You Are Not Your Thoughts
A gentle explanation of why your mind feels busy - and what to do instead
There are days when nothing is actually wrong, and yet everything feels . . . loud.
The kettle’s on. The house is standing. The people you love are mostly fed and accounted for.
And still - your mind is pacing the room like a dog that’s missed its walk.
You replay conversations.
You imagine outcomes.
You worry about things that haven’t happened and feel strangely flat about the things that have.
And then, quietly, you wonder:
Is this just me?
Here’s the reassuring truth I wish someone had told me sooner:
This isn’t a personal failing.
It’s how the human brain works.
And better still - once you understand what’s happening, there’s a great deal more joy available than you might think.
The Mind Was Never Designed for Modern Life
Your brain is very good at one thing: keeping you safe.
Not joyful.
Not relaxed.
Not present.
Safe.
Which means it is constantly scanning for:
what could go wrong
what you should have done differently
what you might need to fix next
So when you find yourself sitting at the kitchen table, staring into your tea and worrying about an outcome that hasn’t happened yet, that isn’t weakness.
That’s your brain doing its ancient job in a very modern setting.
As neuroscientist Daniel Gilbert explains in his work on happiness, we are extraordinarily bad at predicting how bad things will feel - and how long those feelings will last.
Our minds catastrophise. Reality, more often than not, is far kinder.
Why We Worry About Outcomes That Don’t Exist Yet
There’s a reason we spend so much time thinking ahead instead of enjoying what’s right in front of us.
Research by Matt Killingsworth found that we are least happy when our minds are wandering — even if we’re daydreaming about something neutral or vaguely pleasant.
Our thoughts tend to drift to:
comparison
regret
imagined futures
quiet self-criticism
And the trouble is, we don’t just have these thoughts.
We believe them.
I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve sat worrying about how something might go, only to realise later that:
it didn’t happen at all, or
it happened - and I coped just fine, or
something unexpectedly lovely occurred instead
One of my favourite truths to return to is this:
Most of the things we worry about never happen.
And most of the things that do happen are far less dramatic than our minds predicted.
“I’ll Be Happier When . . . ”
There’s a name for this habit of postponing joy.
Psychologists call it miswanting - the tendency to believe we’ll be happier later, once something changes.
When the house is finished.
When life calms down.
When we feel more confident.
When the season shifts.
But study after study shows we are terrible at forecasting happiness. We overestimate how much joy future changes will bring, and underestimate how much is available to us now.
Or, as I often say:
Joy isn’t waiting for your life to improve.
It’s waiting for you to notice where you already are.
You Are Not Your Thoughts (And This Is the Bit That Changes Everything)
Here’s the most important reframe - and the one I come back to again and again:
You are not your thoughts.
You are the one noticing them.
That anxious sentence that pops into your head?
That critical comment?
That familiar spiral?
They are events in the mind - not instructions, and not truths.
In Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), this is called cognitive defusion. It’s the simple practice of stepping back and saying:
“I’m having the thought that. . .”
“I’m having the thought that I’ve got this all wrong.”
“I’m having the thought that everyone else finds this easier.”
It sounds small.
It’s not.
That tiny shift creates space.
And space is where calm - and joy - live.
A Kinder Way to Talk to Yourself
Another beautifully practical finding comes from psychologist Ethan Kross, who found that speaking to yourself in the third person reduces emotional intensity.
Instead of:
“I’m anxious.”
Try:
“Gemma is feeling anxious today.”
You become the narrator, not the noise.
A caring observer, not a courtroom prosecutor.
This isn’t detachment.
It’s self-kindness with a backbone.
Why Presence Feels So Good (Even When Life Isn’t Perfect)
Joy doesn’t arrive as a grand emotion most of the time.
It arrives quietly, through the senses:
warm mug in cold hands
light through a hedge
the sound of laughter from another room
When we savour these moments, we anchor ourselves in the body instead of the story in our head.
This is why mindfulness, meditation, and simple noticing practices are so effective — they gently return us to now, where most of life is actually happening.
Or, put more plainly:
The mind lives in what-ifs.
Joy lives in what-is.
So What Can We Do? (Nothing Complicated, I Promise)
This isn’t about fixing yourself or thinking positively all the time.
It’s about understanding your mind well enough to stop letting it run the show.
A few gentle practices I return to often:
Naming thoughts without judgement
Coming back to the senses when spirals start
Speaking to myself as I would to a friend
Savouring small, ordinary pleasures
Writing things down to get them out of my head and onto paper
None of this requires extra time, special equipment, or a personality transplant.
Just awareness.
And a little warmth.
The Joyful Truth
If you’ve been feeling flat, restless, or quietly overwhelmed, it doesn’t mean something is wrong with you.
It means:
your brain is doing its job
your thoughts have been loud
and joy has been patiently waiting for a gap
Understanding this doesn’t magically fix everything.
But it does offer something precious:
Relief.
Agency.
And the knowledge that joy is not lost - just momentarily obscured.
And often, that understanding alone is enough to let the light back in.
With love,
Gemma x
Stay a while …
