Why are our brains like this? Always braced for the worst.

Here is something I have noticed about people.

Some of us move through life as though everything is always the worst it has ever been. Every week is the most exhausting week. Every situation is the most stressful. Every difficulty is a crisis. Every minor inconvenience feels urgent. Always braced for the worst.

A delayed reply and suddenly you’re writing the ending of the whole relationship in your head. A slightly weird tone and you’re convinced something terrible is happening. A bit of tension and the whole body goes: DEFCON ONE. After a while, life starts feeling harder than it actually is. Because every small thing arrives carrying the emotional weight of something much bigger.

Us humans are fascinating. We can get through heartbreak, grief, raising actual children, nightmare jobs, real crises that would fell a lesser mortal… and then completely lose the plot because someone didn’t reply to a text message.

I see this a lot in my work.

People come in saying things like: “I overthink everything.” “I get too emotional.” “I always assume the worst.” “I don’t know why I react so strongly.” “I’m genuinely tired of my own brain.” “I feel completely stuck.”

And underneath it is nearly always someone who never really switches off. Who’s always scanning. Interpreting. Predicting. Trying to work out if everyone’s okay. Trying to stay one step ahead of rejection or conflict or awkwardness or criticism.

It’s bloody exhausting.

Because not every feeling needs to be acted on immediately. Not every thought is true. Not every silence is loaded with meaning. Not every uncomfortable moment is the beginning of something catastrophic.

But if you’ve spent years emotionally braced, your brain starts treating ordinary life like a potential threat. So the broken oven becomes a whole thing. The unanswered message is definitely not just someone who is a bit busy.

Everything starts gathering emotional meaning and that, as a way to live, is just really hard going.

What I think actually helps isn’t becoming some sort of endlessly serene, emotionally evolved version of yourself. It’s understanding your patterns.

Why certain tones hit so hard. Why some people are impossible to relax around. Why conflict feels unbearable. Why reassurance never quite lands properly.

This is honestly a lot of what I see with the people I work with. And they are not, for the record, weird or too much or fundamentally flawed. They’re just tired. Really quite tired. From years of their brain going: ooh, what did that mean, was that bad, are they annoyed, should I worry about that, I think I should worry about that. And when they start to notice that pattern, things do actually change. There’s so much more breathing room. Relationships feel lighter. They can sit with an unanswered message without it ruining their evening. They can make a mistake at work and it doesn’t spiral into a whole thing about who they are. They stop replaying that thing they said three weeks ago at 3am. There’s more of: oh, there I go again, and a lot less of: this feeling is definitely true and I must act on it immediately.

And that, it turns out, changes rather a lot.

Anyway. If you recognise yourself in any of this, you are absolutely not on your own. A lot of people are exhausted from living in constant reaction mode.

And it does get lighter. It really does. If you want to figure out your patterns with a group of people who completely get it, come join us for my next group coaching programme “It’s Not Just Me“.