coping
Life presents variables; learning how to cope in order to master, minimize, or tolerate what has come to pass.
My Experience on Silencing Autism
I wanted to do an educational article on something that has recently come up in my attention. I was having lunch with some of my peers - and one of the ladies spoke briefly about someone she provides care for: "You know, so-and-so still is so loud and needs to learn to not make everyone miserable just because she is miserable." The so-and-so is an autistic individual and I wanted to say something then, but bit my tongue.
By The Schizophrenic Mom9 days ago in Psyche
Why the Mind Never Feels at Rest
I'm sitting on a beach in Hawaii, watching the most beautiful sunset I've ever seen. This should be perfect. I took time off work specifically for this—to rest, to recharge, to finally relax after months of grinding through deadlines and stress. The ocean stretches endlessly before me, waves rhythmically breaking on shore, the sky painted in impossible shades of orange and pink. I should feel peaceful. Instead, my mind is cataloging everything I need to do when I get back. Mentally drafting emails. Replaying a conversation from last week. Planning tomorrow's itinerary. Worrying about whether I responded to that text. Wondering if I'm relaxing correctly or if I should be doing something more productive with this sunset. I can't just be here. My body is in paradise, but my mind is everywhere else—past, future, hypothetical scenarios, endless mental checklists. Even in this perfect moment, I'm not present. I'm not resting. I haven't been truly at rest in years. The Engine That Won't Stop I used to think I was just busy. That if I could just finish this project, just get through this week, just accomplish these things on my list, then I could rest. But there was always another project. Another week. Another list. Rest remained perpetually one accomplishment away, always just beyond reach. By my mid-thirties, I'd achieved most of what I'd been working toward. Good career. Stable relationship. Financial security. The external stressors that supposedly prevented rest had been largely eliminated. And yet, my mind never stopped. It just found new things to worry about, new problems to solve, new scenarios to analyze. Lying in bed at night. Sitting in traffic. Taking a shower. Eating a meal. Every moment became occupied by thought—planning, analyzing, worrying, remembering, anticipating. My mind had become incapable of simply being without doing. I couldn't watch a movie without also scrolling my phone. Couldn't have a conversation without part of my brain planning what to say next. Couldn't take a walk without listening to a podcast. Every moment had to be filled, optimized, productive. The idea of doing nothing—truly nothing—terrified me. Because when I tried, when I forced myself to just sit with no input, no distraction, no mental task, the silence lasted about thirty seconds before my brain started generating new content to fill it. The Myth of Relaxation "You need to relax," everyone kept telling me. My doctor, my partner, my friends. As if relaxation were something I could simply decide to do, like changing channels. I tried everything. Meditation apps that I'd start and then immediately get distracted from. Yoga classes where I'd spend the entire time thinking about my to-do list. "Relaxing" baths where I'd bring my phone and answer emails. Vacations where I'd return more exhausted than when I left because I'd spent the entire time mentally at work. The harder I tried to relax, the more stressed I became about my inability to relax. I'd read articles about the importance of rest and feel guilty that I couldn't achieve it. I'd watch my partner nap peacefully on a Sunday afternoon and feel envious and broken—what was wrong with me that I couldn't turn off my mind like that? Even sleep—the most basic form of rest—had become labor. I'd lie awake for hours, my brain churning through problems, rehearsing conversations, planning futures, reviewing pasts. When I finally did sleep, I'd dream about work, about deadlines, about all the things my waking mind was obsessed with. There was no off switch. No pause button. No way to exit the constant mental motion that had become my default state. The Roots of Restlessness In therapy, I started excavating where this came from. Why rest felt impossible. Why stillness felt dangerous. The answer stretched back to childhood. I grew up in a household where productivity was virtue and idleness was sin. "If you have time to relax, you have time to do something useful," my father would say. Love felt conditional on achievement. Approval came through accomplishment. I learned early: your worth is measured by your output. Rest is selfish. Stillness is lazy. Productivity equals value. I also learned that being busy meant being safe. As long as I was occupied, focused on tasks, solving problems, I didn't have to feel uncomfortable emotions. Anxiety, sadness, loneliness, existential dread—all of it could be outrun through