When the Mind Is Doing Too Much: A Body-Led Perspective on Anxiety and Overthinking
Many people seek therapy because their mind feels constantly busy. Thoughts loop. Worry feels automatic. It can be hard to turn the mind off, even when life is relatively calm. This often shows up as anxiety, overthinking, mental fatigue, or feeling disconnected from the body.
It’s easy to assume the problem is the mind itself.
In my psychotherapy practice in Guelph and across Ontario, I often see something different.
For many clients, the mind has been compensating for long periods of stress, emotional load, responsibility, or pressure. Thinking, analyzing, planning, and worrying became ways to cope and stay functional. Over time, the mind takes on a protective role, working harder and harder to keep things together.
The issue usually isn’t that the mind is broken or needs to be controlled. It’s that it has been carrying more than it was designed to hold.
When Thinking Becomes a Survival Strategy
When the body has spent a long time under stress, the nervous system often remains on high alert. In that state, the mind steps in to help manage uncertainty and threat. This can look like:
persistent worry or rumination
difficulty staying present or grounded
mental exhaustion
feeling pulled out of the body
trouble resting, even when tired
These patterns are not personal failures. They are adaptive responses. The mind learned that staying active and vigilant was necessary.
Because these strategies are familiar, many people try to heal from the same place they learned to survive. They focus on fixing thoughts, analyzing patterns, or pushing themselves to “think differently,” often with mixed results. Insight can be helpful, but insight alone rarely creates lasting change when the nervous system is overwhelmed.
Why Therapy Isn’t About Shutting the Mind Down
In therapy, the goal is not to silence thoughts or force the mind to calm down. That approach often adds more pressure.
Instead, we work on creating more internal support and stability so the mind no longer has to stay in overdrive. This includes paying attention to how stress shows up in the body, how emotions are held or avoided, and how patterns developed over time.
When the body begins to feel safer and more supported, the mind often softens naturally. Thoughts may still arise, but they feel less urgent, less absolute, and less exhausting. There is more space to notice what is happening without being pulled into it.
This shift doesn’t come from trying harder. It comes from changing the conditions the mind has been responding to.
Creating Space Without Forcing Change
A key part of this work is learning to relate to thoughts differently. Rather than judging them or trying to get rid of them, we begin to notice them with a bit more distance.
For example, instead of “I shouldn’t be thinking this,” the stance becomes, “My mind is trying to help right now.” That small shift can create space. And space allows the nervous system to settle.
This is often the starting point in my work with clients.
If you are struggling with anxiety, overthinking, emotional eating, or stress-related patterns, it may help to consider not what your mind is doing wrong, but what it has been carrying for too long.
Therapy can be a place to begin redistributing that load.
Book your free consultation and take your next step.