You finally have a moment to sit down. 

Nothing urgent on the to-do list. No distractions. 

It’s the perfect time for some self-care activities like doing some deep breathing exercises or just enjoying some quiet time.

However, as it usually goes for you, instead of feeling calm, your body tightens. Your mind races. And now you’re asking yourself: “Why do I feel anxious when I try to relax?”

This is often described as relaxation-induced anxiety. 

It’s the ironic experience of feeling more stress and overwhelmed when you are purposefully trying to feel the opposite. 

As a psychologist in Coquitlam, I see this pattern more often than most people expect. Let’s look at why this happens and how to begin to heal from it.

Why Relaxation Can Make Anxiety Feel Worse

When anxiety increases during rest, it usually reflects how your nervous system has learned to operate. There are a number of reasons this can occur but here are some of the common ones:

Your system is used to being “on”

If your baseline has been constant thinking, planning, or staying alert, your body adapts to that state. Slowing down can feel unfamiliar, and unfamiliar feels uncomfortable.

Your attention shifts inward

Relaxation brings awareness to physical sensations like your heartbeat, breathing, or tension. When anxiety is already present, that internal focus can quickly feel intense or uncomfortable.

Unprocessed stress or trauma can surface

When there is less distraction, your system has more space to register what has been pushed aside. For individuals with a history of anxiety or trauma, stillness can bring up sensations, emotions, or memories that were previously in the background.

Guilt associated with not being more productive

For some people, slowing down isn’t just uncomfortable, it feels wrong. Thoughts like “I should be doing more” or “I haven’t done enough to deserve this break” can create a layer of tension that makes it hard to settle. Instead of rest, the mind shifts back into pressure and self-criticism.

How to Work With Your Nervous System

Instead of trying to force relaxation, a more effective approach is to meet your system where it is. 

Some ways to begin:

• Start with movement-based regulation, such as walking, stretching, or being outside, instead of jumping straight into stillness.
• Keep the window of rest short. Even one or two minutes of slowing down can begin to build tolerance without overwhelming your system.
• Shift your focus outward. Paying attention to your surroundings or a physical object can feel more stable than focusing inward right away.

Over time, your system can begin to experience calm as something familiar, rather than something it needs to react to.

When There’s More Beneath the Surface

When relaxation-induced anxiety continues to show up, it can point to underlying patterns that haven’t been fully processed, where the body remains organized around tension, vigilance, or control, even when there is no immediate threat.

In these cases, the reaction to relaxation isn’t something that resolves with more practice or better techniques. The response is coming from a deeper level of conditioning that the body continues to default to.

This is why it can feel like you understand what’s happening, you try to approach it differently, and yet the same reaction keeps returning.

Working through this requires more than adjusting behaviour in the moment. It involves addressing the underlying patterns directly, so the body no longer needs to respond in the same way.

How Therapy Can Help

In my work as a therapist in Coquitlam, I use a brain-wise, body-informed approach to help clients understand why anxiety shows up in moments that are supposed to feel calm.

Together, we look at what may be underneath these reactions, including patterns shaped by ongoing stress, anxiety, or past experiences and trauma that are still influencing how your body responds.

From there, the focus shifts toward working with those patterns directly, rather than trying to override them in the moment.

This means helping your body gradually process what hasn’t been fully worked through, so the same reactions don’t keep getting triggered when you try to slow down.

Within a safe therapeutic relationship, your nervous system has the opportunity to experience calm in a way that feels steady and supported.

If you’d like to learn more about how I approach this work, you can visit my therapy approach page here.

A Different Way to Understand What You’re Feeling

Feeling anxious when you try to relax can be confusing, especially when it seems like something that’s supposed to help is making things worse.

But this response isn’t random.

In many cases, it reflects patterns that have developed over time, where slowing down allows your body and mind to register things that haven’t been fully processed.

With the right approach, and the right support when needed, relaxation doesn’t have to feel uncomfortable or out of reach. It can become something your body gradually learns to enjoy again.

If you are reading this right now then you likely keep finding yourself replaying conversations, second-guessing every decision, or feeling mentally “stuck” in a loop of endless thoughts over past situations.

Many people end up asking themselves this question: “Why do I overthink everything so much?”

As a Coquitlam psychologist, this is a question I hear often from my clients.

While it can feel frustrating or even exhausting, overthinking isn’t a flaw in your personality. It’s often a protective pattern shaped by both your mind and nervous system, and can develop through past experiences, anxiety, trauma, or times when thinking things through felt like the best way to stay in control.

What Overthinking Actually Is

Overthinking is often described as excessive worrying or analyzing, but there is a lot more going on beneath the surface.

At a deeper level, overthinking is a pattern where the mind attempts to create certainty in situations that feel uncertain, emotionally charged, or potentially dangerous. 

It’s not just you “thinking too much,” but a way of mental problem-solving that has become over-extended for a variety of reasons.

