I watched Louis Theroux’s “Inside the Manosphere” documentary last night and, like many people, found parts of it deeply uncomfortable; the misogyny, the anger, and the certainty with which some of these views are expressed.

It would be easy to dismiss it as a fringe corner of the internet populated by angry men but that would be missing something important. These spaces are growing, and they’re attracting large numbers of young men every single day.

When you listen carefully beneath the bravado and hostility, another story begins to emerge: rejection, loneliness, confusion, shame, and a deep sense of not knowing where they fit in the world.

Overthinking is one of the most common struggles people bring into therapy, though it rarely arrives under that name. It shows up as sleepless nights, endless “what ifs,” difficulty making decisions, replaying conversations long after they’ve ended, or a mind that simply will not switch off.

At its core, overthinking is a protective response that tries very diligently to keep you safe.

Overthinking happens when the mind moves from helpful reflection into unproductive mental looping. Instead of arriving at clarity, you circle the same territory again and again, often becoming more distressed rather than more certain. It tends to take two main forms:

I’m often asked this question, and I know I’m not the only middle-aged woman. It frequently comes up in conversations with colleagues, other school mums, and friends; sometimes quietly, sometimes with admiration threaded through it. In fact, I sometimes ask my female clients the same question:

How do you do it all?

The work. The caring. The remembering. The holding together of so many moving parts.

The question rests on a myth that many women at this life stage have quietly carried for years. That competence means limitless capacity. That strength looks like powering through. That saying no isn’t an option. That “doing it all” is both possible and desirable.

What I see, over and over in my clinical work, is just how early this expectation takes root.

Last week, what was meant to be a straightforward appointment with our GP for my little girl became an emergency dash to the hospital in an ambulance. It’s the kind of curveball that comes with the territory of being a parent; sudden, uninvited, and deeply unsettling.

In moments like these, time stretches and contracts all at once. There is the sharp shock of fear, the blur of voices and movement, and the heavy uncertainty of not knowing what comes next.

When life takes a sudden turn for any of us, it doesn’t just affect our thoughts or emotions. It lands, quickly and powerfully, in our body; in the nervous system. While emergencies, frightening news, or unexpected changes are part of being human, their suddenness can jolt us out of our sense of safety, and because they arrive without warning, they often overwhelm our usual ways of coping, leaving our body on high alert long after the moment has passed.