Seeing Only What We Want to See: Why Confirmation Bias Is Quietly Shaping Our Lives
There’s a belief I hold strongly, both as a therapist and as a human living in this moment: confirmation bias may be one of the most damaging psychological forces in modern society.
That’s not a scientific proclamation or a universal truth. It’s an observation — one formed from years of clinical work, countless conversations, and watching how people interact with information, each other, and themselves.
Again and again, I see the same pattern: people aren’t struggling because they lack intelligence or access to information. They’re struggling because they’re trapped inside narrow versions of reality that feel emotionally safe but intellectually limiting.
And confirmation bias is the mechanism that keeps those realities locked in place.
What Confirmation Bias Really Is (Beyond the Textbook Definition)
At its simplest, confirmation bias is the tendency to notice, seek out, and remember information that supports what we already believe — while dismissing or minimizing anything that challenges it.
But that definition doesn’t capture how deeply personal it is. Confirmation bias isn’t just about politics, news, or arguments on the internet. It shows up in how people interpret relationships, careers, mental health, identity, and self-worth.
If someone believes people are untrustworthy, they’ll catalog every betrayal and overlook quiet loyalty.
If someone believes they’re failing in life, they’ll treat every setback as evidence and every success as an exception.
If someone believes the world is hostile, they’ll experience disagreement as threat rather than dialogue.
Confirmation bias doesn’t feel like distortion from the inside. It seems like clarity.
Why the Mind Clings to It
The human mind seems far more concerned with emotional safety than objective accuracy.
Beliefs do more than describe the world — they organize it. They tell us what to expect, what to fear, and how to prepare. Once a belief becomes emotionally protective, the mind defends it fiercely. Changing a belief doesn’t just require new information. It requires tolerating uncertainty, discomfort, and vulnerability.
That’s why confirmation bias is so persistent. It offers certainty in a world that feels increasingly unstable.
Confirmation Bias as a Cultural Problem
Here’s where my concern widens beyond the individual.
When large groups of people stop challenging their own assumptions, cultures polarize. Conversations collapse. Curiosity dies. Everything becomes a battle between “right” and “wrong,” “us” and “them.” Many societal conflicts appear less about facts and more about identity-protecting beliefs that people are afraid to examine.
Algorithms reward certainty, outrage, and emotional simplicity. Nuance doesn’t spread well. Humility doesn’t go viral. Being wrong rarely gets applause.
And so people dig in. The result isn’t just division — it’s intellectual stagnation. A society that cannot question itself cannot grow.
The Cost at the Personal Level
On an individual level, confirmation bias quietly narrows a person’s life.
It limits emotional range. It reduces psychological flexibility. It makes growth feel threatening rather than inviting.
People often come to therapy saying they want clarity, peace, or confidence. What they’re really asking for is relief from the exhausting effort of defending a worldview that no longer serves them. Letting go of confirmation bias isn’t about abandoning values. It’s about loosening the grip on certainty so learning becomes possible again.
Becoming a More Well-Rounded, Cultured Individual
Being “well-rounded” isn’t about knowing everything. It’s about remaining teachable.
A cultured person isn’t defined by how much they’ve read or how refined their opinions sound. They’re defined by their willingness to encounter perspectives that don’t immediately make sense to them.
That willingness requires a few difficult shifts.
First, accepting that being wrong is not the same as being foolish.
Second, recognizing that discomfort is often a sign of growth, not danger.
Third, understanding that complexity doesn’t weaken beliefs — it strengthens them.
A worldview that survives honest scrutiny is far more resilient than one protected by avoidance.
How People Begin to Outgrow Confirmation Bias
This isn’t about “fixing” the mind. It’s about relating to it differently.
Here are a few practices that help loosen confirmation bias without creating defensiveness:
- Treat beliefs as hypotheses, not conclusions.
Instead of “This is how things are,” try “This is how things seem to me right now.” That single shift opens the door to revision. - Seek understanding before agreement.
You don’t have to adopt another perspective to learn from it. Understanding is not surrender. - Notice emotional reactions before intellectual ones.
Strong emotional responses often signal that a belief is being protected, not examined. - Expose yourself to thoughtful disagreement.
Not inflammatory content — but intelligent, good-faith perspectives that challenge your assumptions without attacking your character. - Practice saying “I don’t know” without rushing to fill the space.
Uncertainty is uncomfortable, but it’s also fertile ground for wisdom.
The Role of Therapy in This Process
In therapy, confirmation bias often reveals itself gently.
A client will present a story about themselves or their life that feels airtight — until small contradictions begin to appear. Over time, those contradictions aren’t threats; they’re invitations.
Therapy doesn’t work by replacing one belief with another. It works by expanding the frame so the person has more room to move, think, and choose.
Growth doesn’t come from being right.
It comes from being open.
Why This Matters Now
I don’t believe confirmation bias is a flaw unique to our time. Humans have always struggled with it.
But I do believe the stakes are higher now.
When people stop questioning themselves, they stop listening. When they stop listening, they stop relating. And when that happens — at any scale — empathy erodes. A society that cannot reflect on its own assumptions risks mistaking certainty for wisdom and confidence for truth.
The alternative isn’t relativism or chaos. It’s humility. It’s curiosity. It’s the courage to say, “There may be more here than I’m seeing.”
Closing Reflection
Becoming more well-rounded isn’t about collecting better arguments. It’s about cultivating a mind that can hold complexity without panic. Confirmation bias thrives in fear and therefore, it weakens in curiosity.
And while we may never eliminate it entirely — nor should we expect to — learning to recognize it might be one of the most meaningful acts of personal and cultural responsibility we can take on. Because the moment you stop assuming you already know the full story…
That’s the moment your world starts to get bigger.
Author: Bodie Coates, LMFT-S, LCADC-S, NCC
When Everything Feels Loud: Finding Steadiness in a Culture of Viral Outrage
There’s a strange thing happening in our culture right now.
Every day, something new catches fire online — a headline, a clip, a half-formed thought — and suddenly the entire internet is shouting about it. One moment it’s a celebrity scandal, the next it’s a political soundbite, the next it’s economic panic or some world event we heard about fifteen seconds ago.
Everything feels loud. Relentless.
And when the world gets loud, people get anxious.
Not clinical anxiety — I’m not making a medical claim here — but the kind of inner chaos that comes from constantly feeling like you’re supposed to have an opinion on everything before you’ve even had time to understand anything.
It’s exhausting. It’s disorienting. And it can make you feel like the ground underneath you is always shifting.
But underneath all that noise is something quieter and far more human: the desire to feel safe, steady, and connected to what actually matters.
Why Viral Outrage Feels So Overwhelming
It seems like people have always had strong reactions, but the speed and intensity with which things spread now feels unprecedented.
You might notice a few patterns when something blows up online:
- The loudest voices float to the top, even if they’re not the wisest ones.
That’s not news; it’s just an observation of how attention works. But when you’re already stressed or overloaded, being swept into the emotional momentum of the crowd can make you feel like you need to brace for impact — even when nothing in your actual life has changed.
