Why Won’t Your Mind Switch Off?
You finally sit down at the end of the day. There’s nothing you actually need to do for the next hour, but your mind doesn’t seem to have received the message. It’s replaying something somebody said, working out what needs to happen tomorrow, solving a problem that hasn’t happened yet, or jumping from one completely unrelated thought to another.
Then somebody tells you to relax your jaw and you suddenly realise your whole body has been sitting there braced while you’ve been trying to relax.
That was pretty much where this week’s Men’s Group conversation went.
We had eight guys at The Healing Barn, including one new face, and with a surprisingly mild August evening we managed to sit outside around the fire for the whole night. I probably smoked myself out several times as the wind changed direction, but there was something pretty good about being outside, talking, laughing and letting the conversation wander wherever it needed to.
The topic was Why Won’t Your Mind Switch Off? It was actually a shorter night than some of our recent groups. Nearly everybody was there before seven and by about quarter past nine we were finished. It didn’t feel like we’d run out of conversation. It felt complete. Which, considering the topic, was probably quite fitting in itself. Sometimes more isn’t required.
What if the body is part of the conversation?
One of the conversations started with a sore lower back. The obvious explanation was that it had probably been tweaked while warming up at the driving range, but I became curious about whether there might be another thread worth following as well.
At first I asked about feeling supported, because I sometimes use what is happening physically as a metaphor and see whether anything resonates. That didn’t really go anywhere. Then we clarified where the soreness actually was. It was very low down, almost into the pelvis, and I asked whether perhaps it was less about support and more about moving forward — whether there was a lack of drive, direction or traction somewhere in life.
Straight away there was recognition: “Lack of drive. Yep, that’s it.”
That doesn’t mean a sore lower back automatically means somebody has lost their direction in life. That isn’t really the point. The point is that the body can give us another place to become curious.
If I’m exploring tension around the lower back, I might ask about drive, direction, movement or feeling stuck. Through the middle of the back I might become curious about support and stability. Around the upper back and shoulders, I might ask what somebody feels they are carrying, forcing or taking responsibility for. Those aren’t diagnoses or fixed meanings. They are questions, and sometimes one of those questions opens a completely different conversation.
You can actually experiment with this yourself without having a sore back. Think about somebody who really pisses you off, or a situation that gets under your skin, and for a few seconds stop following the story in your head. Instead, notice what your body does.
Does your jaw tighten? Do your shoulders come up? Does your stomach contract? Does something happen in your chest? Do you stop breathing properly?
The person isn’t even standing in front of you. Nothing physical has just happened. You thought about them, and your body responded.
That connection between the story in the mind and the reaction in the body became a pretty big part of the evening.
Is the mind tightening the body, or is the body keeping the mind going?
That took us into meditation and something a few of the guys had noticed while using meditation apps. You start the meditation because your mind won’t stop racing, and then the person on the app says something incredibly simple like, “Relax your jaw.”
And suddenly you think, Bloody hell, my jaw is tight.
You hadn’t even noticed.
Then you realise your shoulders are up, your hands are gripping, your stomach is tense or you haven’t taken a decent breath in the last few minutes.
That brings up an interesting question: Is the racing mind creating the tension in the body, or is the tension in the body helping to keep the mind racing?
I’m not sure it always matters which one started first. If the mind and body are feeding each other, then the body gives us another way into the loop.
Trying to tell a racing mind to stop thinking usually just gives it another bloody thing to think about. But noticing your jaw, feeling your feet on the ground, hearing what is happening around you or becoming aware of your breathing is different. You aren’t trying to win an argument with the thought. You’re putting some attention somewhere else.
That is also a lot of how I work one-to-one. I listen to the story somebody is telling me, but I’m also interested in what happens while they tell it. Where does the body tighten? When does the breathing change? When does something suddenly appear in the chest, throat, stomach or back?
Sometimes the words tell us what the mind thinks is happening while the body points towards where something is still being held. The useful part is not me deciding what that sensation means. It is following what is showing up and seeing where it leads.
Coming back to now
Another part of the evening was simply about noticing our reactions and using our senses to come back into the present.
