That calm, steady feeling you were sitting in gets interrupted and you can almost hear it land inside you, oh… here it is. Your body feels a bit heavier, your energy drops, and things that felt easy a moment ago suddenly feel like effort. Small talk, being around people, all of it feels like it requires something you don’t quite have access to right now. And then it layers in quickly, the guilt shows up. Was I rude just then, I didn’t stop to talk, I just kept walking, that probably looked off. And before that thought even finishes, another one is already there, then another, then another, until it stops feeling like individual thoughts and becomes a stream, a swirl of noise that feels convincing in the moment even though part of you can sense it’s spiralling. And just like that, you're not observing it anymore. You're in it. 

And in those moments it's so easy to assume something's gone wrong. Not just with the moment, but with you. It feels like this shift must mean something important, about your life, your mindset, where you're at, maybe even where you're heading. It feels serious, like something to figure out immediately before it turns into something bigger.

But then you realise, okay, you know this pattern now. You know this isn’t some hidden truth about your life suddenly being revealed. It’s just thinking. Raw, automatic, unfiltered mental noise passing through your mind and, for a moment, being taken seriously. Not facts. Not signals. Just thoughts showing up.

And if it’s not a fact, it doesn’t need to be solved or fixed or obeyed. It can just be noise. Uncomfortable, yes. Annoying, oh man, absolutely. But temporary. And even when it's still loud, even when part of you is thinking come on just hurry up and pass already, there is another part that starts to see it for what it is. Just thoughts doing what thoughts do when they're unhelpful. Looping, repeating, sticking around longer than you would like.

And somehow, that takes a bit of the edge off. Just enough to stop it feeling like it’s you. Enough to create a little space between you and it. And in that space, you start to remember this says nothing about who you are or where your life is going. It’s just a moment of noise. And like all noise, it passes.

And here’s something I’ve noticed in those moments. The fastest way through isn’t thinking my way out of it. It’s shifting my attention somewhere else. Out of my head and back into the world. For me, that’s often calls and meetings with clients. And I know that sounds strange, because in the moment there’s a part of me that resists it. I want to be alone and just wait for it to pass. But I’ve learned something from doing it anyway. It settles. Not because the thoughts disappear first, but because my attention has somewhere else to go. Onto my clients, into what they’re saying, into the conversation in front of me. And it almost feels like medicine. A kind of relief for the length of the call or meeting, and often for a little while after too.

It's different for everyone. What works for one person won't necessarily work for another. But the principle is the same. Find the thing that pulls you out of your own mental loop and back into something real. Something outside your head. Something grounded in the world in front of you.

And I think that's the key thing. You don't have to wait to feel better before you act. You can act your way into feeling better. Even when your mind is telling you to withdraw. Even when everything in you is saying not right now. There is usually something small you can step into that changes the direction of it. Because staying in your head rarely improves anything. But shifting your attention, even slightly, even reluctantly, almost always does. Not instantly, not magically, but enough to loosen the hold. And from there things start to move again.

So try not to fix the feeling or analyse it until it makes sense. Recognise it for what it is, step out of it where you can, and let it pass without building a story around it. You might still feel a bit off, a bit tired, a bit flat, but you don't need to turn that into something bigger than it is. You can just get through the moment, do the next small thing, and let your mind settle in its own time. Because it will. However long it takes, it will. 🩷