Welcome,
Welcome,
Welcome to When Did Thinking Become Your Full-Time Job?
This session is all about understanding and softening the mind that simply won't rest.
My name is Francesca Louise.
I'm so excited to have you here because this is a topic that I know a lot about.
Now,
I've been a coach for over 20 years,
But some of the things I coach are closer to home than others.
And this one I really know about firsthand.
Because I've been prone to a lot of overthinking in my lifetime.
Now,
Let's start with the most important part,
That your overthinking is not a character flaw.
In fact,
It's highly intelligent.
Your overthinking is your nervous system working overtime to create certainty in a world that once felt deeply uncertain.
The mind that will not rest learned to spin for a reason,
And understanding that reason is where the softening begins.
So,
I'm very,
Very excited because I'm going to be sharing with you,
Of course,
Some tips and some understandings around this.
Found in the mind,
Even though the mind thinks it is.
And that's why we're always looking for the next question and the next answer,
Because for a very short moment when we find an answer,
Something in us relaxes.
But in fact,
The relaxation needs to happen in the body.
But let's start,
First and foremost,
To give your mind a little bit of food.
And I'm going to start with a question.
When did you last have a quiet mind?
And I don't mean the meditated into silence kind of quiet mind,
Not the exhausted into numbness quiet where you've honestly got no energy left to think,
But genuinely at rest.
Thoughts moving slowly,
If at all,
Nothing to solve,
Nothing to replay.
Nothing to prepare for.
Can you remember ever having that?
Because if you're struggling to remember,
Which I suspect you might be,
You're in the right place.
And you have probably already tried a lot of things to help with this,
Which is what's brought you to this course.
And I'm so glad that you found your way here because this course is going to be short but powerful.
And so right now at the beginning,
I'm wondering,
What are the many things you've already tried to stop your mind from overthinking?
And in fact,
Is it you that thinks you overthink?
Or have other people told you that you overthink,
And now you're starting to wonder?
Perhaps you've tried journaling.
Perhaps you've done some mindfulness apps.
And perhaps you've been listening to people who just say,
Stop overthinking.
Not very useful,
Right?
You may have been told that you're an anxious or a worrier or someone who simply thinks too much about everything,
As if the solution is to think less,
As if you haven't tried.
But here's what I'd like to offer instead.
Your overthinking is not a thinking problem.
And absolutely,
As I mentioned earlier,
Not a character flaw.
Your overthinking is very,
Very intelligent.
It is your nervous system doing something very specific,
Very purposeful,
And once you understand it,
Something you can actually work with rather than endlessly fight against.
And that's what this course is about.
Not how to stop thinking,
But how to understand what your thinking is doing for you and how to create enough safety in your body that your mind can finally get the permission it needs to rest.
Test.
And this is a little bit different to many of the things that you'll be seeing in social media or in generic self-help programs,
Because almost everything written about overthinking talks about it as a cognitive problem.
Changing your thoughts.
Challenging your thinking patterns,
Getting more disciplined.
Replacing negative thoughts with positive thoughts.
But these approaches all have a ceiling and you have probably hit it many times because you cannot think your way out of overthinking.
The mind that is spinning cannot simultaneously be the mind that stops the spinning.
Real change,
The kind that creates a genuinely quieter inner life,
Happens at the level of the nervous system,
In the body,
Not in the head.
Now the big thing for us to play with right now is this concept that your overthinking mind is not broken at all.
It's not your enemy.
It's not evidence that something's wrong with you.
In fact,
It is simply evidence of a highly sophisticated,
Highly intelligent response to a world that was once too chaotic for you to understand.
Your overthinking mind is a protection system.
And it's working exactly as it was designed to.
And before I go any further,
I'd like you to just take a moment.
To let that settle.
Your overthinking is not something wrong.
It's a highly intelligent system.
To keep you safe.
That for many people alone is a massive shift.
And to understand this better.
As with so much of my work,
We need to go back into childhood.
Because for many of us who are overthinking adults,
We learned early on in life that the world looked very unpredictable.
And perhaps your caregivers or the family setup that you had,
Or school,
Early schooling,
Was so overwhelmingly uncertain and unpredictable.
That your body,
Your body emotionally,
Your nervous system felt overwhelmed.
And the energy,
Your life force energy was pushed up into the mind,
Into the head.
