What if the feeling of inner strain is less a verdict on you and more like a dashboard light — a sign that you’re getting pulled into the swirl of thought?
Lately, I’ve been seeing something more clearly in myself.
When I get tight, urgent, noisy, and strained inside, I tend to assume that something is wrong and that I need to figure it out. My mind gets busy fast. It starts trying to solve, explain, compare, conclude, and get somewhere. For a long time, that inner strain felt like proof. Proof that I was missing something. Proof that I needed to think harder. Proof that I needed to get clearer before I could rest.
I’m seeing it a little differently now.
What if that feeling of strain is less a verdict and more like a dashboard light?
Not a moral failure.
Not a sign that I’m doing life wrong.
Not proof that I’m broken or behind.
Just a signal.
A light on the dashboard doesn’t shame you. It doesn’t mean your car is bad. It simply tells you to pay attention.
I’m starting to wonder if that’s how some of our more pressured inner states work, too. When I feel more wound up, more mentally noisy, more urgent, more caught in my own thinking, maybe that feeling is showing me something important. Maybe it’s not telling me the truth about my life. Maybe it’s showing me how hypnotized I am by my thinking in that moment.
That feels like a big distinction.
Because if the feeling is a verdict, then I need to react to it. I need to fix it, defend against it, explain it, or outrun it.
But if it’s a dashboard light, I can simply notice it.
Ah. There it is.
I’m in the swirl.
I’m believing the pressure.
I’m taking the first scary or self-critical interpretation as if it’s the truth.
That doesn’t mean the moment isn’t hard. Sometimes life is hard. Grief is real. Fear is real. Fatigue is real. Hurt is real. I’m not talking about pretending otherwise.
I’m talking about the extra layer. The tightening. The strain. The way the mind can grab hold of what’s hard and start spinning a whole world out of it.
That’s the part I’m learning to notice sooner.
And I’m noticing something else too: when something is true enough for me, I tend to get quieter, not more spun up.
That has become a useful discriminator.
Not “Do I get it?”
Not “Can I explain it?”
Not “Am I finally thinking about this the right way?”
More like:
Does something in me get a little quieter?
A little simpler?
A little less strained?
When the answer is yes, I’ve learned to trust that more than the noisy demand for certainty.
I think many of us have spent years treating inner strain as proof that we need to think harder. I know I have. But more and more, I’m seeing that strain may not be a call to intensify. It may be a call to notice.
Just notice.
Maybe that’s enough for now.
Vince Flammini 