Most people I talk to aren’t overwhelmed because they don’t understand the issues.
They’re overwhelmed because they barely have space to think. Or breathe. Or even feel what they actually feel.
They’re reacting before they’re reflecting. And they can tell the difference.
Your Nervous System Wasn’t Built for This Pace
Here’s something I see all the time: people blaming themselves for feeling stressed or dysregulated when the world around them is running at a pace that no one can realistically keep up with.
When life moves too fast, people often start tightening up inside — as if tension and vigilance can compensate for a lack of control.
But vigilance isn’t clarity. Hyper-alertness isn’t wisdom.
You can’t outrun the noise by getting louder inside your own head.
When the culture becomes chaotic, your mind doesn’t need more speed — it needs more space.
How to Stay Steady in a World That’s Constantly Trying to Pull You Off Center
You don’t need to withdraw from society or ditch your phone or pretend you don’t care.
You just need a way to maintain a sense of inner footing when the emotional tide around you starts to surge.
Here’s one way to start:
1. Create a moment of pause before you form an opinion.
This isn’t about being passive.
It’s about refusing to be emotionally hijacked by the first loud voice you hear.
A pause is the psychological version of planting your staff in the dirt before walking into storm winds.
2. Notice what part of the story is activating you.
Not the public narrative.
Your narrative.
Maybe it touches a long-standing fear.
Maybe it threatens your sense of safety or fairness.
Maybe it echoes something unresolved in your own life.
That one moment of noticing puts you back in the driver’s seat.
3. Ask: “Is this mine to carry?”
Not everything that tugs at your emotions belongs in your backpack.
Some things are better placed back down, not because they don’t matter, but because you cannot tend to everything at once without losing yourself.
4. Re-anchor yourself in something concrete and real.
A walk with the dog.
Watering a plant.
Breathing with intention.
Calling someone who knows your actual name, not your username.
Real life is grounding in a way viral culture never will be.
5. Decide how you want to show up.
Not how your feed wants you to show up.
Not how the loudest crowd is showing up.
Not how your stress wants you to show up.
You.
You get to choose what your presence looks like — thoughtful, compassionate, principled, still learning, still human. That choice brings your power back online.
The Quiet Kind of Strength We Don’t Celebrate Enough
Every time you choose reflection over reactivity, you’re strengthening something essential — what some might call resilience, others might call wisdom, and some might simply call maturity.
It’s the ability to withstand the emotional weather of the moment without becoming it.
That doesn’t mean staying silent, and it doesn’t mean disengaging from the world.
It means staying grounded enough to show up with your integrity intact — even when everything around you is buzzing with urgency.
The World Might Be Loud, But You Don’t Have to Be Lost Inside of It
There’s something deeply hopeful in all of this:
If we can learn to stay steady in a culture that is constantly pulling at our attention, emotions, and identity, we’re not just coping — we’re evolving.
You don’t need to keep up with the chaos.
You just need to keep up with yourself.
And that is a far lighter lift than trying to hold the entire world in your chest.
If you’re navigating uncertainty, overwhelm, or emotional noise and want support sorting through it, we’re here when you’re ready to start the next step.
Author: Bodie Coates, LMFT-S, LCADC-S, NCC
Seeing What We Want to See: How Confirmation Bias Shapes Our Reality
The Trap We All Fall Into
If you’ve ever gotten into an argument online—or, heaven forbid, a family group chat—you’ve probably experienced confirmation bias in action. It’s that mental glitch that makes us double down when someone challenges what we believe. We start pulling up “evidence” that supports our point of view, ignoring or discounting anything that doesn’t.
It’s not that we’re intentionally lying to ourselves. The brain just loves to be right. Feeling “correct” gives us a quick hit of dopamine and a sense of safety. It feels good to confirm that our worldview still makes sense. But over time, that same instinct can trap us inside a distorted version of reality—one that gets narrower the longer we cling to it.
What Confirmation Bias Actually Is
In psychology, confirmation bias is the tendency to seek, interpret, and remember information in a way that supports what we already believe.
If you think your boss doesn’t like you, every neutral comment starts sounding like criticism.
If you believe your partner is pulling away, every late text reply feels like proof.
If you’re convinced you’re unlucky, every small setback reinforces the story.
The facts don’t necessarily change—but the lens you’re looking through does.
It’s like wearing tinted glasses and forgetting they’re on. The world takes on that hue, and you start believing that’s how it really looks.
The Psychology Behind It
From an evolutionary standpoint, confirmation bias made sense. Early humans needed quick judgments to survive. “This berry made me sick once; avoid it forever.” “That tribe attacked us before; they’re dangerous.” Those snap associations helped us live long enough to reproduce.
But in the modern world—where nuance matters, and threats are usually psychological rather than physical—those same shortcuts create massive problems. They make it harder to learn, adapt, or see situations clearly.
The mind’s goal is often comfort, not truth. And confirmation bias is one of its favorite tools.
How It Shows Up in Daily Life
We like to think of ourselves as rational creatures. But in practice, we often build emotional cases and then go searching for intellectual evidence to justify them.
It shows up when we:
- Read articles that agree with our opinions while dismissing opposing ones as “biased.”
- Remember the few bad interactions that confirm a negative self-view and forget the dozens of good ones.
- Surround ourselves with people who echo our beliefs because it feels easier than being challenged.
Even in therapy, clients sometimes say, “I knew it—I am broken,” after a single setback. That’s confirmation bias at work, twisting an isolated event into a narrative that supports an old belief.
It’s not stupidity. It’s just wiring. But like any cognitive bias, it can be rewired—with awareness and practice.
The Cost of Being Right
Here’s the quiet danger of confirmation bias: it keeps us from growing.
When we only seek validation for what we already believe, we rob ourselves of discovery. We start seeing what we expect, hearing what we want, and missing what we need.
And it’s not just intellectual. Emotionally, it locks us into repetitive patterns.
If you believe people always leave, you might subconsciously test your relationships until they do.
If you believe you’re a failure, you might avoid opportunities that could prove you wrong.
If you believe nothing ever changes, you’ll stop trying to change.
Confirmation bias becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. And the longer we live inside that loop, the harder it gets to see outside of it.
Challenging the Bias
Breaking free from confirmation bias isn’t about “thinking positive.” It’s about thinking honestly.
Here are a few ways to start:
1. Catch the pattern, not just the thought.
When you notice a belief getting reinforced (“See, I knew they didn’t care”), pause and ask, “What evidence would prove me wrong?” If your answer is “nothing,” that’s a sign you’re in bias territory.
2. Seek out disconfirming evidence.
This sounds counterintuitive, but it’s powerful. Look for information or experiences that challenge your beliefs. It’s uncomfortable—but growth often starts with discomfort.
3. Practice intellectual humility.
Admit that you might be wrong. That simple act can completely change how your brain processes new information. When you loosen your grip on “being right,” you gain access to actually learning.
4. Engage in mindfulness.
Mindfulness helps you observe thoughts as passing events, not absolute truths. Over time, you start seeing how much your mind bends reality to fit your stories.
