Your Mind Isn’t Broken — It’s Just Doing Its Job (And That’s the Problem)

People come to therapy with this particular look sometimes. It isn’t always dramatic, and it isn’t always tears. More often, it’s this tired, braced expression that says, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but something is definitely wrong.” They’ll describe how their mind won’t shut off at night, how their body is tense all day for no clear reason, how they can’t stop replaying conversations, scanning for mistakes, or building worst-case scenarios like they’re writing a disaster movie script. And then they’ll say it, sometimes softly, sometimes like they’ve already sentenced themselves: “I think I’m broken.”

I understand why it feels that way. If you’re anxious all the time, or depressed and numb, or stuck in obsessive loops, or exhausted from trying to manage your own thoughts like they’re a room full of wild animals, it makes sense that you’d conclude something is malfunctioning. We tend to assume that a “healthy” mind is one that feels calm, confident, and stable most of the time. So when yours isn’t cooperating, the most human conclusion is, “Something is wrong with me.” But one of the most important reframes I offer people—often early, often repeatedly—is this: your mind isn’t broken. It’s doing its job.

The problem is that the job your mind was designed for isn’t peace. It isn’t happiness. It isn’t even clarity. The primary job of the mind, in the most primitive sense, is survival. It’s to detect threat, anticipate danger, and keep you out of situations that might hurt. And it’s not picky about what counts as “danger.” In the modern world, the mind often treats emotional pain—rejection, embarrassment, conflict, uncertainty, grief, failure—the way it would’ve treated a physical threat a long time ago. If your nervous system decides something is risky, it mobilizes you to protect yourself. That mobilization has a name we all know: anxiety.

I like the smoke alarm metaphor because it’s simple and it’s accurate. A smoke alarm is supposed to be loud. You want it to work. If there’s an actual fire, a quiet smoke alarm is useless. But an overly sensitive smoke alarm can make living in your own home miserable. If it goes off every time you make toast, sear steak, light a candle, or take a hot shower, the alarm isn’t “broken” in the sense that it’s not functioning. It’s functioning too well. It’s doing its job with the intensity of a nervous system that doesn’t trust the world.

That’s what a lot of anxiety is. Not a character flaw. Not weakness. Not proof that you’re failing at life. It’s an alarm system that learned—through temperament, stress, experiences, and sometimes trauma—that the world requires constant monitoring. So it scans. It predicts. It warns. It tries to keep you ahead of pain by staying ten steps ahead of the future. And the mind has its favorite tool for that: thoughts.

When you’re anxious, your mind starts pumping out “what if” like it’s on an assembly line. What if they’re mad at me? What if I get fired? What if I say the wrong thing? What if I can’t handle it? What if this feeling never goes away? What if this means something is wrong with me? And the tricky part is that these thoughts don’t arrive as “ideas.” They arrive as warnings. They feel urgent. They feel important. They feel like you’d be irresponsible not to listen to them.

At some point, most people start responding to those thoughts the way you’d respond to a real emergency. They try to resolve them. They argue with them. They seek reassurance. They check and recheck. They research. They ask other people to confirm everything’s okay. Or they avoid. They cancel plans, procrastinate, numb out, shrink their world, and wait until they “feel better” before they try again. None of this happens because people are lazy or irrational. It happens because your mind is trying to do what it believes will keep you safe: get certainty, get control, and reduce discomfort.

This is where it turns into a trap. Because the relief you get from avoidance or reassurance is real. Your chest loosens, your mind quiets down for a minute, your body stops buzzing. The system takes that as proof that you just did the correct survival behavior. In other words, your brain learns, “That feeling was dangerous, and we survived because we escaped.” So next time, it raises the alarm faster. Louder. Earlier. It tries harder to protect you. And before you know it, you aren’t just feeling anxiety—you’re living an anxiety-shaped life.

I see this all the time. Someone will tell me, “I don’t know why I can’t just do the thing.” But when we look more closely, we can usually see the pattern. The “thing” isn’t just a task. It’s a task plus the feelings that come with it—uncertainty, vulnerability, the risk of failing, the risk of being judged, the risk of not being perfect. And because the mind treats those feelings as threats, it starts pushing you toward strategies that minimize exposure. That’s why people can be incredibly capable and still feel stuck. Their competence isn’t the issue. Their nervous system is the issue.

