If you've sat down to meditate, closed your eyes, and felt your brain immediately start running the to do list, the race, the argument from yesterday, the thing you forgot to text back, you are exactly who this episode is for.
This week on FUCK Anxiety I'm breaking down why meditation feels impossible when your thoughts are racing, and the actual brainwave science behind it. Because it isn't that you're bad at this. It's that nobody ever told you what state your brain and body are actually in when you sit down, or why that state is the whole reason meditation isn't landing for you yet.
I've lived in that racing, on edge, my brain never shuts off place. I still visit it. A few weeks ago I fell completely off my own meditation practice, and I'm going to tell you exactly what that did to my body, because it changed everything about how I understand this work.
Let's get into it.
What You'll Learn in This Episode
- The real reason racing thoughts take over the second you sit still: it has nothing to do with willpower and everything to do with which brainwave state your body defaults to
- The 4 brainwave states, and the fifth one anxiety loves: beta, alpha, theta, delta, and the overfunctioning survival state called high beta
- Why you might be "in survival mode" without knowing it: how high beta can disguise itself as your personality, your "type A" nature, or just who you are
- Why affirmations don't work when you're stressed: the door to actually reprogramming yourself is only open in certain states, and high beta keeps it locked
- What happens in your body when you stop meditating: a real, in the moment story from Sari's own three weeks off her practice
- Why closing your eyes is one of the most powerful things you can do for your nervous system: and how it reopens the imagination most of us lost access to somewhere around age eight
- A simple way to start tonight: no hour long ritual required, just five honest minutes
Listen to the full episode here
Apple Podcasts
SpotifyTop Takeaways on Racing Thoughts and Why Meditation Feels Impossible
1Racing thoughts don't mean you're doing meditation wrong
My husband told me this the other morning. He has a canoe race this weekend, he's the captain, and he said, I tried to meditate and all I could think about was the race.
That's what most of us experience the second we sit down. The to do list starts running before our feet even hit the floor. We think that means we failed at meditation before we even started.
Here's what I want you to hear instead. Restlessness is your normal. Tense is just a typical Tuesday for so many of us, and we don't even realize it until we feel the difference. That was the first time meditation actually did something for me. Not that it made me instantly calm. It let me feel, for the first time, what regulated even felt like, so I finally had something to compare the tense version of me to.
If you don't know there's a difference, how would you ever know you're carrying it?
2High beta is survival mode, and it can disguise itself as your personality
I have a friend who says all the time, I'm just a type A person. And I want to gently tell her, no. You're just in survival mode.
I used to say the exact same thing about myself. I'm just an anxious person. That's not true either. I was a person whose nervous system got stuck in very high beta and never got shown how to downshift into beta, alpha, and theta.
High beta is overfunctioning. It's reactive. It's racing thoughts. It's the state I was living in for three weeks straight not that long ago, and I didn't even fully realize it until I sat back down to meditate and felt this heavy dark cloud hanging over me.
I call myself a pool filter. I absorb everyone's energy around me, and meditation is where I usually get to cleanse that out. When I stopped meditating for those three weeks, end of the school year, kids home for summer, no dedicated office, trying to work and entertain them at the same time, I never carved out that time for myself. And it piled up. I became more reactive. Less grounded. More anxious.
The more time you spend in high beta, the more your brain looks for threats. I see this with my oldest daughter, who's 14. Her sister drives her crazy, the way siblings do, and I tell her, you're looking to be frustrated. Your brain has the binoculars out, magnifying every single thing that annoys you. She got assigned a roommate for cheer camp she wasn't thrilled about, and the first thing she did was go complain to her friends, which just predicted a bad experience before it even happened.
It's not broken. It's just stuck, because you've built a subconscious program that keeps looking for the threat. And it can be unstuck.
3Your brain is either open or shut, and high beta keeps the door locked
This is the part that changed how I understand affirmations, journaling, all of it.
Beta is your normal, functional waking state. Alpha is slower, more creative, one foot in the conscious and one foot in the subconscious. That's the download in the shower, the idea that drops in on a walk. Theta is deeper still, the place between awake and asleep, and this is where you're actually suggestible. This is where hypnosis works. This is where meditation works. This is where real change happens.
High beta sits above all of it. Survival mode. And when you're up there, the door to reprogramming yourself is not open, it's shut. That's why affirmations said out loud while you're stressed at your desk don't stick. You're not in a suggestible state. You can say "I am calm" a hundred times and it will not move the needle, because the part of your brain that would actually let that in isn't listening from up there.