5. Talk it out with someone objective.
A therapist, mentor, or even a grounded friend can help you reality-check your assumptions. Sometimes it takes another set of eyes to point out what your own can’t see.
The Role of Emotion
It’s worth noting: confirmation bias isn’t just cognitive—it’s emotional.
We don’t cling to beliefs because they’re logical. We cling because they protect us.
If you’ve been betrayed before, believing “people can’t be trusted” might feel safer than risking vulnerability again.
If you’ve experienced failure, believing “I’m just not capable” might save you from future disappointment.
So before dismantling a belief, it helps to ask: What is this belief protecting me from?
When you meet the underlying emotion—fear, shame, grief, rejection—the bias starts to lose its grip.
Seeing Clearly Again
Awareness is the antidote. When you start to see your biases in real time, reality begins to widen again. You start noticing contradictions, exceptions, and nuances—the things that make life richer and more interesting.
It’s a lot like cleaning a foggy window. The world outside was always there; you just couldn’t see it clearly through the condensation of your own certainty.
The goal isn’t to have no biases (that’s impossible). The goal is to stop letting them run the show.
To see more clearly. To understand more deeply. To hold your own beliefs loosely enough that truth can still reach you.
The Humility of Not Knowing
At the heart of all this lies one of the hardest things for the ego to accept: we don’t know everything.
That’s not a flaw—it’s a freedom.
When you stop needing to be right, you open the door to being curious. And curiosity is infinitely more powerful than certainty.
Certainty shuts the book. Curiosity keeps turning the pages.
So maybe that’s the work: to stay humble enough to question our assumptions, brave enough to face our blind spots, and wise enough to know that reality doesn’t need our permission to exist.
Final Reflection
Confirmation bias isn’t something you “fix” once. It’s something you continually meet, examine, and outgrow. It’s part of being human.
But every time you pause before defending your viewpoint, or admit you might not see the full picture—you reclaim a little piece of your freedom from it.
And in that space between what you think you know and what might actually be true… that’s where real growth begins.
Author: Bodie Coates, LMFT-S, LCADC-S, NCC
Living With Not Knowing: How to Find Calm When the Future Feels Unstable
If there’s one thing the last few years have made clear, it’s this: we are not nearly as in control as we thought.
Plans fall apart. Institutions crumble. People change. The world shifts beneath our feet faster than we can adapt.
And the truth is — we hate that.
Humans crave stability like oxygen. We want to know what’s coming next so we can brace for it. Predict it. Survive it.
But when life refuses to cooperate, uncertainty can start to feel like a personal threat. Like the ground is always moving and you just can’t find balance.
If you’ve ever found yourself doomscrolling, overthinking, or cycling through worst-case scenarios just to prepare for them — that’s not you being dramatic. That’s your brain doing what it was built to do: search for patterns, create stories, and cling to any illusion of safety it can find.
The Brain’s War With Uncertainty
Psychologically, uncertainty is more stressful to the human mind than even known pain.
Studies show that people would rather get an electric shock right now than maybe get one later. That’s how intolerable “not knowing” can feel. Our brains are wired to fill in gaps — and when we don’t have facts, we invent them. That’s how fear grows. It fills in the blanks with catastrophe.
But here’s the catch: the more you try to control uncertainty through prediction or preparation, the more anxious you become. Because every new possibility becomes something to prepare for. And suddenly you’re not living — you’re rehearsing.
The problem isn’t uncertainty itself. It’s the fight against it.
Control as a Coping Mechanism
Control gives the illusion of safety.
When you plan, predict, and analyze, you feel momentarily secure — like you’ve built a wall against chaos.
But control isn’t the same as safety. It’s just a strategy for managing fear.
And like all strategies, it has limits. When those limits are reached — when your best plans fall apart anyway — it’s easy to feel helpless or even betrayed. You start believing that peace only exists on the other side of total understanding. But if peace depends on certainty, it’ll never arrive.
The Anxiety of Modern Uncertainty
We’re living in a time where unpredictability isn’t just personal — it’s cultural. Economies fluctuate. News cycles spin faster than we can process them. Politics polarize communities. Technology changes the way we connect, think, and even feel.
We’re not just uncertain about our own futures — we’re uncertain about the future of everything. That level of global instability can make you feel powerless, small, or cynical. It’s tempting to shut down emotionally just to cope. But numbness is not peace — it’s just exhaustion wearing a mask.
So how do you stay grounded when everything feels in flux?
1. Trade Certainty for Curiosity
Uncertainty becomes unbearable when you see it as a threat.
It becomes tolerable — even meaningful — when you see it as mystery.
Curiosity doesn’t demand control; it invites participation.
It lets you stay open without needing to have all the answers.
When something in your life feels unclear, instead of saying, “I need to figure this out right now,” try saying, “I wonder how this might unfold.” That shift sounds small, but psychologically, it moves you from anxiety (which wants resolution) to wonder (which allows presence).
Curiosity is what makes space for resilience.
2. Build a Flexible Identity
When the world feels uncertain, people often double down on identity to find stability — political, religious, professional, relational.
But rigid identities crack under pressure.
Flexibility isn’t weakness — it’s psychological strength. Think of it this way: bamboo bends in the wind; dry wood snaps. If you define yourself by one role (“I’m successful,” “I’m a caretaker,” “I’m the strong one”), then when life challenges that role, you lose not only stability — you lose yourself.
Try to expand your identity: “I’m someone who adapts.”
That’s the kind of identity that survives storms.
3. Reconnect to the Present Moment
Uncertainty thrives in the future.
Grounding thrives in the present.
The mind races forward — what if, what then, what next — but the body is always here. When anxiety spikes, you don’t need to fix the future; you need to return to your senses.
Try this simple but powerful grounding sequence:
- Name five things you can see.
- Name four things you can touch.
- Name three things you can hear.
- Name two things you can smell.
- Name one thing you can taste.
It sounds simple, but it’s a way of re-entering reality when your mind wants to escape into what-ifs.
The more often you practice grounding, the more your nervous system learns that not knowing doesn’t mean in danger.
4. Let Go of “Perfect Timing”
One of the biggest ways uncertainty paralyzes people is by convincing them that there’s a “right” moment for everything.
You wait for clarity before acting. You wait for confidence before trying. You wait for the path to be lit before taking the first step. But here’s the hard truth: clarity comes after movement, not before it.
Uncertainty isn’t the signal to stop — it’s the condition you must move through. Every meaningful thing — relationships, parenting, healing, purpose — begins before you’re ready.
And maybe that’s the point.
5. Anchor to What Doesn’t Change
When the external world feels unstable, you need internal anchors. Ask yourself: What are the things that remain true, no matter what changes?
Maybe it’s your values: compassion, integrity, curiosity.
Maybe it’s people you love, or your belief in growth, or your faith that meaning can still be found even when life feels uncertain.
Anchors don’t eliminate the storm — they just keep you from drifting too far.
And sometimes, that’s enough.
