An Introduction to the Art of Slowing Down for Wellbeing by a Psychologist and Psychoanalyst for World Mental Health Day on 10 October 2025
Dear Subscribers,
I was inspired to share this post here, as invited by Dr Mehmet Yildiz as a guest blogger on his site. He said this story must be curated for the October 10th World Mental Health Day for awareness. I am grateful for his invitation to amplify my mental health content from my field of psychology and psychoanalysis.
We set aside each year to remind us that caring for our minds is as vital as caring for our bodies. It serves as a powerful reminder that there is no health without mental health.
For many of us, ongoing stress continues to rise as the pressures of daily life mount, from the higher costs of food, housing, and healthcare, to longer work hours just to make ends meet, and more time online instead of with each other. Added to this are global challenges like climate change and political unrest, which leave young people uncertain about their future and older generations feeling more isolated than ever.
Stress like this has almost become “ordinary” for most of us, but it definitely affects us negatively. We feel it in the anxiety, the fatigue, and the steady stress that weighs us down on a regular basis. It affects how much energy we have, how hard it is to feel calm and centered inside ourselves, and how easily we can grow disconnected from the people we care about.
What often starts with the stress of daily life can morph into what many of us know all too well: struggling with a “busy mind.” A mind that feels constantly full, juggling too many demands, or racing with a million thoughts while the body is crying out, Stop, I’m tired, I’m exhausted, I can’t keep going like this. It’s not healthy.
Living with a busy mind can wear us down in different ways, but underneath it is something more profound related to the human condition. Something I’ve come to see as the mind in conflict is tied to how our different, often competing, stressors in life show up in the mind. Each of us contends with different wishes, desires, thoughts, and emotions that don’t always agree with one another.
For example, we might wish to publish a self-help book but also yearn for a bit of peace and quiet, or we may long for closeness with loved ones while also craving independence. These competing wishes and conflicts are normal; they’re part of the human condition. We all face them, but life can feel more difficult when too many press in on us at once. The mind can begin to feel too busy, too cluttered, and yearn for something less stressful.
A busy mind, then, is not just the result of external stressors such as our crowded schedules, endless notifications, or one more responsibility piled onto an already busy day. It’s also about how we live with our competing desires and conflicts, and how often we try to solve them by doing more instead of slowing down. Slowing down gives us a chance to explore what is really going on below the surface of our “ordinary lives” and what is important to us, even helping us better understand how and why we go about our lives the way we do.
The challenge isn’t only about cutting back on what’s on our plates; it’s also about learning how to better live with the often contradictory tensions inside us, paying attention to which ones no longer fit us, which ones may not have been ours in the first place, and how we might carry them forward differently. We do this so that our unexamined tensions don’t keep us stuck in life in emotionally unfulfilling ways, and instead help us focus and lean into those aspects of life that make us feel more engaged and alive within ourselves.
By “overturned,” I mean the way life can feel when its ordinary order is tipped on its head — when too much comes at us all at once and we don’t have the space to take it all in and sort it out. In those moments, we can often feel overly scattered, anxious, and unsure of what to hold onto, as if the ground beneath us is shifting faster than we can keep up with.
At times, the pressure to “keep up” can disguise deeper conflicts we’ve struggled with for years.
For instance, one patient described how every request she received at work seemed urgent, and though she was already at her emotional and physical limit, she still felt compelled to say yes, particularly when her boss asked her to do more than others around her. On the surface, it looked like overcommitment. However, as she reflected more deeply in our sessions, she began to recognize the patterns of her childhood with her father, who often demanded calm in the household, no matter what was happening.
She learned early on that keeping peace meant staying agreeable and not voicing her own needs. Saying yes at work, even when she was overworked and exhausted, became a way of repeating her old role as a peacemaker and protecting her connection to her father, and later to others, by putting herself second. What looked like busyness in the present was, in part, the continuation of an old conflict that began before she was even old enough to speak. Seeing how her “chosen way” of staying exhausted kept her tied to a family dynamic that wasn’t healthy for her opened the possibility of something new. She began to pause before automatically saying yes to more and taking the time to ask herself whether she wanted to respond differently before replying.
