The Tyranny of the Mind Run Amok
Why Most of Us Are Prisoners in Our Own Heads — and Don’t Know It
It’s 3 a.m. You’re exhausted. But your mind won’t stop. You are:
- Replaying that conversation from three days ago
- Rehearsing the email you’ll send tomorrow
- Calculating whether you can afford next month’s expenses
- Judging yourself for still being awake
- Worrying about worrying
You didn’t choose any of these thoughts. They spawned automatically — and now they hold you captive. They’re running the show.
Sound familiar?
The Automatic Mind
The mind never stops. Ever.
Studies¹ estimate that we generate between 6,000 and 60,000 thoughts a day — most of them repetitive. The same worries, the same rehashes, the same judgments, the same visits to the past, cycling endlessly.
They arrive uninvited.
Urgent, insistent, demanding immediate attention.
Red Alert!
Each thought feels urgent, true, and seemingly demands immediate response.
Here’s what we rarely realize: we’re not thinking our thoughts — thoughts are happening to us.
They’re being generated by the system. It’s a feature, not a bug.
The problem is that we’re identified with them.
We react without pausing to examine. To consider.
This is the prison. When we mistake automatic thought for deliberate thought, we become captives of our own cognitive machinery.
The mind is a very good servant, but a terrible master.
The Cost of Captivity
Let’s look at some of the patterns that endlessly circle through our mental circuits.
The Worry Loop
A single anxious thought appears.
You engage: What if … ?
It multiplies into scenarios.
Each scenario spawns counter-worries.
Your fight-or-flight response is fully engaged.
Adrenaline, cortisol, heart racing.
All for a threat that exists only in your head.
Hours vanish into recursive anxiety. Nothing resolves.
The Anger Spiral
Someone cuts you off in traffic.
Thought arises: That #^%& a**hole!
You board that train completely.
Now you’re rehearsing confrontations, judging their character, building a case.
Thirty minutes later, you arrive at your destination — still angry, still rehearsing.
The person who cut you off? They forgot you exist three seconds later.
The Comparison Trap
You see someone’s success online. An influencer in your Instagram feed.
Instantly: Why don’t I have that?
A catalog of your failures unfurls. I’m a loser.
An inventory of their advantages. Their perfect life.
Resentment builds while your actual life — the one happening right now — becomes invisible.
You’re scrolling through someone else’s highlight reel while your own existence goes unlived.
The Identity Prison
These thoughts become identity:
- I’m not a math person (so you never try)
- I’m bad with money (so you stay broke)
- I’m just anxious (so you accept it as permanent)
- I’m too old to change (so you don’t)
- I always fail at relationships (so you stop trying)
On and on it goes.
I’m not good enough.
I can’t do this.
What’s the point?
These aren’t truths. They’re thoughts that calcified into walls — and you’ve lived inside them so long you’ve forgotten they’re not real.
The Illusion of Control
Here’s the cruel irony:
We think we’re thinking our thoughts deliberately, with agency.
In truth, they arise randomly — and we identify with each one, treating each as if it’s us, as if it’s true, as if it demands immediate action.
It’s like watching a movie and forgetting you’re in the audience.
You’ve climbed into the screen. You’ve become the character.
Trying to control thoughts directly is like trying to stop ocean waves with bare hands.
But being swept away by every wave is exhausting.
Most people oscillate: suppress the thoughts (doesn't work) or drown in them (overwhelming).
Neither path leads anywhere except exhaustion.
The result? A life lived on autopilot.
Reaction instead of response.
Noise instead of clarity.
Helplessness instead of purpose.
Mechanisms have consequences. The cost isn’t just internal; it radiates outward, touching everyone around us.
Still think this is just “being human”? Let’s look at what it actually costs us.
The Stakes
This isn’t merely personal discomfort. The effects spiral outward. The cost is existential.
Relationships
You’re sitting across from someone you love, nodding at the right moments — but you’re not actually there. You’re in your head, rehearsing, judging, planning.
They feel it. The distance grows.
Reactive patterns take over; conflicts escalate because you’re defending thought-positions, not actually relating.
Decisions
Major life choices are made from identified thought-states:
I should…
What will they think?
I’m afraid…
Meanwhile, your deeper values and genuine desires remain unconsulted.
You make choices based on fear or obligation or what others expect — and then wonder why life doesn’t feel like it’s yours.
Time
Hours, days, years vanish into mental rehearsal and rumination.
Could-have. Should-have. If only…
Life ticks away inexorably while you’re lost in the story about life.
The “I’ll be happy when …” loop never closes. The when never arrives.
Health
The body pays the price: chronic stress, shallow breathing, disrupted sleep, anxiety spiraling into depression.
Just a couple of glasses of wine for you unwind.
Some gummies to just help you sleep.
The nervous system doesn’t distinguish between real and imagined threat.
Unexamined thoughts keep it on permanent alert — for years, sometimes decades².
The Way Out
What if there were a way past this?
Without religion, ritual, or mystical jargon.
Without belief in magical thinking.
Without having to buy anything.
A way grounded in direct observation and simple empirical truth.
There is.
It doesn’t ask for belief — only curiosity.
It doesn’t require conversion — only attention.
It’s verifiable. It’s learnable. It's simple.
And it starts with something simpler than you might think.
That’s the subject of the next essay — a rational, evidence-based approach to freedom from this inner tyranny.
It’s not philosophy, mysticism, or therapy.
It’s good housekeeping — the kind every mind requires if it’s to remain a servant rather than a master.
And once you see the mechanism clearly, freedom is no longer a mystery — it’s maintenance.
Footnotes:
¹ Obviously, the actual frequency of thought occurrence varies from individual to individual. Estimates vary widely - from 6,000 (Queen's University, 2020) to 60,000 (commonly cited but less rigorous). The exact number matters less than the recognition: thoughts arise automatically, constantly, and mostly repetitively.
² I spent decades this way. The body keeps score - even when the mind doesn't realize what it's doing.
With quiet thanks to Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash for the image