6. Let Grief Have a Seat
Uncertainty often brings loss — not just loss of control, but loss of imagined futures.
When plans fall apart, you’re not just stressed — you’re grieving the version of life you thought you’d have.
Most people try to skip this part. They reframe, rationalize, or distract. But grief ignored becomes anxiety disguised.
Let yourself feel sad about what’s gone. Let yourself miss what might never be. Grief isn’t weakness — it’s the emotional acknowledgment that something mattered.
When you let grief move through you, you make space for acceptance to take its place.
7. Practice Gentle Realism
Hope doesn’t mean pretending everything will be fine. It means acknowledging what’s uncertain while still believing in what’s possible.
That’s the balance of gentle realism: not toxic positivity, not despair — just honest hope.
You can say, “I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I’ll meet it when it comes.” You can say, “Things might not be easy, but I trust I’ll grow through them.”
Gentle realism allows for fear without letting fear drive the car.
Finding Meaning in the Uncertain
At its core, uncertainty isn’t a flaw in the system — it is the system.
Every life, every relationship, every decision lives in the space between knowing and not knowing. Meaning isn’t found in predicting the outcome — it’s found in showing up fully for the process.
You don’t need to master uncertainty to live a meaningful life. You just need to stay present long enough to let life reveal itself. Because underneath all the fear, the truth is simple: you’ve been living with uncertainty your whole life — you’re just more aware of it now.
And maybe that awareness is the beginning of wisdom.
Closing Thought
The next time the future feels heavy, remember — you don’t need to know everything to begin. You don’t need to predict what’s coming to prepare for it. You just need to take one steady breath, feel your feet on the ground, and trust that not knowing doesn’t mean not growing.
You are still moving forward — even through the fog.
Author: Bodie Coates, LMFT-S, LCADC-S, NCC
When Awareness Turns Into Anxiety: Why You Don’t Have to Fix Everything You Notice
Self-awareness is one of those traits everyone praises. Therapists love it. Social media celebrates it. Personal growth books call it the key to happiness.
And yes — awareness is powerful. It helps you recognize patterns, understand emotions, and make choices that align with your values.
But what happens when awareness stops being freeing and starts being exhausting?
When every thought, feeling, and reaction becomes something you’re analyzing, questioning, or trying to control — awareness stops being growth, and starts being a trap.
The Hidden Anxiety Behind “Being Aware”
Let’s be honest: most of us don’t want to just notice our feelings. We want to manage them.
You start learning about anxiety, trauma, attachment styles — all good things — but then you can’t stop scanning yourself like an emotional security system.
- Is that anxiety or intuition?
- Am I being triggered or overreacting?
- Was that boundary too harsh or too soft?
You end up in this mental feedback loop where awareness keeps expanding, but peace doesn’t.
That’s because awareness without compassion turns into self-surveillance.
It’s not mindfulness — it’s micromanagement.
The Problem With Constant Self-Improvement
Our culture has turned self-growth into an endless renovation project. You can’t just be. You have to be working on yourself.
It’s like we’ve been sold this idea that every uncomfortable feeling is a sign of something to fix — not something to understand.
But sometimes anxiety isn’t a message to act on. Sometimes it’s just the echo of old survival patterns saying, “We don’t know how to relax yet.”
When you try to analyze or optimize every part of your inner world, you actually reinforce the belief that peace is something you have to earn.
Awareness Isn’t Control
Awareness is about seeing.
Control is about forcing.
When you confuse the two, you start believing that if you’re just aware enough, you can prevent pain.
You can’t.
Being aware doesn’t mean you can (or should) out-think your emotions. The purpose of awareness is acceptance — not prediction.
The goal isn’t to never feel anxious again. It’s to stop being shocked when you do.
That’s what freedom actually looks like.
How to Let Awareness Help Instead of Hurt
Here are a few ways to make awareness supportive again — not stressful:
1. Stop treating insight like a to-do list.
Every time you notice something about yourself, you don’t have to “work on” it. Sometimes noticing is the work.
2. Learn the difference between observing and obsessing.
Observation says, “That’s interesting.”
Obsession says, “I need to fix that right now.”
You’ll know you’re slipping into obsession when awareness feels like pressure instead of perspective.
3. Let feelings exist without assigning them homework.
You don’t need to trace every emotion back to childhood or decode it like a mystery. Sometimes you’re just tired. Or overstimulated. Or human.
4. Practice non-interference.
Instead of asking “What do I do with this?” try asking “Can I allow this?”
Paradoxically, the less you try to control your emotions, the less control they seem to have over you.
What It Feels Like to Finally Let Go
When you stop trying to control every thought and emotion, something strange happens: life starts to feel easier — not because your problems disappear, but because your resistance does.
You stop apologizing for being sensitive.
You stop chasing perfect self-regulation.
You stop believing that peace means being “fixed.”
You begin to realize that awareness isn’t about perfection — it’s about relationship. You’re learning to live with yourself, not against yourself.
And ironically, that’s when real change happens. Not when you’re forcing it, but when you’re finally soft enough to allow it.
Awareness With Gentleness
The next time you catch yourself spiraling about your own inner world, remember this:
You don’t need to monitor yourself like a therapist on duty 24/7.
You can notice things and not do anything about them.
You can feel things and not interpret them.
You can be aware and still rest.
Awareness was never meant to be exhausting.
It was meant to bring you home.
Author: Bodie Coates, LMFT-S, LCADC-S, NCC
When Calm Feels Weird: Learning to Live Without Constant Chaos
You know that moment when things finally settle down — no deadlines breathing down your neck, no family emergencies, no emotional roller-coasters — and instead of feeling relief, you feel… uneasy?
That’s not failure. That’s peace, and your nervous system just doesn’t recognize it yet.
The Addiction to Chaos
Many people say they want peace. But peace, for a lot of us, doesn’t feel peaceful. It feels foreign, almost suspicious. We start scanning for what’s about to go wrong, because chaos has become familiar.
When your life has been marked by stress, urgency, or high emotional intensity, your brain and body start to equate calm with danger. Not consciously, of course. It’s just that quiet doesn’t feel normal.
So what happens? You fill the space again.
You pick a fight, take on a new project, doomscroll, or overthink yourself into exhaustion — not because you want chaos, but because chaos feels safe.
The Nervous System’s Confusion
It’s not just psychological — it’s biological. Your nervous system adapts to whatever state it’s been most exposed to. If your baseline has been tension, over-responsibility, or adrenaline for years, calm will feel like withdrawal.
You might even think something’s wrong with you because you can’t relax. You might tell yourself you’re just “wired this way.” But you’re not broken — you’re just re-calibrating.
Calm is a skill, not a default setting.
Relearning Safety in Stillness
If this sounds familiar, here’s what the work often looks like:
- Notice your discomfort.
When things are quiet, your mind will start whispering, “What am I missing? What’s about to fall apart?” Just noticing that thought — without acting on it — is the first sign of progress. - Let stillness be awkward.
It’s supposed to feel weird at first. You’re re-teaching your body that peace isn’t a trap. Like sitting in a dark room while your eyes adjust — eventually, you start to see clearly. - Separate calm from numbness.