constant mental motion. My restless mind wasn't a malfunction. It was a highly effective coping mechanism I'd developed decades ago and never learned to turn off. The Cost of Constant Motion By the time I hit forty, the cost of my restless mind had become undeniable. Chronic fatigue that no amount of sleep could fix. A persistent tension headache that lived at the base of my skull. Digestive issues my doctor attributed to stress. A resting heart rate that was consistently elevated, as if my body was perpetually preparing for a threat that never materialized. My relationships suffered. I couldn't be fully present with anyone because part of my mind was always elsewhere. My partner would be telling me something important, and I'd realize I hadn't heard a word because I'd been mentally composing a work email. I'd lost the ability to enjoy things. Beautiful moments, achievements, pleasures—they all got immediately processed and filed away rather than savored. I'd accomplish something I'd worked toward for months and instead of celebrating, I'd immediately focus on the next goal. Most devastatingly, I'd lost access to myself. I had no idea what I actually thought or felt about anything because I never stopped long enough to check in. I was so busy doing that I'd forgotten how to just be. The Breaking Point The collapse came during what should have been a routine Saturday afternoon. I had nothing scheduled, no obligations, no deadlines. My partner was out with friends. I had the entire day to myself to do whatever I wanted. Freedom. Space. Time. I stood in the middle of my living room, paralyzed. My mind immediately started generating tasks: clean the house, run errands, catch up on emails, exercise, meal prep, organize the closet. Endless options, all productive, all useful. But underneath the mental chatter, I felt something else—a desperate, bone-deep exhaustion. Not physical tiredness. Soul tiredness. A profound weariness with the endless doing, the constant motion, the relentless mental activity. I didn't want to be productive. I didn't want to accomplish anything. I wanted to rest. Really rest. I wanted my mind to be quiet for just five minutes. But I didn't know how. I sat on the couch, determined to do nothing. Within two minutes, I was reaching for my phone. I forced myself to put it down. Thirty seconds later, I was mentally planning the week ahead. I tried to stop. My brain immediately jumped to analyzing why I couldn't stop thinking. And then, unexpectedly, I started crying. Deep, wrenching sobs that came from a place I'd been ignoring for decades. I was so tired. So profoundly, completely exhausted. And I didn't know how to stop. Understanding the Restless Mind My therapist helped me understand what was happening. "Your nervous system is stuck in sympathetic activation," she explained. "Fight or flight mode. Your body thinks you're constantly under threat, so it keeps you hypervigilant, always scanning, always preparing, never resting." She introduced me to the concept of "chronic stress activation"—when your nervous system gets locked in survival mode and forgets how to return to the relaxed, restorative state humans need to heal and recharge. My restless mind wasn't just psychological. It was physiological. My body had been flooded with stress hormones for so long that it had forgotten what safety felt like. Rest registered as danger because stillness meant I wasn't preparing, defending, accomplishing—and my nervous system had learned that constant vigilance was survival. "You can't think your way into rest," she said. "Your mind is the problem. You have to go through the body." The Long Road to Stillness Learning to let my mind rest was nothing like I expected. It wasn't about thinking different thoughts or developing better mental habits. It was about teaching my nervous system that it was safe to stop. I started with physical practices. Gentle yoga that focused on breath rather than achievement. Progressive muscle relaxation where I'd systematically tense and release every muscle group, giving my body permission to let go. Long walks where I deliberately left my phone at home and practiced noticing sensations—the feeling of my feet on the ground, the temperature of the air, the sounds around me. The first few times, my mind screamed in protest. This was wasted time. I should be doing something productive. I should be solving problems, planning, optimizing. But gradually, slowly, my nervous system started to remember that rest was possible. That stillness wasn't death. That I could stop moving and the world wouldn't collapse. I learned to create what my therapist called "micro-rests"—brief moments throughout the day where I'd deliberately stop the mental motion. Sixty seconds of just breathing. Thirty seconds of staring out the window without thinking. A full minute of just feeling my body in the chair. These felt ridiculously simple. They were also incredibly hard. But they started creating tiny pockets of quiet in the constant noise. The Practice of Presence I started