And this feeling of being overturned doesn’t just hit us at the individual level of experience. It also shows up, and is reinforced, in the larger arenas of our lives: the environments we work in, the families we grew up in, and the cultures that surround us daily. It can show up in workplaces that often expect us to be constantly available, which can make it hard to step away and take care of our own needs without feeling guilty. It often happens in families where roles are too rigid, where stepping outside what’s expected of us, or simply saying no, can feel like breaking a sacred family taboo.
This can also happen in wider cultures that prize busyness and hyper-productivity, where consciously choosing a slower pace of life is often looked down on. And the toll in these larger contexts doesn’t just happen in the mind, but it also shows up in our bodies. It might begin with tight shoulders, move into shallow breathing, or spill over into nights of anxiety and restless sleep. When we live with stress and anxiety on a regular basis, being overturned can begin to feel like this is ordinary for us, as if this is just how life is, while in truth it ends up eroding our health and overall wellbeing.
In this context, the work isn’t about employment or tasks, per se, but about the inner work of living differently and the related effort it takes to slow down and pay closer attention to ourselves. It often begins with learning how to pause and really listen to how we’re feeling, to reflect and explore what is important to us, and to notice what is going on within us.
Over time, this kind of work can help us make better-informed decisions that impact us positively and align with our values. It can also mean stepping outside of our customary patterns, like moving toward self-criticism whenever something goes wrong, instead of pausing to consider what’s actually happening, which may have little to do with us.
In many ways, this is the beginning of what I think of as the art of slowing down: a practice that doesn’t erase our conflicts but opens space so that we can engage with them in new ways, rather than merely repeating older, unhealthier ones.
The art of slowing down may sound simple in theory, but in practice, life often feels anything but stress-free. I saw this unfold with the same patient, who described not only feeling overwhelmed but also experiencing anxiety and panic attacks at work. At the heart of it was her long-held belief that the only way through her busy life, and her restless mind, was to do more, not less.
For years, she tried to manage her busy mind by working harder, clearing up tasks, keeping everyone satisfied, and pushing herself to meet every demand that was asked of her. But she noticed that no matter how much she did, the sense of being “too full” never went away. What she thought would bring relief only left her feeling more burdened and anxious.
In time, she began experimenting with slowing down before automatically saying yes, and discovered how difficult it was to stop herself from agreeing without hesitation. At first, the time in between the request and her answer felt extremely uncomfortable, almost as if her father’s presence was still in the room, waiting for her to comply. Yet in her ability to wait and give herself a moment to think things through, she found something new: a flicker of a choice that was hers to make. For the first time, she was able to catch her exhaustion and reluctance as they arose, before she took on more work than she needed to.
What followed for her wasn’t a sudden transformation but a gradual shift in how she chose to respond to others. She began to explore setting boundaries for herself, first turning down extra weekly assignments, leaving an evening open for what she wanted instead of taking work home with her, and even giving herself permission to say, “I’ll need to think about it,” rather than immediately saying yes without taking the time to think about what she wanted. These weren’t merely changes to her schedule; they were conscious choices to respond to her conflicts differently, weighing her own needs after years of telling herself someone else’s needs, beginning with her father’s, were more important than hers.
When she began to purposefully practice slowing down, her mind didn’t stop being busy right away, but it did start to feel less pressured. Her external demands were still there, but the way she responded to them began to change. What surprised her most was realizing that doing less helped her feel more in control of herself and even proud of the way she was choosing to live her life. For so long, she had assumed she needed admiration or attention from others to feel good about herself. What she was beginning to realize was that her own choices, made in line with her needs, could give her the deeper self-respect she had been craving, respect no one else could give her.
But this work isn’t only psychological; it’s also deeply physical. Our bodies often set the stage for how busy our minds feel.