Some people confuse the absence of stress with emptiness. But calm doesn’t mean you’ve lost your edge or drive. It just means you’re no longer running on fumes. - Redefine what “productive” means.
Rest isn’t the opposite of productivity — it’s part of it. The more you normalize rest, the less your worth depends on constant motion.
When You Stop Needing the Storm
Eventually, the quiet stops feeling so loud. You’ll go a few days without chaos and realize you didn’t miss it. You’ll handle things without adrenaline and notice how much clearer your mind feels.
This is what growth can look like — not fireworks or breakthroughs, but stability that doesn’t scare you anymore.
That’s when you know your nervous system has learned something new: that peace can be safe.
If calm feels uncomfortable, that’s not a sign you’re failing. It’s a sign you’re healing from chaos.
Sometimes the hardest part of growth isn’t pushing through pain — it’s learning to stop running from peace.
Author: Bodie Coates, LMFT-S, LCADC-S, NCC
When Stress Becomes Too Much: Finding Your Way Out of Overwhelm
There’s stress… and then there’s the kind of stress that swallows you whole. The kind that makes your heart race just looking at your calendar, or keeps you staring at the ceiling at 2 AM wondering how you’re going to make it through tomorrow.
We like to think of stress as “motivation,” a signal that we’re being productive or doing something worthwhile. But when stress turns into overwhelm, it’s not just uncomfortable — it’s corrosive. It eats away at your focus, your relationships, and your health.
If you’ve ever felt like you’re drowning in responsibilities or anxiety, you’re not alone. And more importantly, you’re not powerless.
The Anatomy of Overwhelm
Overwhelm is what happens when the demands placed on you exceed the resources you feel you have to cope with them. It’s not just about the actual workload — it’s about your perception of control, support, and capacity.
That’s why two people can experience the same situation (say, a work deadline or a family crisis) and respond completely differently. For one, it’s manageable. For the other, it feels impossible.
What makes overwhelm so tricky is that it hijacks both the body and the mind.
- Physically, stress hormones surge, creating tension, headaches, fatigue, or digestive issues.
- Mentally, your thoughts scatter, self-doubt rises, and decisions that should feel simple suddenly feel paralyzing.
- Emotionally, irritability or hopelessness can take over, making you feel like there’s no way out.
It’s not just “too much to do.” It’s “too much to hold.”
Why We Stay Stuck in the Cycle
One of the cruelest parts of overwhelm is how self-perpetuating it becomes. The more anxious you feel, the harder it is to act. The harder it is to act, the more the tasks pile up. The more the tasks pile up, the more anxious you feel.
This creates what I often call the stress spiral. And once you’re caught in it, your brain starts sending messages like:
- “You should be able to handle this.”
- “You’re falling behind.”
- “You don’t have time to slow down.”
Ironically, those exact thoughts make the spiral spin faster.
Breaking the Spiral: What Actually Helps
Escaping overwhelm isn’t about magically erasing responsibilities. It’s about shifting how you relate to them — and to yourself — so that stress doesn’t run the show. Here are some ways forward:
1. Pause Before You Push
The instinct in overwhelm is often to push harder: stay up later, work faster, say yes to more. But one of the most radical things you can do is stop, breathe, and check in with yourself.
Even 60 seconds of mindful breathing can interrupt the stress response in your body and give you just enough clarity to make a better next move.
2. Break It Down Into What’s Next
When everything feels urgent, your brain floods with “all at once” thinking. That’s why making a simple list of the next three things you can realistically do is powerful.
Not all 100 things. Just three. And when those are done? Write down the next three. This keeps you anchored in action without letting the big picture crush you.
3. Challenge the “Shoulds”
So much overwhelm comes from invisible rules we’ve internalized:
- I should be more productive.
- I should be able to handle this without help.
- I should have figured this out by now.
Try replacing “should” with “could.” For example:
- I could try this differently.
- I could ask for support.
That small word shift creates flexibility where shame once lived.
4. Care for Your Nervous System
Stress is not just mental — it’s deeply physiological. Which means caring for your body matters:
- Move your body in ways that feel grounding (walks, stretching, lifting, dancing).
- Prioritize rest — even short naps or earlier bedtimes can restore balance.
- Limit stimulants like caffeine or doomscrolling that amplify nervous energy.
When your nervous system feels steadier, so does your mind.
5. Let Support In
Overwhelm thrives in isolation. Asking for help doesn’t mean you’re failing — it means you’re human. Whether it’s delegating tasks, talking with a therapist, or simply telling a friend, “I’m maxed out right now,” connection helps share the load.
The Deeper Work: What Overwhelm is Really Saying
Sometimes, stress and anxiety aren’t just about the workload. They’re messengers pointing to deeper patterns.
- Are you carrying responsibilities that aren’t really yours?
- Are you saying “yes” when you need to be saying “no”?
- Are you expecting yourself to operate like a machine instead of a human being?
Often, overwhelm exposes the ways we’ve been living beyond our limits, ignoring our values, or trying to meet impossible standards. That doesn’t make you weak. It makes you someone who’s ready to shift.
A Different Relationship With Stress
Here’s the truth: stress will always exist. Life will always bring deadlines, conflicts, and unexpected changes. The goal isn’t to eliminate stress — it’s to change your relationship with it.
When you learn to pause, to prioritize, to care for your body, and to challenge the rules that keep you trapped, stress no longer has to mean suffocation. It can become information. A signal. A reminder that you need to adjust.
Closing Thoughts
If you’re overwhelmed right now, take this as permission: you don’t need to have it all figured out by tonight. You don’t need to fix everything at once.
You just need one small next step. Then another. Then another.
That’s how people rebuild lives after loss. That’s how people heal after trauma. And that’s how you can loosen the grip of anxiety and stress.
The spiral doesn’t have to keep spinning. You can step out of it — gently, slowly, one steady breath at a time.
And if you need support? You don’t have to go through it alone. There’s no shame in saying, “This is too much for me right now.” Sometimes, that’s the most courageous thing you can do.
Author: Bodie Coates, LMFT-S, LCADC-S, NCC
Living With Loss: How Grief Shapes Us (and What It Means to Heal)
Loss is one of the few guarantees in life. People we love will pass away. Relationships will end. Jobs, homes, routines, and dreams will shift or vanish. Sometimes the loss is expected, like the slow decline of an aging parent. Other times it slams into us without warning, leaving us stunned and breathless.
What’s consistent is this: grief doesn’t care about our timelines, our expectations, or the neat categories we try to put it in. It comes in waves, sometimes gentle, sometimes violent, always reshaping the shorelines of our lives.
Why Grief Feels So Overwhelming
Grief is not just sadness. It’s disorientation. It’s the sudden absence of something that once anchored you, whether that was a person, a role, or even a version of yourself.
Psychologists describe grief as a process of “relearning the world.” You wake up one day and the rules have changed. The person who always answered your late-night call isn’t there. The ritual of feeding your dog after work feels hollow because the house is quieter than it used to be. Even the air in familiar rooms can feel different.
