophy about “mind.”
How beautifully put. Thanks for this excellent food for... thought?
Reminds me of the late David Hawkins recommendation on letting go - ignore thoughts and their self-perpetuating loops, be aware instead of the feelings that drive and summarise these thoughts, and especially ask: what is the energy behind the feeling?
And yet our coherence-making narrative appear to be a basic part of our consciousness. I always suspected so, but now that we have LLMs which are just guessing the next word that's most coherent with what they've read before, and are surprised to see logical reasoning and intelligence emerge... I start to think coherence-making is a basic law of consciousness and the universe.
Perhaps the trap is seeking coherence in the details of thoughts before focussing on the deeper, stronger, but non-verbal coherence and alignment.
There's a rich element around this topic and LLMs - since they are essentially mimicking and regurgitating human thinking. I actually considered weaving that in here but decided to dial back some of the AI references.
And the inherent meaning-making is another rich topic that could deserve its own essay, one that I suspected some savvy folks would pick up on. I love your pointing to focus on the stronger, non-verbal energy behind them.
I have been especially focused on this area for quite some time, (but through a slightly more neuroscientific lens) and your experience and insights both clarified and solidified many things for me, for which I am very grateful.
Through my own experience and personal research, I've come to realise that an anxious brain - one overwhelmed with negative thoughts - is evidence of a brain spectacular at learning.
After all, insights need two things:
(1) A subconscious mind seeded with knowledge and experience.
(2) A prefrontal cortex adept at latching onto an insight and running with it.
Now take the above and replace a few key words…
[Anxiety] needs two things:
(1) A subconscious mind seeded with [anxious thoughts] and [negative] experience.
(2) A prefrontal cortex adept at latching onto an [anxious thought] and running with it.
It's the same learning machinery, just pointed in a different direction. In fact, as you said yourself, freeing your mind from the idea that you are your thoughts and developing the skill of meta-awareness leaves so much more room for insightful and creative thoughts to emerge.
With your "pick a number" exercise in your article, you said "I know that even if this little exercise landed for you, the bigger claim—that this is how all thinking works—is harder to believe. And if you really let it in, it can be destabilizing." I actually recently published an article that walks through how all thoughts materialise, and how there is a ~500ms gap where "you" live... where awareness can begin. I would be honoured (and so very curious!) to hear your advanced take on it, if you can spare a moment to read it. (I hope you don't mind that I put the link to it here: https://hereisyourbrain.substack.com/p/conscious-thinking-subconscious-thoughts.)
Again, absolutely wonderful read. I really enjoyed this.
Man this articulates a lot of things really well and I copied a lot of paragraphs into my Anki deck of "thoughts to come back to" (the irony of doing so is noted).
Also filled with the urge to launch a SEE TOLD YOU SO email at past psychologists who insisted that I was in charge of creating my thoughts and that negative emotions all originated with a thought that triggered them (instead of the emotion or experience occurring before the thought at least some of the time). They weren't entirely unhelpful, but their insistence that I had to accept that framing as truth certainly was.
I like how it reframes overanalysis not as failure but as a strategy that once protected us. The practical focus on the body makes the whole piece feel usable rather than abstract.
This is fabulous, a message that I need to hear regularly. This modern world of endless tech, social media, doomscrolling and attention economy makes us extra susceptible to this tendency. And my personality is just such that I am prone to both overthinking and addiction.
I appreciate there is a section here on simply diving into one’s senses. A book on exactly this topic is really interesting to me, from a more scientific perspective, and concludes very much the same. “Better in Every Sense” based on cutting edge research shows how our brain has essentially two modes, thinking and sensing. So the means to turn off overthinking is to explicitly focus on sensing, and the authors describe how various known means to do so hit on this same thing. From meditation to psychedelic drugs to ‘forest bathing,’ these all are practices that turn off the brain’s self-referential ‘default mode network’ or what the authors refer to as “the house of habit.” And they do this by activating the senses.
The authors suggest that when one is stuck in thinking-mode, one is unlikely or unable to form new ideas, but rather remain trapped in existing conceptions and frameworks. It is only when new sensory information turns the brain’s wheels that truly new ideas can emerge.
Anyway, it’s worth a quick read if you are interested in these topics from a scientific perspective. Cheers!
My biggest addiction ever. And accompanying unconscious tension, its bestest companion.
How well you noted that overthinking is encouraged. It's in the way we are brought up, it's in the language "Think for yourself", it's in the culture.
No one teaches you to feel into your body. You don't even know it's a thing until one day you break down and scramble for pieces to put yourself back together - learning that actually body needs to feel and let go, and about the constant e-motion spurring on the overthinking loop, spiralling into the darkness.
I wished we all could master the art of not thinking, or at least not overthinking. What would it feel like not to? What kind of world could that be? What would it feel like to be in it, just like the streaming ginger tea on your desk.
Thank you for sharing this essay. I enjoyed the full length of it. And I wrote that without overthinking. (Thanks to my Russian literature teacher, I got good at essays when I "felt" I had something to say!) Ha ha
Woke up this morning wired and tired, like I’ve been in a room with a static-y TV blaring all night. This is what too much thinking & false urgency feels like in my body. I have many practices, but sometimes life knocks me off-course. Once you start to feel balance, any imbalance feels extra-bad (which is good news!). I was so glad to wake up to this… to have the path back to ease so beautifully and carefully distilled.
I think that wired yet tired feeling is something like the signature of our digital era. I also love that term false urgency, despite how stressful (and, at times, intoxicating) it feels. I hope your day is smooth and easy from here, maybe there's still cozy snow out there, which I've been jealous of.