What often keeps our minds busy spinning with anxiety and unwanted thoughts is not only the weight of our inner conflicts but also the state our bodies are in as we contend with the ongoing stress in our lives. When we are run down or depleted, we have less capacity to make sense of what is truly important to us, and less ability to live the kinds of lives we want. In those moments, making space for ourselves gives us a better chance of choosing different ways of responding rather than falling back into older, unhealthy patterns.
Thus, we want part of our Wellbeing Equation to be about learning how to create space inside ourselves that feels less stressful, a space where we can feel centered and comfortable in our own skin. From there, we have more room to consider what is important to us instead of automatically being swept away by whatever demand in our lives captures most of our attention. This isn’t about emptying the mind, but about making room to explore what patterns in our lives are shaping us, and to ask whether they’re really serving what is best for us.
One way this takes shape is through activities that support both mind and body together, helping us feel more energized, giving us greater cognitive capacity, and allowing us to feel more like ourselves when we’re less stressed. As I’ve shared previously, one of the best ways to do this is through sleep, nourishment, and movement. This is not because these activities erase the struggles we face, but because they help our mind and body function better from a physiological perspective.
When we feel rested, have eaten nourishing foods that give us energy, and moved our bodies in healthy ways, we are less likely to be hijacked by stress or pulled into fight-or-flight states that diminish our ability to think clearly. They allow us to better use our mental capacities, such as reflection, to the best of our ability, apply our insights more effectively, and respond to our conflicts in healthier ways instead of falling back into old patterns, particularly the ones that aren’t good for us.
This is why I describe the Wellbeing Equation as not about creating a perfect life free of difficulty. It’s about giving ourselves enough inner room to live with our conflicts without being overtaken by them, which gives us a better chance of understanding where those conflicts originated and how they still shape us. From there, we can begin to respond differently, for instance, recognizing anger not as something to suppress or unleash destructively, but as a signal that can be expressed in ways that strengthen relationships rather than harm them. This process helps us better discern which burdens are truly ours and which ones we can set down, while leaning more fully into what helps us feel healthier, more engaged, and alive in our lives.
Here’s an invitation to a live show: October 10th | 2:00 PM EST | Substack — LIVE: Ayesha Calligraphy | Spirituality
The Live is entitled: Finding Meaning: A Live Conversation on Purpose, Spirituality, and our Wellbeing Equation.
Join us as we talk about what gives life meaning, how purpose and spirituality influence our wellbeing, and the ways we can live with greater intention and connection in everyday life.
- Ayesha Calligraphy, her Substack is called Soul’s Journey: Spirituality in Everyday Life, which focuses on uncovering the soul’s hidden wisdom through Rumi’s poetry, sacred art, and spiritual reflection — inviting readers to embrace life as a journey of transformation. You can learn more about her Substack and what she offers [HERE].
Conclusions and Key Takeaways
World Mental Health Day reminds us that caring for our minds is not just about tending to the difficult stressors in our lives, but it’s also about shaping and putting time into the design and ways we live. A busy mind can easily convince us that speed is the answer and that saying yes to others’ requests or demands is what keeps us safe. But what often goes missing in that equation is the simple truth that space itself can be healing.
When we choose to slow down, we often find we’re not missing out on much. Instead, life generally has a way of giving back to us, allowing us to feel more grounded and better able to pay attention to what really matters to us.
This is the art of slowing down, making space not only to rest and ease our stress and anxiety, but also to give ourselves a better chance to ask: Is this really how we want to live?
👇 Comment below:
What boundary or small pause could you practice this month that would give you more room to breathe and be with yourself in a less stressful way?
With steadiness, — Bronce
👉 If you’d like to read more about me and my Wellbeing Equation journey, please visit my website: www.broncerice.com and my Substack About Page.
👉 And if you like what you’ve read, please sign up for my newsletter, The Wellbeing Equation HERE and spread the word by hitting the restack button ♻️ to share with your community.
👉 I also offer Paid Subscribers access to additional resources and deeper content related to your wellbeing. You can sign up HERE.
You can also read my stories on Medium.
Here is some info about my background:
Leave a Reply