To try and make sense of this craziness.
And your nervous system learnt that there's some kind of relief up there in the head.
Let's go and live there instead.
And by moving energy up into the head,
You will in turn have disconnected at some level.
To body communication.
Maybe you learned as a young child that things could go wrong if you didn't do the right thing,
And you're trying to understand what that thing is.
Maybe you learned that it was better to think ahead,
To prepare,
To make sure that things don't go wrong.
If I can just understand what could happen if I go left or right,
I can stop something bad from happening.
And so the mind starts spinning and running every scenario to keep you safe,
Replaying conversations,
Preparing for every possible version of tomorrow.
Not because you're anxious by nature.
But because anxiety was a rational response to an environment that required vigilance.
And so your nervous system.
This highly intelligent part of you.
Found a way through emotional overwhelm,
Perhaps fear or threat or discomfort or confusion.
It found a way through.
And that's a way that you've managed life ever since then.
But the problem is that your nervous system doesn't automatically update every few years when the environment changes.
It doesn't update when you go to college or get your first job.
In fact,
The vigilance that was needed as a child keeps going.
It's still running now.
In a life where much of the time you're totally safe,
If not all of the time,
But your nervous system has not received that message clearly enough to stand down,
Stand back.
And that's what's going on in the mind.
So your mind keeps spinning,
Protecting you from dramas,
Trying to keep you safe from the unpredictable,
Creating certainty through thinking,
Analysing,
Learning.
Because certainty through safety was not reliably available.
And none of this is a flaw,
And I'm going to repeat that a few times.
This is an adaptation.
A brilliant.
But exhausting,
No longer useful adaptation to the world around us.
Now,
Not all thinking is overthinking.
There is a quality of thought that moves,
That arrives at something,
Resolves and releases.
And that's processing,
And it has a direction.
And it involves action.
But you're kind of overthinking in all likelihood.
Is one of rumination.
It circles,
It returns to the same ground again and again without resolution.
You might be very frustrated by this,
But you may even have hit a point of laughter.
Because when you notice it going on,
It's quite farcical.
It feels urgent.
But arrives nowhere and keeps repeating.
It's exhausting precisely because it never ends,
Because it was never designed to end.
It was designed to maintain vigilance and to keep you out of the body,
Which may have had the risk of feeling overwhelmed if we connected to it.
Please let that sit.
Your overthinking is not looking for a solution.
It is keeping you in the mind so that you don't feel an overwhelming emotion in the body.
And it's learned to do that from childhood.
And so the feeling that it's trying to escape from is one that it learnt in childhood and has possibly never been released.
So please learn to notice the difference between these two different types of thinking.
One is a human gift,
The ability to think and assess and create and move through a challenge and find a solution,
Resolve something,
Release it,
Take action,
Move on.
Powerful.
Ruminating and what we tend to call overthinking is something quite different and it has nothing to do with finding a solution,
Although that's what it feels like.
Now overthinking tends for most people to sit in their head because that's where we feel our mind is.
And also perhaps as far as the shoulders.
And what's interesting for us to recognise here,
Or perhaps just to play with the thought,
Is that my mind does not live in my head.
My mind is almost like a bubble around the head.
And we live in it.
That's quite a fascinating one,
Isn't it?
And so everything that sits in my mind,
All those different thoughts going round and round and round,
I am in it.
It's not in me.
And this is a visual that can be very helpful for us to understand and to contextualize just how powerful this overthinking process is and why it can sometimes feel overwhelming.
Overthinking sits with us as almost a buzzing quality,
A pressure,
A relentlessness,
A sense of thoughts running just slightly faster than you can catch them.
And you might be somebody that in addition or in tandem with overthinking is very quick,
Great at banter,
Because your nervous system and your neural pathways have learned very early to fire and wire.
And sometimes for some of us,
Our mind,
That buzzing mind thing sits just behind the eyes or around the eyes.
And overthinking often.
Moves also into the shoulders and the neck.
Because there we have a certain armour,
Another protection level.
Braced,
Ready,
Ready for anything.
As if carrying the weight of everything that needs to be thought about,
Anticipated and managed.
And many overthinkers carry chronic tension in the neck and shoulders without ever connecting it to the spinning mind.
But the body and the mind are not separate.