Then shame shows up, because shame always loves an anxious person. Shame takes a normal human struggle and turns it into an identity. Instead of “I’m having anxiety,” it becomes “I’m broken.” Instead of “My mind is trying to protect me,” it becomes “I shouldn’t be like this.” Instead of “This is hard,” it becomes “I’m failing.” And that second layer—judging yourself for having the experience—often hurts more than the anxiety itself.

This is one of the reasons I’m so direct about normalizing what’s happening. Not in a dismissive way, not in a “just relax” kind of way. In a grounded way. If your mind is running protection software, it will produce protective outputs. Thoughts. Worries. Catastrophes. Urges. Compulsions. Avoidance. That doesn’t mean it’s correct, and it doesn’t mean you have to obey it. But it does mean there’s a logic to it. And when you can see the logic, you can stop making it mean you’re defective.

In ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy), we don’t treat thoughts like commands. We treat them like mental events. Words and images that show up, shaped by your brain’s attempt to keep you safe. We don’t have to fight them, but we also don’t have to follow them. We’re less interested in winning an argument with your mind and more interested in helping you build psychological flexibility: the ability to feel what you feel, think what you think, and still choose actions that align with the kind of person you want to be.

This is the moment people usually pause. Because they’re used to the idea that therapy is about getting rid of symptoms. Getting rid of anxiety. Getting rid of intrusive thoughts. Getting rid of discomfort. And sure, symptoms often change when you stop feeding the cycle. But ACT aims at something deeper than symptom control. It aims at reclaiming your life from the rules your fear has been writing.

In the room, this often becomes very practical, very human work. Someone will be describing a spiral, and you can almost feel the urgency in their language—this pressure to fix the feeling immediately. And I’ll slow it down. We’ll identify what the mind is demanding in that moment. Usually it’s certainty. Or relief. Or control. Then we’ll notice what happens in the body when we don’t immediately comply. The tightness, the heat, the buzzing, the dread. And we’ll practice staying with it long enough to learn a new truth: discomfort isn’t the same thing as danger.

That distinction matters more than people realize. Because if discomfort equals danger, you will build your entire life around avoiding discomfort. And that will shrink your world. But if discomfort becomes something you can make room for—something you can carry—then your life starts expanding again. You can have anxiety and still show up. You can have uncertainty and still take the next step. You can have a painful thought and still act from your values. That’s freedom, not because life gets perfectly comfortable, but because fear stops being the decision-maker.

I’m not asking anyone to like anxiety. I’m not asking anyone to “embrace” suffering in some forced, motivational-poster way. I’m saying something more grounded: if you wait until you feel certain, confident, or calm before you live your life, you’ll keep postponing your life. And your mind will happily help you postpone it forever, because postponing feels safe.

The goal isn’t a quiet mind. A quiet mind is great when it happens, but it’s not the only measure of health. The goal is a bigger life. A life where you can feel anxious and still have the hard conversation. A life where you can feel uncertain and still take action. A life where you can have intrusive thoughts without treating them like evidence that you’re dangerous or broken. A life where your values—not your nervous system—are the compass.

A small, practical way to work with this (non-narrative)

The next time your mind is spiraling, try this simple sequence: first, name what’s happening (“My mind is trying to protect me”); second, notice what it’s demanding (certainty, reassurance, control, avoidance); third, make room for the body sensations for 30–60 seconds without fixing them; and then choose one small action aligned with your values, even if the anxiety comes along for the ride. If you want a quick values prompt, ask: “What kind of person do I want to be in this moment?” and do the smallest version of that.

If any of this lands with you, it’s probably because you’ve been trying to “win” against a mind that isn’t actually your enemy—it’s your overzealous protector. Therapy can help you retrain that relationship so you’re not spending your days obeying alarms that don’t match the actual fire. You don’t need a different brain. You need a different stance toward the brain you already have. And with practice, that stance becomes less about fighting what you feel and more about choosing how you live.