Alpha and theta are where the subconscious becomes accessible. This is where the old wiring actually loosens. If you ever look at neural pathway imaging, you'll see these little clusters either growing fingers and attaching to new ones, or breaking apart and dissolving. That's neuroplasticity, happening in real time, and it only happens when the door is open.
4Closing your eyes is the portal back to yourself
I was listening to a podcast recently where a doctor talked about how images are actually a way of receiving from something bigger than us. God, the universe, spirit, whatever word fits for you.
When your eyes are open and your mind is running the show, it is hard to imagine anything. Kids have this wild imagination because from birth to about age eight, they're still living in alpha and theta states. The door is open for them. As we get older and move more into beta, that door starts to close.
Closing your eyes is how we reopen it. We stop processing, analyzing, planning, reacting. We stop seeing through the mind's lens that's stuck in beta, and we start seeing through something bigger.
I talk a lot on this podcast about the grain of rice, the thing you're so zoomed in on that it's the only thing you can see, held right up against your face. That's where most of us live. Meditation, and that quiet space behind closed eyes, is what lets us zoom out. We stop staring at the grain of rice. We get to see the whole table.
How to Start Meditating When Your Mind Won't Stop Racing
You do not need an hour. You do not need silence like a monk. Here's what I actually want you to try.
Step 1: Start with five honest minutes
Not sixty. Not even fifteen if that feels like too much right now. Five minutes of intentional stillness, done consistently, will do more than one perfect hour you never repeat.
Step 2: Set a timer and just follow your breath
My oldest sister was studying Buddhism at one point and told me, just set a timer on your phone and pay attention to the inhale and the exhale. That's it. That's the whole assignment.
Step 3: When your mind wanders, don't fight it. Just come back.
I'm telling you right now, your mind is going to wander. That's not failure. The win is simply noticing you drifted and gently returning to your breath, over and over, until the timer goes off.
Step 4: Do it whenever it actually fits your life
This is not about a rigid 6am ritual. If you're a mom, that might be the fifteen minutes before the kids wake up. Find your window and protect it.
Step 5: Let your body physically soften
Jaw loose, shoulders down, eyebrows unfurrowed. Notice how different you feel after just one slow, deep breath. That's not nothing. That's you downshifting in real time.
You are literally training your brain to move from high beta into alpha with every single breath. It won't feel amazing every time, and that's allowed. It's still working.
Common Patterns to Watch For
- Believing restlessness means something is wrong with you. Tense has become so normal for so many of us that we've stopped noticing it's even there. That's not a personal failure, it's just a sign you haven't felt the regulated version yet.
- Calling it your personality instead of your survival response. "I'm just a type A person" and "I'm just an anxious person" often mean the same thing: a nervous system stuck in high beta that never got shown how to come down.
- Trying affirmations while you're still stressed and wondering why nothing sticks. The door has to be open first. Words alone can't force it.
- Treating meditation as all or nothing. Quitting after one uncomfortable session because it didn't feel instantly peaceful means missing the actual practice, which is coming back to your breath, again and again.
Reflect on This
- Why does meditation feel impossible when your mind won't stop racing?
- Have you been in survival mode so long that it's started to feel like your personality?
- Am I in fight or flight all the time, even when nothing is technically wrong right now?
- When was the last time you gave yourself five honest minutes of stillness, no phone, no to do list?
Send me a DM and tell me what your mind won't stop running the second you try to sit still. I would love to hear.
Resources Mentioned in This Episode
- Joe Dispenza's guided meditations, and the meditations at the end of his book, Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself
- Your free tool: If racing thoughts are taking over the second you try to sit still, start with the Free 5 Minute Nervous System Reset. It's a guided starting point built for exactly this, something that actually helps tonight.
Work With Me
If your mind won't shut off no matter how many apps or timers you try, you do not need more information. You need your body to actually learn what regulated feels like, and that takes more than willpower.
In my 1:1 sessions, we go into theta together on purpose. We work directly with the subconscious, where the real unwiring lives, not talking about the pattern from the outside, but actually rewiring it from the inside. That's the difference between knowing this and feeling it change.
If that's what you've been missing, let's map out exactly what's keeping your nervous system stuck on a Freedom Roadmap Session.
And if this episode met you where you are, do me a favor. Follow the show, download it, and leave a review on Apple Podcasts so another woman whose brain won't shut off can find it too. You can also browse more episodes on nervous system regulation and anxiety any time you need a reset.