meditating, though not the way I'd tried before. No apps with soothing voices telling me what to do. Just me, sitting, breathing, watching my thoughts without engaging with them. The first sessions were chaos. My mind generated endless content—worries, plans, memories, judgments. I'd get caught in thought-streams and suddenly realize ten minutes had passed and I hadn't been present for any of it. But my therapist said that was the practice. Not achieving mental silence, but noticing when you've left the present moment and gently returning. Over and over. Thousands of times. That's the work. Gradually, imperceptibly, something shifted. The spaces between thoughts became slightly longer. The grip of mental content loosened slightly. I started experiencing brief moments—just seconds at first—of genuine stillness. Not forced, not achieved through effort, but naturally arising when I stopped trying so hard. Those moments were revelatory. I'd forgotten that quiet was possible. That the mind could actually rest. That there was a state of being that wasn't constant doing. The Discoveries in Stillness As my mind learned to rest, I started discovering what had been hiding underneath all that mental noise. Emotions I'd been outrunning for years. Grief about losses I'd never processed. Anger I'd never expressed. Joy I'd never fully felt because I'd been too busy to notice it. A profound loneliness that no amount of productivity could fill. My restless mind had been protecting me from feeling things I didn't think I could handle. As long as I stayed busy, stayed in my head, stayed in constant motion, I didn't have to confront the uncomfortable truths about my life, my relationships, my choices. Stillness meant feeling. And feeling was terrifying. But it was also liberating. As I started letting myself feel instead of constantly think, as I created space for emotions instead of drowning them in mental activity, something unexpected happened: I started actually resting. Not because I'd achieved some perfect state of mental silence, but because I'd stopped fighting so hard. I'd made peace with the fact that my mind would always generate content, but I didn't have to engage with every thought. I could let them pass like clouds while I remained still underneath. The Ongoing Practice Three years into this work, rest is still a practice, not a permanent state. I still have days when my mind races relentlessly. I still catch myself filling every moment with activity, still find stillness uncomfortable. But now I have tools. I can recognize when my nervous system is activated and know how to down-regulate. I can notice when my mind is in constant motion and choose—sometimes—to stop feeding it. I can create space for genuine rest instead of just distraction disguised as relaxation. I've learned that rest isn't the same as doing nothing. It's not about being lazy or unproductive. It's about giving your nervous system permission to feel safe enough to stop preparing, defending, achieving. It's about trusting that you're okay, right now, without having to do anything or be anywhere or accomplish anything. That trust doesn't come naturally to someone who learned early that worth equals productivity. But it's learnable. Slowly. Imperfectly. With practice. The Permission We Need If your mind never feels at rest, if you can't remember the last time you felt truly still, if even your attempts to relax feel like another task to accomplish—you're not broken. You're not failing at rest. You've just been in survival mode for so long that your nervous system forgot what safety feels like. Your mind learned to stay hypervigilant because at some point, that vigilance protected you. But you're not in that situation anymore, and your body just hasn't gotten the memo yet. Rest isn't something you achieve through effort. It's something you allow through surrender. It's the opposite of everything our culture teaches us about productivity and optimization and constant improvement. Your mind doesn't need to be quiet to rest. It just needs permission to stop working so hard. To stop scanning for threats, solving problems, planning futures. To simply be, without agenda or achievement. You deserve rest. Not as a reward for productivity. Not after you've accomplished enough. But simply because you're a human being, and rest is a fundamental human need. Your worth isn't measured by your mental activity. You're allowed to be still. A mind that never rests isn't a sign of ambition or intelligence or dedication—it's a nervous system stuck in survival mode, convinced that stopping means danger. You weren't built for constant motion. You were built for rhythm: action and rest, thinking and stillness, doing and being. The exhaustion you feel isn't from working too hard—it's from never truly stopping. Rest isn't weakness. It's not wasted time. It's the foundation of everything else. Your mind will never feel at peace through more thinking, more doing, more achieving. It will only find rest when you finally give it permission to stop trying.
