Hey friend,

A few years ago I was at an event and I sat across from a psychiatrist who after spending 5 minutes chatting with me, told me I had "an overactive mind." He said it like a diagnosis, but it landed like a compliment I was supposed to feel bad about.

I found out when I was 30 that I had ADD (clinically) and spent the rest of my adult life being rewarded for that overactive mind. It got me through building businesses, through dealing with the loss of my father, through becoming the kind of person who could hold seventeen threads of a conversation while mentally drafting tomorrow's to-do list. The speed was a feature, not a bug. Until it wasn't.

The same mind that made me "high-performing" also made me unable to sit in a quiet room without manufacturing a crisis. Peace felt like a warning sign. Ease felt like something I'd forgotten to worry about.

The Machine Doing Its Job

Here's what I eventually understood: my mind wasn't broken. It was doing exactly what it had been trained to do - predict threats, solve problems, optimize outcomes. That's the job. Not fulfillment. Not awakening. Not happiness. Just survival, using whatever data it's collected over the years. And it was damn good at it.

The problem is that my mind had collected a lot of data suggesting that chaos was normal. That vigilance was safety. That rest was a luxury I hadn't yet earned. So when things finally got quiet, I'd (unknowingly) sabotage. When the path was clear, I'd find reasons to doubt it. When ease arrived, I'd interrogate it until it left.

This isn't dysfunction. It's hyperfunction in a dysfunctional paradigm - a nervous system interpreting peace as unfamiliar, and unfamiliar as unsafe.

Why the Loops Won't Stop

There's a neurological pattern underneath all of this. When your brain encounters novelty, especially novelty tied to emotional risk, it flags it as a "prediction error" - something that doesn't match the model it's built. This activates your default mode network, the region responsible for self-referential thinking, mental time travel, and compulsive narration.

In plain terms: you get caught in thought loops because your brain is rehearsing possible futures, trying to reduce uncertainty before it arrives. Not because you're weak or anxious or broken. Because your prediction machine is working overtime in a world that feeds it infinite material.

This is what optimization looks like when it has no off switch. The same capacity that helps you plan and prepare and anticipate becomes a prison when it can't stop running simulations.

The Misdiagnosis

Most people interpret this as a personal failing. "I have anxiety." "I'm neurotic." "Something's wrong with me."

But that framing misses the point. You're not defective. You're running ancient, outdated survival software in a bandwidth-saturated world. Your mental loops aren't evidence of brokenness. They're symptoms of a mismatch: biology built for the savanna trying to navigate infinite scroll, 24-hour news cycles, and a culture that treats productivity as a moral virtue.

The Way Out

Freedom doesn't come from optimizing the mind further. Another productivity system won't fix this. Neither will more meditation apps or morning routines or hacks for "mental clarity."

What actually helps is disidentification. Your mind is a tool (an extraordinary one) but somewhere along the way you started mistaking it for a self. You don't just have thoughts; you become them. The mental chatter isn't background noise you're aware of. It's the water you're swimming in.

The shift is subtle but total: instead of trying to fix the thoughts, you notice the one who's aware of them. Next time your mind says "I can't handle this," ask yourself who is aware of that thought. Not to generate an answer (there isn't one) but to interrupt the loop. To create a sliver of space between you and the machine.

Creating Slack

The practical move here isn't more optimization. It's less. Schedule fifteen minutes with no input and no output, just presence. I know that’s a big ask but humor me. When thoughts arise, label them with a single word: "thinking." That's it. Not analysis, not interpretation, not another layer of self-assessment. Just recognition.

And stop treating your mental state as a referendum on your worth. A busy mind doesn't mean you're failing. A quiet mind doesn't mean you've arrived. They're both weather.

The Real Situation

Your mind isn't broken. It's a machine that was rewarded for panic, praised for performance, and never taught how to rest. It learned that safety meant staying three steps ahead, and it's still running that program even when there's nothing to outrun.

But you're not the machine. You're the awareness watching it spin and that awareness doesn't need debugging. It was never broken to begin with.

Nic

PS. Want to be clear about who you really are? Join the Neuroscience of Change - an online program rewiring what’s really running you. Name your own price (Pay What You Can) to get your hands on this powerful program.

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