As someone who’s lived in her head her entire life, this essay is incredibly helpful. I will be digesting it for quite a while. Deeply grateful to you.
That means a lot, Kristin. So glad it's helpful.
The move from substances to productivity to thinking itself as the underlying mechanism makes sense. The object changes, the tightening doesn’t. And the description of that tightening landing in the body is such an important bridge. It keeps this from becoming another abstract philosophy about “mind.”
That part honestly deserves its own essay, but I'm glad it was clear enough for now. Thank you, April.
How beautifully put. Thanks for this excellent food for... thought?
Reminds me of the late David Hawkins recommendation on letting go - ignore thoughts and their self-perpetuating loops, be aware instead of the feelings that drive and summarise these thoughts, and especially ask: what is the energy behind the feeling?
And yet our coherence-making narrative appear to be a basic part of our consciousness. I always suspected so, but now that we have LLMs which are just guessing the next word that's most coherent with what they've read before, and are surprised to see logical reasoning and intelligence emerge... I start to think coherence-making is a basic law of consciousness and the universe.
Perhaps the trap is seeking coherence in the details of thoughts before focussing on the deeper, stronger, but non-verbal coherence and alignment.
There's a rich element around this topic and LLMs - since they are essentially mimicking and regurgitating human thinking. I actually considered weaving that in here but decided to dial back some of the AI references.
And the inherent meaning-making is another rich topic that could deserve its own essay, one that I suspected some savvy folks would pick up on. I love your pointing to focus on the stronger, non-verbal energy behind them.
So right back at you on beautifully put.
“Breathe through your butthole!” Is one of the most amazing prompts I’ve ever been told.
This was truly a remarkable read.
I have been especially focused on this area for quite some time, (but through a slightly more neuroscientific lens) and your experience and insights both clarified and solidified many things for me, for which I am very grateful.
Through my own experience and personal research, I've come to realise that an anxious brain - one overwhelmed with negative thoughts - is evidence of a brain spectacular at learning.
After all, insights need two things:
(1) A subconscious mind seeded with knowledge and experience.
(2) A prefrontal cortex adept at latching onto an insight and running with it.
Now take the above and replace a few key words…
[Anxiety] needs two things:
(1) A subconscious mind seeded with [anxious thoughts] and [negative] experience.
(2) A prefrontal cortex adept at latching onto an [anxious thought] and running with it.
It's the same learning machinery, just pointed in a different direction. In fact, as you said yourself, freeing your mind from the idea that you are your thoughts and developing the skill of meta-awareness leaves so much more room for insightful and creative thoughts to emerge.
With your "pick a number" exercise in your article, you said "I know that even if this little exercise landed for you, the bigger claim—that this is how all thinking works—is harder to believe. And if you really let it in, it can be destabilizing." I actually recently published an article that walks through how all thoughts materialise, and how there is a ~500ms gap where "you" live... where awareness can begin. I would be honoured (and so very curious!) to hear your advanced take on it, if you can spare a moment to read it. (I hope you don't mind that I put the link to it here: https://hereisyourbrain.substack.com/p/conscious-thinking-subconscious-thoughts.)
Again, absolutely wonderful read. I really enjoyed this.
Man this articulates a lot of things really well and I copied a lot of paragraphs into my Anki deck of "thoughts to come back to" (the irony of doing so is noted).
Also filled with the urge to launch a SEE TOLD YOU SO email at past psychologists who insisted that I was in charge of creating my thoughts and that negative emotions all originated with a thought that triggered them (instead of the emotion or experience occurring before the thought at least some of the time). They weren't entirely unhelpful, but their insistence that I had to accept that framing as truth certainly was.
I like how it reframes overanalysis not as failure but as a strategy that once protected us. The practical focus on the body makes the whole piece feel usable rather than abstract.
This is fabulous, a message that I need to hear regularly. This modern world of endless tech, social media, doomscrolling and attention economy makes us extra susceptible to this tendency. And my personality is just such that I am prone to both overthinking and addiction.
I appreciate there is a section here on simply diving into one’s senses. A book on exactly this topic is really interesting to me, from a more scientific perspective, and concludes very much the same. “Better in Every Sense” based on cutting edge research shows how our brain has essentially two modes, thinking and sensing. So the means to turn off overthinking is to explicitly focus on sensing, and the authors describe how various known means to do so hit on this same thing. From meditation to psychedelic drugs to ‘forest bathing,’ these all are practices that turn off the brain’s self-referential ‘default mode network’ or what the authors refer to as “the house of habit.” And they do this by activating the senses.
The authors suggest that when one is stuck in thinking-mode, one is unlikely or unable to form new ideas, but rather remain trapped in existing conceptions and frameworks. It is only when new sensory information turns the brain’s wheels that truly new ideas can emerge.
Anyway, it’s worth a quick read if you are interested in these topics from a scientific perspective. Cheers!
My biggest addiction ever. And accompanying unconscious tension, its bestest companion.
How well you noted that overthinking is encouraged. It's in the way we are brought up, it's in the language "Think for yourself", it's in the culture.
No one teaches you to feel into your body. You don't even know it's a thing until one day you break down and scramble for pieces to put yourself back together - learning that actually body needs to feel and let go, and about the constant e-motion spurring on the overthinking loop, spiralling into the darkness.
I wished we all could master the art of not thinking, or at least not overthinking. What would it feel like not to? What kind of world could that be? What would it feel like to be in it, just like the streaming ginger tea on your desk.
Thank you for sharing this essay. I enjoyed the full length of it. And I wrote that without overthinking. (Thanks to my Russian literature teacher, I got good at essays when I "felt" I had something to say!) Ha ha
Looking forward to your next piece.