Loss destabilizes us because it forces us into a new reality — one we didn’t choose, one we don’t fully understand yet.
The Myths That Make Grief Harder
As if grief weren’t heavy enough, our culture tends to pile on expectations and myths about what it “should” look like. Here are a few of the most common ones:
- “Time heals all wounds.”
Time can soften pain, but it doesn’t erase it. Some losses remain tender for the rest of your life. Healing isn’t forgetting — it’s learning how to live alongside the loss. - “Grief has stages, and you just move through them.”
The famous five stages (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance) were never meant to be a strict roadmap. Real grief is messier. You can feel acceptance one day and crushing anger the next. That doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong. - “You should be over it by now.”
There is no clock on grief. Anyone who tells you otherwise hasn’t had to carry what you’re carrying.
These myths don’t just miss the truth — they make people feel ashamed of their grief. Like they’re “failing” at something that’s already unbearable.
The Body Remembers
Grief isn’t only emotional; it’s physical. People in deep grief often describe feeling like their chest is caving in, or like they’re walking around in a fog. Appetite and sleep patterns shift. Even concentration can collapse.
Neuroscience shows us why: loss activates the brain’s threat and attachment systems. The body releases stress hormones as though the loved one’s absence is a literal danger to survival. Grief is not just a feeling; it’s an embodied experience.
What Healing Really Means
Healing in grief doesn’t mean “moving on.” It means moving forward with the loss integrated into your life. It’s not about returning to who you were before — because that version of you no longer exists. Healing is about becoming someone new, shaped by both the love and the loss.
This process often includes:
- Reconnecting with meaning. Asking: “How do I make sense of my life now?”
- Rebuilding identity. Who am I without this person, role, or dream?
- Relearning safety. How do I live without bracing for the next catastrophe?
- Allowing joy again. Letting yourself feel moments of peace or happiness without guilt.
None of this happens quickly. And that’s okay.
The Gifts We Don’t Ask For
It can feel almost offensive to suggest that grief gives us anything — and yet, many people describe ways their losses reshaped them in profound ways.
Grief can teach patience, compassion, and humility. It strips away illusions of control and clarifies what actually matters. People often say things like, “I don’t sweat the small stuff anymore,” or “I cherish my relationships more than I used to.”
None of that makes the loss worth it. But it does highlight how grief can be both devastation and transformation.
How to Support Yourself in Grief
While grief can’t be rushed or skipped, there are ways to make the path gentler:
- Let yourself feel it. Suppressing grief doesn’t make it disappear — it just forces it underground, where it seeps out in other ways.
- Build rituals. Light a candle, visit a meaningful place, or create a tradition in honor of what you lost. Rituals give grief a container.
- Stay connected. Isolation makes grief heavier. Even if words feel impossible, sitting in silence with someone can be healing.
- Be patient. Healing is not linear. Good days and hard days can sit side by side for a long time.
How to Support Someone Else in Grief
It’s tempting to try to fix someone’s grief with advice or pep talks. But often, the most powerful thing you can do is simply be there.
If you’re supporting a grieving friend, remember:
- Don’t try to minimize their pain. Saying “they’re in a better place” or “at least you had them this long” usually makes people feel worse.
- Show up in concrete ways. Bring food. Offer to walk the dog. Sit with them at the funeral. Practical help is invaluable.
- Keep showing up. Grief lasts longer than most people think. A year after a loss, most people stop checking in — but that’s often when grief is still raw.
Sometimes the best words you can offer are: “I don’t know what to say, but I’m here.”
Living With the Absence
Here’s the paradox of grief: the absence never fully goes away, but neither does the love. If anything, the love becomes sharper, more enduring, because it has been tested by loss.
This is why so many people describe carrying their loved one with them — not just in memory, but in the choices they make, the values they hold, and the way they live.
Grief reshapes you, yes. But it doesn’t erase the connection. In many ways, it deepens it.
Closing Thoughts
If you’re in grief right now, know this: you are not failing by feeling the way you do. Grief is not weakness, and it’s not something to “get over.” It’s proof that you loved deeply, and that love continues to echo through your life.
The path forward is not about leaving your loss behind. It’s about weaving it into who you’re becoming. And though it may not feel possible yet, there will be moments again — sometimes small, sometimes startling — where joy breaks through.
That, too, is part of healing.
Author: Bodie Coates, LMFT-S, LCADC-S, NCC
The Hidden Cost of Constant Comparison (and How to Step Out of It)
It happens before you even realize it—you’re scrolling, glancing, or overhearing someone else’s highlight reel, and suddenly your own life feels smaller. We live in a comparison culture, and it’s exhausting. Every vacation photo, career milestone, or polished family portrait can sneak its way into your brain, whispering: Why don’t I measure up?
This comparison game isn’t just a bad habit. It’s corrosive. It quietly eats away at your sense of self, convincing you that your worth is always relative to someone else’s achievement. And the cruel irony? No one ever really wins. There’s always someone richer, thinner, happier-looking, or seemingly more successful to measure against. The bar never stops moving.
Why Comparison Feels So Compelling
Comparison isn’t random—it’s baked into the way our brains work. We learn by noticing differences, we measure safety by reading the room, and we build goals by watching those ahead of us. In small doses, that’s adaptive. But when everything becomes a competition, what once helped us grow starts to make us shrink.
It can look like this:
- You start projects not because you care about them, but because you want to “catch up.”
- You find yourself resenting people you actually admire.
- You’re never satisfied—your victories feel fleeting, like they expire the second someone else posts theirs.
That’s the trap. When your life feels like it’s constantly graded on a curve, you forget what you actually want.
The Way Out: Reclaiming Your Own Lane
The antidote to comparison isn’t pretending you don’t notice others. It’s about rooting yourself in your values, your pace, and your priorities.
Here are 3 steps to start loosening comparison’s grip:
- Name the voice. When you notice the mental jab of “I should be where they are,” pause. Call it out as comparison—not truth. That tiny act of labeling gives you room to respond differently.
- Reconnect with what matters. Ask yourself: Would I want this if nobody else was watching? If the answer is yes, go for it. If not, maybe it’s not really your goal.
- Limit the feed. This isn’t about cutting off from the world, but curating what you consume. You don’t need constant reminders of everyone else’s curated “best moments.” Give yourself space to live your own.
The shift doesn’t happen overnight. But slowly, comparison becomes less of a dictator and more of a signal: a reminder to return to your own lane.
You Are Allowed to Define “Enough”
At the end of the day, you are the only one who has to live your life. And that means you get to define what enough looks like. Not Instagram, not your coworkers, not even your family’s expectations—you.
When you stop trying to win a race you never signed up for, you start building a life that actually fits. And that’s not just freedom—it’s peace.
Author: Bodie Coates, LMFT-S, LCADC-S, NCC
The Myth of “Getting Over It”
We’ve all heard it: “You just need to get over it.” Usually offered with good intentions, but let’s be honest—it’s one of the least helpful phrases out there. Grief, trauma, loss, even heartbreak—these aren’t speed bumps you bounce over once and leave behind. They’re more like scars. They fade, they stop bleeding, but they’re part of you forever.
