Skip to main content

Breaking Overthinking Cycles

Suddenly, without warning, the mind rises and begins to walk on its own. One step, then another, then a thousand. It moves without direction, yet always in haste. It wants to understand, to predict, to grasp the world in its hands. But the world slips away—as it always does.

To think is to exist, they say. But what if thinking too much is a way of not being at all? Overthinking steals the moment, turns the simple into a maze, fills the quiet with noise.

And then—the pause. A break in the current. A deep breath, a touch against the skin, a feeling without a name. The fine needle resting on the body, the inhale and exhale, the silence between one thought and the next—that is where life is.

It is not about banishing the mind but teaching it to stay. To let it be without devouring. Because in the space between thoughts, life happens.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Research shows that parental warmth shapes our worldview — how might acupuncture offer a reparative experience in adulthood?

  It is becoming increasingly clear that our worldview — whether we perceive life as welcoming or hostile — is shaped far more by the emotional bonds of early childhood than by material hardship or environmental risk. A recent study, published in Child Development , revealed that an adult’s sense of safety, beauty, and benevolence in the world is deeply rooted in the warmth received from parental figures — more so than in their exposure to poverty or danger. This finding resonated with me on a personal level. Time and again, I encounter patients in clinical practice who, despite being outwardly successful and high-functioning, carry an abiding sense that the world is cold, fragmented, even threatening. In acupuncture sessions, it is not uncommon to witness how such emotional imprints — stored not only in the mind, but also in the body — manifest as chronic anxiety, diffuse pain, insomnia, or emotional detachment. Through the lens of Chinese medicine, these states reflect imbalances...

The Progressive Misreading of Silence

At 5, I entered rooms like a murmur. I was already listening for something behind the noise — something older than voices, softer than footsteps. “He’s such a well-behaved boy,” they said, smiling with relief. But what they mistook for virtue was only quiet intuition. I was not good. I was attuned. At 11, I had mastered the art of presence without weight. I could sit by the window for hours, watching the wind pass through the trees like thought through the body. “He’s quiet,” they would say — gently, but with a trace of discomfort. They couldn’t name the feeling of someone watching without need. At 17, I was called “mature.” But maturity is not a virtue — it is a scar. I had already seen the shape of endings before others saw beginnings. Friends came to me like tide to stone, hoping to be held. I held them, yes — but not always with words. Sometimes silence is the only honest offering. At 24, my stillness no longer charmed. The world asked for brightness, momentum, performa...

What Strength Truly Means: A Letter to Men

There exists, hidden in the quiet undercurrents of our culture, a grand illusion: that manhood is synonymous with silence, that strength demands the concealment of pain, and that the measure of a man is his ability to endure without faltering. Such ideas pass through generations like whispered codes, accepted without question, repeated without reflection. And yet, when held to the light of reason, they wither like old parchment, for they are not truths, but relics of fear. It must be said — and said without apology — that you are allowed to speak of what has wounded you. To give voice to pain is not to surrender to it, but to name it, to limit its dominion. Silence may seem noble in the moment, but over time it hardens into a cage. Words, carefully chosen and honestly spoken, are the first instruments of freedom. You are allowed to weep — not as an act of collapse, but as a testament to your humanity. Tears are not the language of the weak; they are the body's recogniti...