Why You Feel Like a Pinball in Your Own Mind and How to Find the Pause
There is a particular kind of mental exhaustion that has nothing to do with how much you have done. You have not run a marathon. You have not had an unusually hard day. And yet by mid-afternoon your mind feels scattered, jumpy and impossible to settle. Like a pinball being thrown around before you can catch it.
This is one of the most common things I hear from the women I work with. And it is something I experience myself.
We tend to blame the to-do list. The endless things to remember, the mental load of running a home and a career and a life. And yes, that is a huge part of it. But it is not the whole picture. Because the pinball mind is also fed by something else, our inability to be still. To sit in a queue without reaching for the phone. To walk without a podcast. To exist in a moment of silence without filling it. I am not exempt from this. I try to keep strict boundaries around my phone, flight mode from 9pm to 8am, but in the evenings when I am working late those boundaries get harder to hold.
The result is a mind that has forgotten how to be present.
The science behind it
There is an area of the brain called the Default Mode Network (DMN). It is the system that activates when your mind is wandering, ruminating, replaying conversations or worrying about things that haven't happened yet. It is the network behind the pinball feeling.
Here is what makes it harder to escape than most people realise. When we are in an active stress response, even a low level, background stress response that we barely notice. That stress hijacks the DMN and pulls it toward negative rumination and worry. So a mind that feels scattered and bouncy is almost always running on a low hum of stress underneath. Not dramatic and not crisis-level, but the ordinary, chronic, modern kind that builds up when we never fully switch off.
This is not a personal failing. It is a physiological response to the world we live in! Understanding it changes how we work with it.
Where to begin
I do not have a solution to the broader societal problem of overstimulation but I can share what helps. What I come back to in my own life and what I teach inside my program the Inner Stability Method.
It almost always starts with the nervous system. Specifically with finding ways to dial up the parasympathetic nervous system, the rest and digest branch that counteracts the stress response. The part of our system we are simply not spending enough time in.
This means committing to a regular breath or yoga practice. Both are breath-based at their core and that creates a real shift in your nervous system over time. Not once but consistently. This is the foundation that changes everything else.
But in the moment, in the middle of a day when your mind is bouncing, one of the most effective tools I have found is breath holds.
Your brain cannot sustain the wandering, ruminating quality of the DMN alongside the internal shift that a breath hold creates. When you take a slow inhale and hold at the top, the DMN quietens. The mental chatter softens. It is one of the most direct routes into stillness I have found.
Something simple to try: take a slow inhale from the base of the spine all the way to the top. Hold gently at the top for a few seconds. Then a long slow exhale. Notice what happens in the few seconds after the hold.
What I guide in my practices goes much deeper than this but even this small version is worth exploring.
If you'd like to experience this properly, I have a guided breath practice you can do with me. You can access it here.
The bigger picture
Learning to counteract the pinball mind is the first step. But it is only the first step. Because underneath the scattered, bouncy quality of a busy mind there is often something deeper — thought patterns, inner narratives and beliefs that are running the show without us even realising.
That is the layer we go into in From Chaos to Clarity — a free 45-minute masterclass I am hosting on Tuesday 19 May 2026 at 8pm UK time. We start with the nervous system, because we always start there and then we go underneath it.
If your mind has been feeling like a pinball lately and you are ready to do something about it, I would love to have you there.
Save your spot here — it's free