The myth of “getting over it” sells us the idea that healing has a finish line. That there’s a magical day when you’ll wake up, shrug, and say, “Well, glad that’s over!” But healing doesn’t work like that. There’s no clock that says time’s up.
Why We Crave Closure
Part of the reason people push the “get over it” narrative is because pain makes us uncomfortable—not just our own, but other people’s too. We don’t like being reminded that life is fragile, that hurt lingers, that love doesn’t vanish just because someone is gone.
Saying “get over it” is really saying, “Please stop reminding me that pain is real.” It’s a way to tidy up something that can’t be tidied.
What Healing Really Looks Like
Healing isn’t erasing—it’s adapting.
- You don’t “get over” losing someone you love. You learn how to keep living while carrying their memory.
- You don’t “get over” trauma. You learn how to build safety and reclaim what was taken from you.
- You don’t “get over” heartbreak. You learn how to trust again, even knowing you might get hurt.
Healing is about weaving pain into your story without letting it define your entire identity.
Three Shifts to Rethink Healing
- Replace “get over it” with “live with it.” Pain doesn’t disappear—it changes shape. Living with it means it’s not running your life, but it’s still acknowledged.
- Stop racing the clock. There’s no deadline for grief or recovery. Some days are lighter, some days are heavier. That doesn’t mean you’re failing.
- Honor the scar. The fact that you hurt means you loved, trusted, or cared deeply. That’s not weakness—it’s evidence of a meaningful life.
Closing Thought
The truth is, “getting over it” is a myth we’d be better off retiring. Healing is less about crossing a finish line and more about learning to carry what’s happened to us in a way that doesn’t weigh us down forever. You don’t need to “get over” your pain. You just need to learn how to keep going—messy, human, and still capable of joy.
Author: Bodie Coates, LMFT-S, LCADC-S, NCC
The Pressure to Be “Fine” (and Why It Wears You Down)
There’s a strange cultural script that many of us follow without realizing it. You ask someone how they’re doing, and nine times out of ten, the answer is “I’m fine.” It’s automatic, a reflex, almost like shaking hands. But the truth? Most of us aren’t actually “fine” most of the time. We’re carrying stress, juggling responsibilities, trying to hold things together, and hoping no one notices the cracks.
The pressure to always be okay, to perform “fine” for others, becomes exhausting. It convinces you that your struggles are weaknesses, and that showing them makes you less capable or less worthy. That’s a lie—and it’s one a lot of us have bought into.
Why “Fine” Is a Shield
Saying you’re fine serves a purpose. It protects you from vulnerability. It avoids awkwardness. It lets you keep moving without having to explain yourself. But when “fine” becomes the only thing you allow yourself to be, you cut yourself off from the deeper connections that come when people see the real you—messy, complicated, imperfect, and human.
The Cost of Pretending
When you force yourself to always appear fine, a few things tend to happen:
- You build emotional walls. People might respect your composure, but they don’t actually know you.
- You miss out on support. No one can help if they don’t know you’re struggling.
- You internalize pressure. Pretending becomes a habit, and over time it feels harder to drop the mask.
It’s ironic—pretending to be fine to avoid burdening others often leaves you carrying more weight than you can handle.
Breaking the Pattern
So how do you step out of the “fine” cycle without oversharing or feeling like you’re falling apart? Here are a few practical shifts:
- Experiment with honesty. Start small. Instead of “I’m fine,” try “It’s been a rough week, but I’m hanging in there.” It’s honest without unloading everything.
- Check your motives. Are you saying you’re fine to protect yourself, or because you don’t think others can handle the truth? That difference matters.
- Find safe people. Not everyone earns the right to hear your real story. But if you don’t have even one person you can be real with, it’s time to start building that support system.
What This Really Means for Mental Health
Being “fine” all the time is a survival strategy, not a sustainable way of living. Real mental health means allowing yourself to feel—not just the neat, socially acceptable feelings, but the inconvenient, complicated ones too. And yes, it means risking a little vulnerability.
When you give yourself permission to step out from behind “fine,” you create the possibility of real connection. And it turns out, that’s where a lot of the healing happens—not in the pretending, but in the moments of honesty that let someone else say, “I hear you, same here.”
Author: Bodie Coates, LMFT-S, LCADC-S, NCC
The Weight of “What If”: Learning to Calm an Anxious Mind
Anxiety often sneaks in through the back door of our minds with two little words: what if.
What if I mess this up?
What if something bad happens?
What if I’m not enough?
It’s amazing how quickly those two words can spiral into a dozen scenarios that never even come close to happening. Anxiety thrives on possibilities, not realities. And while possibilities can be useful when we’re planning for the future, they can also trap us in loops of fear and overthinking.
Why “What If” Feels So Heavy
Part of what makes what if so powerful is that it tricks the brain into preparing for danger, even when no real danger exists. The body reacts as if the worry is already true—your heart races, your chest tightens, your sleep disappears.
That’s exhausting.
And yet, it’s human. Everyone struggles with uncertainty. Everyone feels the weight of “what if” at times. The problem isn’t that the thoughts appear—it’s that we get hooked by them and forget we can step back.
Shifting the Focus
Instead of trying to silence anxious thoughts completely (which usually just makes them louder), the goal is to change your relationship with them.
Here are a few approaches that help:
- Notice the thought, name it, and pause. Simply saying, “I’m having a what if thought” creates a little distance.
- Come back to what’s real. Ask yourself: What is actually happening right now? Often, the present moment is much calmer than the future your mind is inventing.
- Practice grounding. Breathe. Move your body. Look around the room and anchor yourself in what you can see, hear, or touch.
A Small Shift That Matters
If you want something practical to try this week, here’s a simple exercise:
- Write down the most common “what if” that shows up in your mind.
- Next to it, write the phrase “even if.” For example:
- What if I fail? → Even if I fail, I’ll learn something I can use next time.
- What if people judge me? → Even if they do, it doesn’t change my worth.
- Read the new statement out loud. Notice how your body responds.
That tiny shift—from bracing for the worst to remembering you can handle what comes—can be enough to soften anxiety.
Moving Forward
Anxious thoughts will come and go. That’s part of being human. But you don’t have to live in the world they invent. The next time your brain whispers what if, try answering with a calmer, more grounded voice.
Not with perfection. Not with force. Just with a little more compassion for yourself.
Author: Bodie Coates, LMFT-S, LCADC-S, NCC
Stop “Shoulding” On Yourself: Why Expectations Weigh You Down
There’s a sneaky little word that causes more suffering than most people realize: should.
- “I should be more patient.”
- “I should have achieved more by now.”
- “I should exercise every day.”
On the surface, these statements look like motivation. In reality, they’re often chains. I call this “shoulding on yourself.” The more you should on yourself, the more you turn life into a running tally of ways you’ve fallen short. And if you’ve noticed, the list never ends.