Often, the thinking is an attempt to make sense of a past or future experience that hasn’t been fully processed yet.

How Overthinking Shows Up in Daily Life

Overthinking can start out feeling subtle but then it often shifts to feeling persistent and mentally exhausting.

You might notice yourself:

• Replaying conversations or situations long after they’ve ended
• Having difficulties with making decisions, even small ones
• Mentally preparing for multiple outcomes at once
• Feeling responsible for how others perceive you and wanting to change that
• Trouble being present, even during calm moments

There can also be a disconnect between what you know logically and what you feel internally. Even when something seems manageable, your body may still feel tense or unsettled.

Why Your Mind Gets Stuck in Overthinking

Overthinking often begins at the mind level.

From a psychological perspective, it can be linked to deeper, often unconscious beliefs such as:

• “If I think it through enough, I can prevent something from going wrong”
• “If I don’t figure this out, something bad could happen like last time”
• “If I don’t think everything through, something could go wrong”
• “If I make a mistake or fail then people will be disappointed in me”

These patterns tend to form through earlier experiences where being careful, aware, or emotionally attuned felt necessary – including moments that felt unpredictable, overwhelming, or unsafe. 

In those situations, thinking things through may have been one of the ways your system tried to anticipate risk and stay in control.

Over time, the mind learns that thinking more equals being safer or more prepared. It starts to rely on analysis as a way to manage uncertainty, reduce risk, and create a sense of control.

However, because many situations in life don’t have perfect answers or complete certainty, the mind never fully reaches a sense of resolution. This is where the endless looping begins.

How the Nervous System Reinforces the Loop

Alongside these cognitive patterns, the nervous system plays a key role in maintaining overthinking.

When your brain perceives uncertainty or potential risk, it can activate the sympathetic nervous system – the part of the autonomic nervous system responsible for the fight-or-flight response during stress or perceived danger. 

Some symptoms of the sympathetic nervous system activation include:

• Muscle tension (especially in the jaw, shoulders, and chest)
• Faster or shallow breathing
• A sense of urgency or internal pressure
• Difficulty settling or relaxing

These physical signals communicate to the brain that something needs to be resolved.

The mind responds by trying to think things through in an effort to reduce that internal tension. 

However, this thinking keeps the system engaged rather than calming it.

Over time, the mind and body begin reinforcing each other:

• The body stays in a state of activation
• The mind keeps searching for certainty
• The loop continues

This is why overthinking can feel less like a conscious choice and more like a pattern your system is pulled into.

Small Ways to Begin Shifting the Pattern

Rather than trying to stop overthinking entirely, it can be more helpful to begin shifting your relationship to it.

You can approach this from two angles: working with the mind (awareness and interruption) and supporting the nervous system (regulation and grounding).

At the mind level

These approaches help you notice and gently interrupt the thinking pattern:

• Name the pattern or emotion: when you catch looping thoughts or feeling anxious about a situation. Name it. This begins to bring in that awareness.
• Write it out: journaling your thoughts can move them out of your head and make patterns easier to see
• Shift the questions: instead of asking yourself things like “why am I overthinking everything so much?”, try asking “what is my mind trying to solve or protect me from right now?”
• Create a pause: give yourself permission to solve “the problem” at a later time instead of pushing for immediate clarity

At the nervous system level

These approaches help your body settle, which in turn reduces the drive to keep thinking:

• Grounding through the senses: notice 5 things you can see, 4 you can feel, 3 you can hear, 2 you can smell, and 1 you can taste.

• Breathing techniques: slow, steady breathing (for example, slightly longer exhales) or box breathing to signal safety and calm to the body

• Physical movement: Dancing, shaking, stretching or going for a walk can help release built up emotions in the body

These strategies help build awareness and gradually interrupt the loop, allowing both your mind and body to settle over time.

How Therapy Can Help You Break the Cycle

Sometimes overthinking becomes a persistent pattern that feels difficult to break, even when you’re trying to be aware of it. In some cases, it can be hard to fully access or understand what’s driving the pattern on your own – especially if certain experiences, emotions, or responses have been pushed aside or are not immediately clear.

That’s when it can be helpful to explore it with support.

Working with a psychologist allows you to understand not just the thoughts themselves, but the deeper patterns driving them based specifically on your unique circumstances. 

In my Coquitlam practice, I use a brain-wise, body-informed approach that integrates:

• Somatic Experiencing (SE) and Self-Regulation Therapy (SRT) to help your body process stored tension and shift out of chronic activation
• Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy (CBT) to work with thought patterns, beliefs, and habitual responses

Rather than only trying to change thoughts, this approach helps your system experience a greater sense of safety and flexibility, which naturally reduces the need to stay in overthinking loops.