Our conscious attention can only hold a relatively small amount of information at once, while much more is being processed outside our immediate awareness. When the mind is racing, that limited conscious space can become completely occupied by the same problem going around and around.
We replay yesterday. We revisit something that happened ten years ago. We solve tomorrow. We imagine a conversation that hasn’t happened yet. We plan for a problem that may never arrive.
The senses give us another reference point because they only happen now.
What can you hear right now? What can you see? What can you feel against your skin? What can you smell? What is happening with your breathing?
Sitting outside around the fire made that pretty easy. There was the warmth of the flames, the cool night air, the sounds around us, the smell of the smoke and, in my case, occasionally enough smoke directly in my face that there was absolutely no chance of wondering what was happening in the present moment.
Coming back to the senses doesn’t make whatever you were thinking about magically disappear. It simply creates enough space for something besides the conscious mind to be involved.
And maybe that is important, because sometimes the mind won’t switch off because we keep asking it to do a job that belongs to the whole of us.
Maybe the racing mind isn’t the whole problem
This is probably one of the bigger things I took away from the night.
When somebody says, “My mind won’t switch off,” the obvious thing to focus on is the thinking. How do I stop the thoughts? How do I quiet the mind? What technique will make this go away?
But what if the racing mind is just the bit we can see?
Underneath it might be a body that is still braced, a decision that hasn’t settled, something we are trying to control, an old reaction that keeps being triggered, or a pattern we haven’t really understood yet.
The thought is real. The overthinking is real.
It just may not be the whole thing.
That fits with something we talk about a lot at The Healing Barn. The thing somebody arrives with is often the most visible part of the experience, but becoming curious about what might be happening underneath can reveal something quite different.
And then there was the vomiting and diarrhoea...
Sickness came up fairly early in the night as well, and somehow managed to become a running source of humour for most of the evening. I’m not even going to attempt to recreate all of the jokes because I’m fairly sure they were considerably funnier sitting around the fire than they would be written down here.
There was an interesting conversation underneath it though.
When we get sick, our immediate reaction is normally, Why the hell is this happening to me? And obviously there are physical reasons people become sick. Bugs, viruses, food and all sorts of other things are very real.
But I sometimes wonder whether there are times when sickness arrives alongside something else we have been working through emotionally or mentally. That doesn’t mean the emotional work caused the bug, and it certainly doesn’t mean we ignore the physical reason we are sick. It is simply another thing I have noticed in my own experience.
Sometimes illness forces us to stop. It removes our ability to keep pushing, working and controlling everything. The body demands rest that the mind may never have voluntarily agreed to.
So rather than only asking, “Why is my body doing this to me?”, there may occasionally be something useful in asking, “What else is happening in my life right now, and what is this experience forcing me to do differently?”
Sometimes you’ve also just eaten something dodgy and your body is making its opinion of that very clear. And then you could probably ask why the hell you put it in your mouth in the first place.
What if something didn’t need to be useful, productive or meaningful? What if you simply enjoyed doing it?
What if you did something simply because you enjoyed it?
One of the things I really noticed during the night was how much of the conversation was beginning to move towards pleasure.
We have talked recently about the difference between moving away from pain and actually moving towards something we enjoy. I shared some of my own experience with getting the motorbike and allowing myself to have something in my life simply because I enjoy it.
That sounds really obvious until you realise how much pressure we put on everything to have a purpose.
If you paint a picture, does it need to be good enough to hang somewhere? If you knit something, does anybody even need to wear it? If you learn guitar, exercise, ride a motorbike or build something in the shed, does it have to become another goal, achievement, side business or part of your life purpose?
What if you simply bloody enjoy doing it?
Sometimes putting purpose onto everything takes the pleasure straight out of it.
And strangely enough, moving towards genuine pleasure can actually feel uncomfortable. If you have spent years making decisions because something needs fixing, somebody needs you, there is a responsibility to carry or there is some pain you are trying to escape, doing something with no deeper justification than “I like this” can feel almost wrong.
You might start questioning yourself.
Should I really be doing this? Is this irresponsible? What is the point of it?
And I actually think that questioning can sometimes be a pretty good sign.
It may mean you are doing something different.
There is also a difference between genuine enjoyment and the massive high we can get when we believe something outside of ourselves is finally going to fill something inside.