Nothing is separate.
The shoulders are bracing against the same uncertainty that the mind is trying to think its way through.
So let's go into a short somatic practice.
And what we're going to do for this is take a wonderful big deep breath.
And we're not going to try and stop thinking.
Isn't that a relief?
But we are going to try and locate the thinking.
So as you take a few lovely big deep breaths,
Perhaps into the diaphragm,
Just bring your awareness to your head area.
And notice if there's any buzzing or pressure or a sense of thoughts running.
And are you feeling it inside the head or around the head?
We just want to get curious.
And we don't need to follow our thoughts because we're now starting to recognise that the function is not to find a solution.
And so we can start looking at these thoughts a little bit more like white noise.
But notice the quality of the activity.
And you may be somebody that notices the buzzing or the sounds around your ears.
But when you feel ready.
Just move your awareness slowly down to the shoulders and the neck area.
Are they dropped and soft or are they held slightly braced tight as if you're carrying a backpack?
Just notice.
And without trying to change anything.
I invite you to just make contact.
With what overthinking feels like in your body.
Because that contact,
That moment of noticing,
Is already something different from being inside the spin.
And what you're doing right now,
Connecting to the body.
Matters far more than you may realise.
You are no longer the overthinking.
You are the one observing it.
And that distance,
No matter how small,
Is the beginning journey into greater safety.
And far more freedom.
And freedom is such an important word.
Because for many of us who overthink,
We feel trapped.
And what we don't realise is that we are trapped by our own safety system.
And often we think it's external circumstances that are keeping us stuck.
With a deeper reality.
Is that actually it's our mind.
Isn't that fascinating?
And not in a way of self-blame but in a way of huge curiosity to understand the human intelligence slightly differently.
I find this totally inspiring and this for me was transformational in my journey.
When I understood why my mind was overthinking and what the function was,
And that it was actually a sign of intelligence,
And all I had to do was bring more safety into the body,
And the mind,
After years of over-functioning perhaps,
Could finally relax,
I was overjoyed and excited.
So one of these areas that most advice on overthinking misses completely is that the spinning mind is really not problem.
Or should I say it's not THE problem?
The spinning mind is a symptom.
And the actual problem,
If we're going to use the word problem today,
Is that the nervous system does not feel safe enough to stop scanning for threat.
And as long as the body is in a state of low-level alertness,
The mind will keep spinning,
Because spinning is the mind's way of helping the body feel in control and keep us safe.
So if you'd like to have a quieter mind.
.
.
You need to start with a safer body,
Not the other way round.
And this is why thought-challenging techniques have limited effect for chronic over-thinkers.
You can challenge the thought.
You can replace it with a more rational one.
And five minutes later,
The mind is spinning again on the same topic.
Or you might be one of these.
It finds a bigger topic to worry about or think about.
I've been there.
Because the underlying nervous system state that generates the thoughts hasn't changed at all.
And it will keep upping the ante's until it has our mental attention.
So you might also be somebody who has friends that seem to have a problem for every solution.
This is a similar kind of thing.
Maybe that's you.
So what we're going to do instead on this course is go directly to the Navya system.
I've shared with you some really profound insights that will bring a little bit of rest in your mind,
But also,
I hope,
Blast something open.
Last open a vortex of amazement of how our nervous system is working to keep us safe and our journey now is to update our nervous system.
We keep ourselves safe and so let's be kind and compassionate and just a little bit patient because we're now going to go in and use the body to send the mind a message it's been waiting to receive.
The message that you are safe,
You can rest,
A message that says.
.
.
I've got you.
So let's go into this one.
And I'm going to be guiding you through something very simple that communicates directly with your nervous system.
So first,
Please just notice where your shoulders are right now.
Don't move them yet,
Just notice.
Are they up near your ears?
Are they slightly forward?
Are held tight.
And now take a really big,
Slow,
Deep breath in.
And as you exhale,
Just let your shoulders drop.
Not a forced drop,
But a released drop.
As if you're putting down something heavy you'd forgotten you were carrying.
Think back in the old days we held suitcases with no wheels.
I remember that far back.
Gosh,
And the weight of holding those big suitcases.
Imagine putting those down,
Or bags of shopping.
Just take another deep breath in and this time as you exhale you may actually just wish to make a sound as you do so.