By Ameer Moavia10 days ago in Psyche
The Psychology of Overthinking at Night
Every night, the same ritual: I turn off the lights, close my eyes, and within minutes, my mind transforms into a courtroom where I'm simultaneously the defendant, prosecutor, and judge—and I'm always found guilty. It's 2:47 AM, and I'm mentally replaying a conversation from three days ago. Not an important conversation. Not a fight or a confrontation. Just a casual exchange with a coworker where I said something that might have sounded stupid. Probably didn't. But might have. My mind dissects every word, every pause, every facial expression I can remember. What did she mean when she said "interesting"? Was that genuine interest or polite dismissal? Did I talk too much? Did I sound arrogant? Should I have asked more questions? Round and round the thoughts spiral, each loop adding new layers of anxiety, new evidence of my social incompetence, new reasons why everyone probably thinks I'm insufferable. By 3:30 AM, I've catastrophized that one unremarkable conversation into proof that I'm about to be fired, that I have no real friends, that I'm fundamentally unlikeable and everyone's just been too polite to tell me. By 4:00 AM, I'm mentally composing an apology email for something that probably didn't even register as awkward to anyone but me. This is my nightly reality. And I know I'm not alone. The Midnight Court There's something uniquely cruel about the thoughts that arrive after midnight. They're not the same thoughts that visit during daylight hours. They're darker, meaner, more convincing. During the day, I can recognize irrational anxiety for what it is. I can talk myself down, use coping strategies, distract myself with work or conversation or movement. But at night, alone in the dark with nothing but my thoughts, those same anxieties become undeniable truths. The rational part of my brain goes offline, and suddenly every fear seems valid, every worst-case scenario seems inevitable, every mistake I've ever made seems unforgivable. I've replayed conversations from twenty years ago. I've worried about things that haven't happened yet and probably never will. I've mentally prepared for catastrophes that exist only in my imagination. I've solved problems that don't need solving and created problems that don't exist. My husband sleeps peacefully beside me while I lie awake, convinced that some minor misstep I made during the day has irreparably damaged my entire life. "Why do you do this?" he asked once, after finding me crying at 3 AM about something I couldn't even articulate. "Why do you torture yourself like this?" I didn't have an answer then. But I do now. The Science of the Spiral Our brains are fundamentally different at night. This isn't just psychological—it's biological. As my therapist explained it, the prefrontal cortex—the part of your brain responsible for rational thinking, perspective, and emotional regulation—starts to power down as you get tired. Meanwhile, the amygdala, your brain's fear center, stays wide awake. It's like the adult supervisor leaving a room full of anxious children. Without the rational brain to provide context and perspective, your anxieties run wild, unchecked by logic or reason. Add to this the fact that nighttime naturally triggers our evolutionary threat-detection systems. For thousands of years, darkness meant vulnerability. Our ancestors who stayed alert at night, scanning for predators and dangers, were more likely to survive. We've inherited those vigilant, worried nighttime brains. But instead of scanning for predators, we scan our memories for social threats, professional failures, relationship problems, and existential fears. The isolation of night amplifies everything. During the day, we're distracted by a thousand stimuli—work, conversations, movement, light, noise. At night, there's just you and your thoughts. No distractions, no escape, nowhere to hide from the anxieties you've been outrunning all day. The Anxiety I've Carried I can trace my nighttime overthinking back to childhood, to nights spent lying awake listening to my parents fight, trying to predict whether the argument would escalate, rehearsing what I'd do if things got worse. I learned to be hypervigilant at night. To problem-solve in the dark. To mentally prepare for catastrophes while everyone else slept peacefully. That hypervigilance never left. Even though I'm safe now, even though there's no real threat, my brain still performs the same nightly ritual: scan for dangers, replay interactions