I offer therapy in Coquitlam as well as virtual sessions across BC for individuals looking for support with anxiety, overthinking, and related patterns. You can get in touch with me through my contact page here if you would like to explore working together.

Moving Toward a More Grounded Way of Thinking

If you’ve been asking yourself, “why do I overthink everything so much?”, it can be helpful to begin seeing it as a pattern your system has learned and that there are ways to shift out of the pattern.

What often feels like “too much thinking” is usually your mind and body working together to try to create safety, certainty, or control.

When you begin to understand the beliefs driving the pattern, and how your nervous system reinforces it, it becomes easier to step out of the loop with more awareness.

Over time, this can lead to a quieter mind, a more regulated body, and a greater sense of steadiness in how you respond to uncertainty.

Overthinking doesn’t need to control you forever. It’s something that can be understood, supported, and gradually shifted so you can feel more steady and at ease over time.

Ever wonder why you keep ending up in unhealthy relationships, why you feel constantly triggered by your partner, or maybe why you’ve started avoiding relationships altogether?

These are signs that your nervous system might be trying to protect you from past pain and trauma.

As a Coquitlam therapist, I often work with people who find themselves stuck in the same emotional patterns with relationships. They are usually aware of the cycles they keep repeating but are unsure why these patterns keep persisting and how to break them.

Understanding how trauma affects relationships helps make sense of these reactions and offers a path toward healing ultimately leading to healthier connected relationships.

What Trauma Can Look Like

When we hear the word trauma, we often think of major, life-changing events. But trauma can also come from the smaller, repeated moments that left you feeling unsafe, unseen, or unsupported. 

You might have experienced:

• Childhood trauma, like emotional neglect, harsh criticism, physical abuse, or growing up in an unpredictable home.
• Attachment trauma, where comfort or connection wasn’t consistently available when you needed it.
• Adult or complex trauma, such as betrayal, chronic stress, relationship breakdowns, or loss.

Each of these experiences leaves an imprint on your nervous system, and can shape how you connect with others.

How Trauma Affects Relationships

When trauma goes unresolved, your nervous system can get stuck in survival mode, constantly scanning for signs of danger. Even seemingly minor things like a tone of voice or a delayed reply can trigger a wave of old hurt or anxiety that feels bigger than the moment itself.

That state of alert might have protected you once, but in current relationships, it can make closeness or vulnerability feel unsafe.

Here are a few ways this often shows up:

• You shut down or pull away when things start to feel too close.
• You get anxious when someone doesn’t text back right away.
• You overextend yourself or avoid conflict to keep the peace.
• You have trouble trusting, even when someone’s proven to be trustworthy.

These patterns aren’t character flaws, they’re learned protective responses. The good news is these patterns can be unlearned.

As a Coquitlam psychologist, I help clients recognize that these reactions are their body’s way of trying to stay safe.

Once you can see them as protective patterns, you can begin learning new ones that teach your body it’s safe to connect with others again.

One of the key parts of my practice involves healing through co-regulation — where two nervous systems interact in a way that fosters emotional balance and well-being.

Feeling understood and supported by someone safe helps your body relearn what connection can feel like.

The Body Remembers — and It Can Heal

Because trauma affects both the brain and the body, healing needs to include both as well. It’s not only about talking through the past; it’s about helping your body experience safety in the present.

In my practice, I use a brain-wise, body-informed approach that combines Somatic Experiencing (SE), Self-Regulation Therapy (SRT), and Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT). These approaches help your body complete unfinished stress responses, reduce overreactivity to daily pressures, and strengthen your capacity for self-regulation and a deeper sense of calm.

As your nervous system learns to settle again, your relationships begin to shift naturally. You might find it easier to communicate, to stay present during conflict, or to trust that you can handle emotional closeness without losing yourself.

Where to Begin

If this sounds familiar, take it as a sign that your body is asking for support — not proof that something’s wrong with you.

You can start small:

• Notice your triggers. When you feel tension rise, pause and take deep slow breaths before reacting.
• Ground yourself. Look around, name things you see or hear, take deep breaths and remind your body that you’re safe.
• Offer yourself compassion. Every protective response started for a reason that was out of your control and it takes time to shift these automatic responses.
• Be honest in your relationships. If you have a partner, share what you know about your triggers and how they can support you — it builds trust and supports co-regulation.
• Reach out for help. Working with a Coquitlam therapist who understands trauma and relationships can help you process those old experiences safely and create new patterns of relating with others.

Healing Trauma Takes Time But It’s Possible

Learning how trauma affects relationships can be an uncomfortable process at first, but it’s also deeply freeing. 

When you understand what your body is doing to protect you, you can begin to work with it instead of against it.

If you’re ready to explore this healing process with a Coquitlam psychologist who integrates both mind and body approaches, I’d be honoured to help. Together, we can help your nervous system feel safe again so you can build the kind of connections that feel grounded, secure, and real. Start with a Free Consultation.