And on the exhale,
Let the shoulders just soften and fall a little more.
And let's do a big deep breath like that one more time.
And now just notice the quality of the thinking.
Not the content.
But the quality Has anything shifted even fractionally?
Is there any more space?
Any slight softening.
That is your nervous system receiving the message that right now,
In this moment,
You do not need to brace.
And your mind immediately responds.
How about that?
That tiny practice,
Just dropping the shoulders with intention and breath.
Is one of the most direct pathways to the nervous system.
That is available to us.
And it's available to us everywhere.
In the car,
At work,
At home.
Anywhere you like.
It bypasses the thinking mind entirely.
And speaks directly to the body.
And in response,
The mind responds.
I invite you to use that technique as often as you can.
Use it as soon as you notice the spinning beginning.
We're not doing it to stop the thoughts.
We're doing it to change the state that generates them.
That is such a profound shift and I'm so happy to be able to share that with you.
Now I mentioned the word curiosity and I mention it in many of my courses.
It's such a powerful word when it comes to understanding ourselves and healing ourselves into a world of nervous system safety.
And many people who overthink.
End up fighting their overthinking.
And they get irritated and frustrated.
They try to stop it,
Override it,
Or distract away from it.
And I wish to invite you to become curious about it.
The moment you notice the mind is starting to go round in circles,
Instead of saying,
Stop it,
Stop thinking about this,
Just try asking.
What is my mind trying to protect me from right now?
What is the uncertainty?
That I'm trying to resolve.
What am I scanning for?
What threat am I anticipating?
And we're not doing this to analyse and to add more thought.
We're doing this to ground ourselves.
And we ask this question gently.
Asked from a place of loving curiosity.
Because we don't need to be frustrated anymore.
Because we now know that we're not trying to think our way to a solution.
Our thinking is just a symptom.
And this approach of curiosity shifts your relationship to the thinking.
So that you're no longer inside it.
You are alongside it.
Asking what it needs.
I'm going into the body.
So I'd like you to bring to mind something that your mind has been circling lately.
And you may have many things to choose from.
Just choose one.
Something that is unresolved.
Something that it keeps returning to.
And now I would just like you to say to yourself.
Not as a platitude,
But as a genuine offer.
I don't need to solve this today.
And just notice what happens in the body when you say that.
Is there resistance?
Relief.
Tightening or small release.
Because it has resistance.
That is information.
Your nervous system does not yet feel safe enough to put something down and that's okay because we're not here to force anything.
We're just being curious,
Remember?
We're just noticing.
What feels possible.
And we're connecting.
Into the body.
And if you noticed even a fraction of relief.
Let yourself feel it and enjoy it.
Because that tiny fraction is real.
And that is the mind beginning to trust.
But not knowing something.
Doesn't mean danger.
So let's have a look at the important learnings from today.
Overthinking is not a thinking problem.
It is a highly intelligent nervous system trying to keep you safe.
And it usually learned to do so in childhood.
But the program has not been updated.
Your spinning mind is a protection system.
Brilliant!
Intelligent.
Exhausting.
Your thinking mind learnt to spin because certainty through thinking was at one time more available than certainty through safety.
The mind cannot rest until the body feels safe,
Which is why challenging thoughts has its limits.
For most people the shoulders and the head.
Carry the overthinking for us.
Working with the body.
Changes the mind.
Curiosity about the spinning thoughts is far more powerful than trying to fight it or control it.
Asking or being curious.
About what the thoughts think they're protecting you from.
Could be a really exciting question.
And finally,
Permission to not know is one of the most radical things a chronic overthinker can practice.
And it's incredibly powerful.
For our resilience as human beings,
Especially at a time where so much is changing.
But most importantly,
For our deepest self.
So you came here with a mind that would not stop,
And you wanted to understand,
What do I do about all this overthinking,
It's driving me bonkers.
Or maybe that's what you thought.
And I truly hope that you're leaving now with something truly useful.
Something far more useful than a couple of tips on how to control that mind.
I truly hope you're leaving with an understanding of why it spins and a growing sense that you and your mind are not enemies.
You're in a relationship and you can bring the compassion and the respect and the gratitude in and you can start to bring in more safety through the body.
I hope you enjoy.
And I wish you a peaceful mind.
Bye-bye.
