…But there might not be. You are human. It’s normal to get carried away with your thoughts and have your mind going here, there and everywhere. Repeat after me, there is nothing wrong with me. There is nothing wrong with me AND there are things I might want to work on that will make life a bit easier or a bit brighter. 

As humans we have 70,000 – 100,000 thoughts a day and not all of them are happy and joyous. We can get caught up in some pretty wild and dark thought processes and that’s OK, that’s human. We are hard-wired for safety. You might think “but that meeting I’m ruminating about doesn’t impact my ability to survive” and you are right AND for some reason your brain thinks it does. I’m not going to attack or kill the squirrel when I walk up to it but it runs away anyways. We have to accept what our mind sees as a danger. That is the first step in managing our own version of humanness. 

Just because our mind is running a marathon and flitting from thought to thought like some sort of anxious and judgemental Ninja Warrior, doesn’t mean we have to go with it. When your mind runs away, try to become aware of it. Once you become aware of the mental race you’ve been running, exhale. Come back to the room you are in right now. 

What day is it? 

What time? 

Are you seated or standing?

What are you wearing?

Can you feel the weight of your clothes on your body?

Can you feel the support of the chair under your butt or your feet on the floor?

Do you notice anything around you? 

Any noises you can hear? 

Can you feel your hands? Your pinky fingers? 

Orient back to the here and now and train your brain. It sounds easy doesn’t it? It is not. Noticing when your mind has wandered off, away from the present moment and bringing it back is hard work. You deserve to give yourself credit for that hard work. Simply training your mind can help manage a whole host of mental experiences like: anxiety, depression, insomnia, stress, anger and more. We all have stuff, baggage, and things that are either getting in the way of us living our lives or things we just want to work on and manage. 

This type of activity is mindfully-based using your senses. Mindfulness is a really simple process of recognizing when the mind has wandered off into thought and coming back to the present moment. There are lots of ways to practice mindfulness including guided meditation, visualization, grounding techniques and lots more. You can find free resources for this here. 

Being a human is not easy. You likely have a lot on your mind and are managing a lot (even if your mind says it’s not that much). If you feel like you have done the self-help routine, if you have tried therapy, if you have tried alone reach out to us at co*****@re*************.com and we will do our best to support. 

Authored by Annie Amirault MSW, RSW, Psychotherapist & Co-Founder of ReLearning Human