for hidden meanings, prepare for worst-case scenarios. By the time I was thirty, nighttime overthinking had become so routine I barely questioned it. I thought everyone spent hours awake analyzing their day, worrying about tomorrow, catastrophizing about everything that could go wrong. It wasn't until my doctor suggested my chronic insomnia might be anxiety-related that I realized: this wasn't normal. This was my nervous system stuck in a loop, treating everyday life like a constant threat. The Topics That Haunt Us The content of nighttime overthinking follows predictable patterns. We don't lie awake thinking about our successes or the things that went well. We fixate on: Social interactions. Every conversation becomes evidence of our inadequacy. "Why did I say that? What did they think? Did I sound stupid? Do they hate me now?" Past mistakes. Things we did years ago, mistakes we've already apologized for, embarrassments that probably no one else even remembers—they all resurface at 2 AM with fresh urgency. Future catastrophes. Our minds spin elaborate disaster scenarios. What if I lose my job? What if my partner leaves? What if I get sick? What if everything falls apart? Existential dread. Who am I? What's the point? Am I wasting my life? Have I made all the wrong choices? Physical symptoms. A headache becomes a brain tumor. Fatigue becomes a serious illness. Every bodily sensation becomes potential evidence of imminent death. The darkness amplifies everything, stripping away the perspective and proportion that daylight provides. A minor awkwardness becomes social catastrophe. A small worry becomes existential crisis. The Exhausting Performance What makes nighttime overthinking so damaging isn't just the lost sleep—it's the way it bleeds into the next day. I'd wake up exhausted, my mind still heavy with the previous night's anxieties. I'd drag myself through the day, caffeine-fueled and barely present, already dreading the moment I'd have to go to bed again and face another night of mental torture. The overthinking created a vicious cycle. The anxiety kept me awake, which made me more tired, which made my prefrontal cortex even less effective the next night, which led to even worse overthinking. I started avoiding sleep. I'd stay up late scrolling my phone, watching TV, doing anything to delay the moment I'd have to turn off the lights and face my thoughts. Which of course made everything worse. My relationships suffered. I'd be irritable and withdrawn, too exhausted to be present. My work suffered—it's hard to focus during the day when you've spent the night catastrophizing about everything that could go wrong. But the worst part was the shame. I felt weak for not being able to control my own thoughts. I felt ridiculous for losing sleep over things that seemed so trivial in the morning. I felt alone, convinced that everyone else had figured out how to turn off their brains at night while I remained broken. The Breaking Point The crisis came during a particularly bad week when I'd averaged maybe three hours of sleep a night. I was sitting in a meeting at work, and my boss asked me a direct question. My mind went completely blank. I couldn't remember where I was or what we were discussing. I excused myself, went to the bathroom, and had a panic attack in a stall. This couldn't continue. The nighttime overthinking wasn't just stealing my sleep—it was stealing my life. That afternoon, I called a therapist who specialized in anxiety and insomnia. "Tell me about your nights," she said. I described the spiral—the replaying of conversations, the catastrophizing, the inability to shut my brain off, the shame of lying awake while everyone else slept peacefully. "You're not broken," she said. "Your brain is doing exactly what anxious brains do at night. But we can teach it something different." The Work of Quieting the Mind Healing nighttime overthinking wasn't about thinking my way out of it—it was about changing my relationship with my thoughts. My therapist taught me that thoughts at 3 AM aren't truth—they're just thoughts, colored by fatigue, darkness, and an offline prefrontal cortex. I didn't need to believe them or solve them. I just needed to acknowledge them and let them pass. We practiced cognitive defusion—learning to observe my thoughts without getting caught in them. Instead of "I'm going to get fired," I'd think "I'm having the thought that I'm going to get fired." Small shift, massive difference. It created space between me and the anxiety. I learned the "worry window" technique—setting