You can slow your racing mind and give your body a chance to catch up, to feel aligned. When our minds race forward, spinning and whirling about things we can’t control, we feel out of control. These tips will calm it all down.
If you are prone to overthinking or your mind likes to take over and run away with ideas, worries and thoughts about the future, you probably want to slow your racing mind. When my mind gets carried away, it feels both unproductive and laced with anxiety. It usually starts with, “What if …?” and then, “Now what …” followed by some kind of frantic attempt at problem solving that never seems to solve any problems.
No matter how much I meditate, or how well I sleep, my racing mind still appears from time to time. While I try not to overthink my overthinking, if I don’t employ one of the strategies below, I can easily get swept away. If you can relate, try one of these 8 ways to slow your racing mind the next time things are speeding up.
8 Ways to Slow Your Racing Mind
When your mind is racing it can be distracting. It’s hard to focus on even the simplest thing when something in your own body is pulling your attention. You can try to ignore it but in my experience, it only gets faster and louder until it gets what it wants … your attention.
1. Shift your attention to slow your racing mind.
This is not only number one on the list, but it’s my number one go way to slow my racing mind. If it’s happening during the day, I turn on calming music. This playlist will slow things down. This playlist helps too. You can shift your attention by paying attention too. Start noticing what you can see, hear, smell, feel and taste. Really notice. Noticing is a soothing practice that invites and welcomes your presence.
When my racing mind wakes me up in the night, I need something else to shift my attention. I usually try counting backwards from 125 by 3. If that doesn’t work, I’ll do a body scan, starting at my toes and relaxing every muscle all the way up. Those usually work, but if it’s particularly stubborn racing mind, I’ll watch an episode of Gilmore Girls or Schitt’s Creek. Watching something I’ve already seen gives my brain a break. There’s nothing to figure out. I know screens can disrupt your sleep, but a racing mind will disrupt your sleep too.
2. Put your brain on paper.
Sometimes the only way to prove to yourself that your racing mind isn’t onto something and actually doing good work, you have to see it in writing. Move every spinning thought to paper. Don’t try to make sense of them, just move them from your mind to paper. For a fun little twist, turn it into fiction. Tell a story about your thoughts that has nothing to do with the actual real life version of events. This can calm your thoughts or at the very least, allow you to stretch yourself creatively.
3. Be vulnerable and share your thoughts.
Our racing minds have power when we hold it all in. Sharing takes the mind’s foot off the accelerator. It lets the air out of the balloon. When you share with the right people, it’s a relief. Know your audience and share with people who make you feel safe and supported. That could be a friend, family member or therapist. If you can’t share, say it out loud anyway. Name what’s going on and it will get smaller.
4. Move your body.
There is a place for stillness but a racing mind my require movement. Take a walk, stretch, jump up and down, dance around your kitchen or move in another way that feels good.
5. Spend less time online.
Spend one full day a week completely disconnected and see what happens. Do you feel less anxious when you stay off social media? Do you experience less physical pain when you aren’t online as much? Does your mind have less to race about when you aren’t hyper connected to the news and social posts? Pay attention to how you actually feel while online. If social media is weighing you down, these 27 things feel better than scrolling.
6. Prioritize better mental health.
I assess the quality of my mental health by checking in and asking questions like, “How do I feel?” “Is it easy to be creative or am I forcing it?” “Am I more reactive than usual?” “Is my mind racing and making snap judgements or do I have space to be more thoughtful?” “Am I responding to stress in a healthy way or is stress affecting my sleep, work and/or relationships?” I’m not a medical professional but these questions do help me understand where I might need a little work. These are the things I focus on or come back to to ease my nervous system and better my mental health.
7. Stop doing so many things.
Chances are you are doing too much. I know you may think that getting it all done will make you happy. You might even think doing it all will make you a better person. It may also trigger anxious thinking. Overdoing it doesn’t just happen outside of you. It’s happening inside of you too. What I’ve learned (with lots of practice) is that doing more things won’t make you a happier person. It will make you a tired person.
8. Drink water to ease anxiety.
Could it really be this easy? Certainly not all of the time but even if it’s just some of the time, there’s no harm in trying. This article from Real Simple discusses the link between dehydration and stress.
They share ,”The relationship between hydration and stress is well documented. Basically, when you’re dehydrated, your body is stressed, and when you’re stressed your brain releases stress hormones, setting off a chain reaction of the stress response in your body. Research from the University of Cincinnati and published in the Journal of Neuroscience concluded that how hydrated you are determines how well your body (and your mind, and therefore emotions and behavior) handles stress.”
Slow your racing mind and you will naturally calm your body. Any of these suggestions can break the spell of spinning out. Each fix will alleviate stress. Experiment and see which ones work best for you.