That feeling can be intense: Yes! This is it. Once I get this, everything is going to feel better.
Then we get the thing. It feels bloody good for a little while.
And eventually the gap is still there.
The pleasure I’m talking about feels quieter than that. There can still be anticipation and excitement, but there isn’t the same desperation attached to it. The thing doesn’t have to save you, prove something about you or complete you.
You simply enjoy it.
Maybe that is the difference between chasing a feeling and allowing yourself to feel good.
What if the way you make decisions is keeping your mind busy?
Another conversation came up around personality systems and understanding how we naturally operate. That eventually took us into Human Design.
I use Human Design as one of several lenses for understanding myself and other people. What I find useful about it isn’t that it gives somebody another label. It can sometimes give language to things we have already noticed but haven’t really understood.
My own Human Design, for example, has helped me recognise that clarity doesn’t always arrive for me instantly. I can get an initial idea and want to run off with it, but quite often I need to talk it out, hear myself saying it, notice what happens in my body and then give the decision enough time to settle.
When I skip that process and try to decide everything through thought alone, the mind can keep going. It revisits the decision, finds another angle, creates another possibility and wonders whether there is something else it has missed.
Human Design is simply one way of looking at that. The more useful question is probably:
Do you actually know how clarity arrives for you, or are you expecting your mind to manufacture it?
Maybe you need to talk something out. Maybe you need to sleep on it. Maybe you need to get away from everybody else for a while. Maybe you need something concrete in front of you to respond to. Maybe you need to notice what your body does.
Sometimes the racing mind isn’t asking for more information.
Maybe the rest of you simply hasn’t caught up yet.
So why won’t your mind switch off?
By the end of the night, I don’t think the answer was another technique for controlling the mind.
If anything, it was almost the opposite.
Maybe the mind won’t switch off because we keep asking it to solve everything. Solve tomorrow. Solve what somebody meant yesterday. Solve what might go wrong. Solve how we should feel. Solve the ache in the back. Solve the decision. Solve whether we are doing life properly.
Meanwhile the rest of us is already giving us information.
The jaw is tight. The shoulders are raised. The stomach is turning. The breath is shallow. Something feels heavy. Something else feels lighter. One thing feels like pushing while something else has a little bit of life in it.
Perhaps switching the mind off isn’t really about winning an argument with your thoughts.
Maybe it begins with noticing what is happening underneath them.
And perhaps progress isn’t reaching some magical point where your mind never races again. Maybe progress is noticing it earlier. Realising your jaw is clenched before you have spent two hours going around in circles. Catching yourself trying to solve next Tuesday while you are sitting in your lounge on Saturday. Recognising, “I’m doing that thing again,” and having another option available.
The same trigger might still happen. The difference is that it doesn’t have to take you over in quite the same way. That view of progress — recognising a familiar pattern sooner and responding differently — is also consistent with the way The Healing Barn describes change.
Notice your body. Notice your senses. Notice your reactions. Notice how clarity actually arrives for you. And perhaps notice what you enjoy when you stop demanding that everything in your life has a reason.
Sometimes your mind doesn’t need another problem to solve better.
Sometimes it needs less to solve.
If this feels familiar
Maybe you’ve read this and recognised your own version of it. Your mind keeps returning to the same situation, your body is tight without you really knowing why, or there is a reaction that keeps happening and you don’t quite understand what is underneath it.
You don’t need to figure that out before you come and see me.
That is actually where we can start.
Bring whatever is happening now. We can slow it down, notice what happens when you talk about it, follow what shows up in the mind and body and become curious about what might be sitting underneath the thing you have been trying so hard to solve.
You don’t need to decide which technique you need or commit to something big. You can simply start with one 60-minute session for $150 and see what comes up.
If you’re not even sure whether working together is the right next step, you can start with a free 30-minute Clarity Call. We can talk about what has been happening and see whether the way I work feels like the right fit.
Start with what is happening now. That is enough.
Start with a free Clarity Call
Scott Holdem
The Healing Barn
Helping you understand what’s really going on underneath the surface, so you’re not just reacting to life automatically and can start choosing how you want to move forward.