The problem with shoulds is that they rarely reflect your actual values. Instead, they’re borrowed—absorbed from culture, family, Instagram reels, or whatever version of “success” happens to be trending. They sneak in as rules you didn’t agree to, yet you feel guilty for breaking.
The Psychology of Shoulds
When you carry around “should statements,” you’re stuck in a mental trap that psychologists often call cognitive distortions. These aren’t lies you consciously tell yourself; they’re patterns of thought that warp reality and make you feel worse. “Shoulding” is one of the most common because it disguises itself as responsibility.
Here’s the irony: instead of making you stronger or more disciplined, shoulds make you resentful, ashamed, and disconnected from what actually matters to you.
What to Do Instead
The antidote to shoulding yourself isn’t about throwing away all goals or structure. It’s about shifting from borrowed rules to chosen values.
Here are a few practical ways to begin:
First, notice when you’re shoulding on yourself. Pay attention to the tone in your head. “I should…” usually carries guilt, while “I want…” or “I choose to…” feels lighter, more freeing.
Second, ask where that should came from. Is it really yours? Or does it belong to someone else’s idea of who you’re supposed to be?
Third, reframe it. Instead of “I should exercise,” try:
- “I want to move my body today so I feel more alive.”
- “I value health, so I choose to do something active.”
3 Steps to Overcoming the Trap of “Should”
- Identify the “should.” Write it down exactly as it shows up in your mind.
- Challenge it. Ask: “Whose voice is this? Does this rule actually fit with my values?”
- Reframe it into a choice. Align it with something meaningful to you—not just an obligation.
Why This Matters
When you stop running your life on shoulds, you stop living like a defendant in your own courtroom. Instead, you start making choices that reflect who you actually are. The relief is immediate—not because your responsibilities vanish, but because they finally belong to you.
Author: Bodie Coates, LMFT-S, LCADC-S, NCC
The Trap of Only Seeing What You Expect
Ever had a friend buy a bright red car and suddenly you see bright red cars everywhere? It’s not that the world suddenly flooded with them—it’s your brain’s selective attention at work. Confirmation bias is that same principle, but applied to beliefs.
If you believe your boss doesn’t like you, you’ll notice the missed “good morning” but ignore the time they asked for your opinion. If you believe your partner is losing interest, you’ll remember the forgotten text but overlook the thoughtful coffee they brought you last week.
The human brain likes patterns and predictability. It’s efficient—but also dangerous. We filter the fire hose of information down to what feels consistent with our current narrative. That means we end up “proving” ourselves right, even when we’re dead wrong.
For anxiety, this is jet fuel. If your mind is primed to expect danger or rejection, you’ll unconsciously collect proof for it all day. It’s not a conspiracy—it’s just your brain trying to make sense of the chaos by grabbing the data points that fit your fears.
The antidote isn’t to stop having biases. You can’t. But you can slow them down. Notice your inner “aha” moments and ask: What would I see if the opposite were true? Mindfulness is useful here, not as some magical calm button, but as a way to actually see what’s happening—without your brain’s editorial spin.
Confirmation bias is sneaky because it feels like truth. But truth is bigger than what you’ve noticed so far. You might be wrong—and that can be the best news of your week.
Author: Bodie Coates, LMFT-S, LCADC-S, NCC
The Quiet Panic We Don’t Talk About
There’s the panic you can point to — the kind that makes your chest tight, your thoughts loud, your body restless. And then there’s the quiet panic.
The quiet panic doesn’t make headlines. It doesn’t spike your heart rate the same way a car swerving into your lane might. Instead, it sits underneath your day-to-day, shaping what you do, what you avoid, and what you can’t quite name.
It’s the tension in your shoulders that never leaves.
The urge to keep the news on in the background, “just in case.”
The way you scroll at midnight, chasing some piece of information that will make you feel safe.
It’s a different kind of fear — not the loud, sudden one, but the constant, low-grade hum that tells your nervous system: Something’s wrong. And it’s not going away anytime soon.
Why it’s happening now
We live in a cultural moment where uncertainty is the default. Economies feel fragile. Politics is loud and volatile. The climate is changing in ways we can see and feel. Technology is rewriting our social rules faster than we can understand them.
In generations past, big changes still happened, but they often unfolded at a pace people could absorb. Now, we can wake up to ten major crises before we’ve even made coffee — global, national, local, personal — all served in real time.
The human nervous system wasn’t built for that. It was built for immediate, tangible threats: the predator you could see, the storm you could smell coming. Now we’re bombarded with threats we can’t fight directly and can’t escape from — which means our bodies stay on alert without ever finding resolution.
That’s how the quiet panic sets in.
How it changes you without you noticing
One of the most disorienting parts of quiet panic is how sneaky it is. You might not say “I’m scared.” Instead, it might look like:
- Avoiding making plans for the future because it feels pointless or risky.
- Constantly scanning for bad news, as if anticipating it could help.
- Feeling irritable or shut down for “no reason.”
- Distracting yourself so thoroughly that the idea of sitting quietly feels unbearable.
In therapy, I’ve seen people talk around these feelings without naming them directly. “I just feel off.” “I can’t relax.” “Everything feels… fragile.” Those phrases are often the smoke that points to the fire of quiet panic.
What doesn’t help (but we all try anyway)
When that hum of panic is constant, it’s tempting to try and solve it by:
- Consuming more news so you can “stay prepared.”
- Trying to control every small part of your day so nothing unexpected happens.
- Numbing out completely — with work, with entertainment, with substances.
The problem is, those things don’t resolve the root tension — they reinforce it. The more you feed the nervous system uncertainty and fear, the more it believes it’s right to stay in high alert.
What can help
Quiet panic isn’t something you can “get rid of” instantly, but you can interrupt its cycle. Three things make a noticeable difference:
- Name it out loud
When you can put words to what’s happening, your brain has a better chance of shifting from pure emotional response to thoughtful observation. Try saying (even to yourself): “I’m feeling a constant background anxiety today. I don’t need to solve it all right now.” - Give your nervous system something concrete
Quiet panic is fueled by vague, shapeless threats. Do something physical that has a clear start and end: walk around the block, wash dishes, stretch your arms over your head. This gives your body a sense of completion — the opposite of endless, unresolved tension. - Anchor in something unchanging
That might be a ritual (making tea the same way every morning), a place you return to (a park bench, a trail), or a set of words you repeat. The world may be unpredictable, but your body learns safety through repetition.
The bigger picture
If you’ve been feeling this quiet panic for a long time, it’s not a personal failure. It’s a natural reaction to living in a cultural moment where safety feels optional and permanence feels like a joke.
We are all walking around trying to find steadiness in a world that rewards constant motion. The work isn’t to escape uncertainty — that’s impossible — but to find ways of living that let you keep your footing even as the ground shifts.
And maybe, just maybe, to remember that you’re not the only one feeling it. That’s the other trick of quiet panic — it makes you believe you’re alone. You’re not.
Author: Bodie Coates, LMFT-S, LCADC-S, NCC
Sandstone Therapy 