aside 15 minutes during the day to deliberately worry about everything on my mind. When nighttime anxieties appeared, I could tell myself, "Already addressed this during worry time. Moving on." I established a wind-down routine that signaled to my nervous system that it was safe to sleep. No screens for an hour before bed. Gentle stretching. Reading something light. Making my bedroom a sanctuary rather than a courtroom. I practiced grounding techniques when the spiral started. Five things I could see, four I could touch, three I could hear. Counting breaths. Anything to bring me back to the present moment instead of the catastrophic future my mind was creating. The Unexpected Discoveries As I worked on the nighttime overthinking, I started noticing patterns. The spiral was worst on days when I'd ignored my feelings, when I'd pushed through stress without acknowledging it, when I'd said yes when I meant no. The nighttime overthinking wasn't random. It was my psyche's way of processing things I hadn't dealt with during the day. All the feelings I'd stuffed down, all the concerns I'd dismissed, all the stress I'd tried to outrun—it all surfaced at night when my defenses were down. I started addressing things in real-time instead of stockpiling them for the 3 AM review. If a conversation bothered me, I'd process it during the day instead of waiting for my exhausted nighttime brain to catastrophize it. If I was stressed, I'd acknowledge it instead of pretending I was fine. The less I suppressed during the day, the less my brain had to process at night.
By Ameer Moavia10 days ago in Psyche
My Father Wound Is the Size of a Melon
I’d bricked up the ache I had felt from my father’s lack of love or concern for me, a long time ago. I drank the pain away and morphed it into a sexy, vivacious, and fun-loving party lover. It’s true, I did lose days to heartache and hangovers, but that’s Yin and Yang, right?
By Chantal Christie Weiss10 days ago in Psyche
The Speed of Life
We live in an age where speed is celebrated. Faster internet, faster success, faster replies, faster results. From the moment we wake up, life seems to press a silent accelerator. Notifications buzz, deadlines chase us, and comparison quietly sits in our pockets. The speed of life keeps increasing—but the quality of life often does not. This raises a powerful psychological question: Is moving faster actually helping us live better, or is it slowly draining the meaning from our lives?
By Alexander Mind11 days ago in Psyche
The Night I Understood Football
I didn’t go to the game expecting hope. It was a cold November Thursday. My brother had just lost his job. My nephew hadn’t spoken in days after a school incident. The world felt heavy, and the last thing I wanted was to watch a mismatch—our hometown team facing a dynasty that hadn’t lost in months.
By KAMRAN AHMAD11 days ago in Psyche
Society Often Teaches Us to Suppress Our Sad Feelings, Branding Them as Negative.. Top Story - January 2026. Content Warning.
Allow yourself the time to feel, process, and let go. What a journey we’ve traveled together. You can relate to that pain that appears out of nowhere and wants to linger in our minds. Once fear moves in, it takes root—spreading doubt, loneliness, and confusion It’s that kind of pain that overtakes your mental health, gradually making a home within you. Your thoughts can create a space filled with fear, a feeling that we often cling to because it’s the one our minds use against us—leading to a fierce battle between your thoughts and your feelings. It’s a struggle no one wants to lose, yet losing yourself feels like an ever-present threat. Isn’t that a trick life plays on us?
By Johana Torres12 days ago in Psyche
Watch Out Wednesdays! (New Year's Eve Edition) - Opinion. Content Warning.
Happy New Year's Eve to everyone! Here is what to watch out for as we head into 2026! 1. Look for vengeance. For 2026, seek to avenge yourself of all of your enemies. Please be 100% in reaching your goal. Please make sure that they cry long into the night. Those who have plotted against you will be in misery when they see you being successful anyway.
By Adrian Holman14 days ago in Psyche
Consent in Photos
Some images rattle around your body. You catch it for a second. A fraction of a breath. And in that moment you know that it will stay with you forever. I just saw an image like that. It's an image I didn't agree to see. And I'll bet my life that the man in it didn't agree for it to be taken either.
By Kirstyn Brook16 days ago in Psyche
