Why Can't I Switch Off?

Does this scenario sound at all familiar to you? You finish work, close the laptop and leave the office. You drive home, make dinner, perhaps sit down for the evening and tell yourself that now you can relax. Your mind has other ideas.

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You replay a conversation from earlier, think about what needs doing tomorrow, remember an email you forgot to answer, question the decisions you have made and start thinking about money, your health, your family, your business, your future. One thought opens the door for another and suddenly your mind feels like a browser with thirty tabs open, all playing different videos at the same time.

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At that point, you are physically at home and mentally you are still at work. You are sitting still, yet your mind is running a marathon. So why can’t you switch off?

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It is a question that increasingly reflects modern life. The latest Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey for England found that 20.2% of adults have something in common, they call it Generalised Anxiety if you want the label. Whilst labels are unhelpfully infiltrating our society at an alarming rate, this statistic does show that the inability to quieten the mind is common in this, our modern era.

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Looking behind the statistics, worry, mind busyness and periods of stress are part of being human. Wha the statistics do show is that anxiety, psychological distress and reduced wellbeing are significant issues in our modern world.

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Let’s dive deeper into what is happening. Your mind was designed to notice what matters. It scans for problems, searches for patterns and prepares you for what might happen next. This processing, in and of itself, is an extraordinary survival mechanism. The difficulty comes when the internal alarm system never receives the message that it is safe to stand down.

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Imagine having a smoke alarm that becomes so sensitive that it reacts every time you make toast. Eventually, you stop trusting the alarm and you may even become accustomed to the constant noise. Your mind can work in a similar way.

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If you spend your days responding to messages, solving problems, making decisions, managing other people's expectations and absorbing an endless stream of information, your mind can become accustomed to being in problem-solving mode. When the external noise stops, the internal noise becomes more noticeable.

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One of the reasons you may struggle to switch off in your quiet moments is that your mind does not distinguish between a problem you can solve and a possibility you can only imagine. In other words, as far as your mind is concerned, reality and a vivid visualisation are exactly the same and are treated the same within the body. There is a huge difference between “I need to send that proposal tomorrow” and “What if everything goes wrong?” The first is a problem with an action attached to it and the second is a question without a definite answer.

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Your mind can spend hours attempting to solve a problem that does not yet exist and worry can become like walking on a treadmill, you are expending enormous energy while remaining exactly where you started.

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The sheer volume of consistent stimulation that surrounds you is a contributing factor to staying ‘switched on’. Your day may begin with your ‘phone beside your bed. Before you have even put your feet on the floor, you may have checked messages, news, emails and social media. Throughout the day, notifications pull your attention in different directions and in the evening, you may watch television while scrolling through your phone, that’s double impact on your mind and brain wave patterns. Your body may be sitting on the sofa while your attention is travelling at motorway speed.

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Let’s be real for a moment, there is nothing inherently wrong with technology. The challenge is that your attention is constantly being invited somewhere else. Your mind rarely gets the equivalent of an empty road.

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Then there is that unfinished business. Your mind dislikes open loops and constantly searches for closure. If something feels unresolved, your mind will keep returning to it. This can be useful when you need to remember an important task and becomes exhausting when every unfinished conversation, decision or possibility is treated as something that needs your attention immediately.

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Your emotional patterns can add another layer to the cake of your constant mind activity. Perhaps you have learned to take responsibility for everyone else and constantly anticipate what other people might need. Perhaps you have developed a habit of preparing for problems before they happen. Maybe you learned somewhere along the way that being productive means always doing something. You can become so good at carrying the world that putting the world down feels strangely uncomfortable.

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NLP offers an interesting way of looking at this because it focuses on the relationship between your thoughts, your language, your internal representations and your emotional states. To be clear, the aim is not to empty your mind completely, that’s an unrealistic goal and actually difficult to achieve without intense meditative practice. Instead, you can learn to change the way you respond to what your mind is producing.

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Think of your mind as a radio station. You may not be able to stop every programme from being broadcast, you can learn to change the channel and listen to just one. One of the fundamental ideas within NLP is that your experience is influenced by the way you represent an event internally. The words you use, the pictures you create, the sounds you imagine and the meaning you attach to an experience can all influence your emotional response.

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Let’s play for a moment. Consider the thought:

“I have so much to do, I am never going to get everything done.”

Notice what happens inside you when you say that to yourself.

Now change the language:

“There are several things I need to deal with and I can decide what matters most and take the next step.”

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The external circumstances may not have changed, your internal map has. This is where NLP becomes highly practical. You can learn to notice the patterns that create mental pressure rather than simply being carried along by them.

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When your mind feels busy, ask yourself, “What am I thinking about right now? Is this something I can act on? What am I assuming? What meaning am I giving this? Is this a fact, a possibility or a prediction?”

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These simple questions create something extremely valuable and that’s distance. Instead of being inside the thought, you begin to observe the thought and that is a powerful shift. You are no longer the passenger being driven around by your mind. You are beginning to take your hands back onto the steering wheel, you are driving the bus.

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So, what can you do next to begin to quieten your busy mind? Give this simple daily exercise some space for the next seven days. Just ten minutes at the end of your working day or before your evening begins.

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Take a piece of paper and draw three columns.

In the first column, write ‘My Mind’.

In the second, write ‘My Control’.

In the third, write ‘My Next Step’.

Then empty your head onto the page. Write down everything that is occupying your mind, unorganised and unjudged, just get it out of your head and onto paper.

Now look at each item and ask yourself whether it is genuinely within your control. If it is, write something in the third column that represents your next useful action, just the next step.

If the item is not within your control, consciously acknowledge that you cannot solve it right now.

You might say to yourself:

“I recognise this thought. I do not need to solve it tonight.”

Then take a slow breath and deliberately bring your attention back to the present moment.

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In this simple exercise, you are training your mind to understand that not every thought requires an immediate response.

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Once you have identified a recurring thought, ask yourself what you would rather be thinking instead.

If your habitual thought is, “What if I get it wrong?”, experiment with, “What would I do if I trusted myself to handle whatever happens?”

If your thought is, “I have too much to do,” replace it with, “What is the most important thing I can complete next?”

If your thought is, “I should have done more today,” think, “What did I accomplish today, and what deserves my attention tomorrow?”

Here, you are mindfully choosing a more useful question and that distinction matters. Your mind follows the questions you repeatedly ask it and will search for evidence to support them.

Ask, “What could go wrong?” and your mind will begin searching for evidence.

Ask, “What can I do about this?” and your mind begins searching for options.

Ask, “What would help me feel more in control?” and you have created a completely different mental pathway. Over time, this can become a habit.

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In reality, the goal is not to become someone who never worries, it’s to become someone who knows what to do when worry arrives and that is a very different proposition. You can become more skilled at deciding which thoughts deserve your attention and more comfortable with not having every answer. You can learn to manage the way you respond to pressure.

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Learning NLP gives you a much deeper understanding of how your internal world works and, importantly, how to work with it rather than constantly fighting against it. You begin to recognise the patterns behind your thinking, understand how language influences your experience, become more aware of the states you create and develop practical ways of moving from an unresourceful state into a more useful one. Here’s the most important thing to remember, your mind is not your enemy. It is more like a powerful horse that has been running for too long without being given clear direction, you need to learn how to guide it.

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Perhaps the question in question here is not really, “Why can't I switch off?” Perhaps the more useful question is “What would become possible for me if I learned how to direct my mind instead of allowing my mind to direct me?” That is where change begins, by learning how to create choice.

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