You're always five steps ahead.
You're thinking about what needs to happen next, what someone might say, how a conversation could go, what you might have missed, and what you'll need to do if things don't go as planned.
Even when you're sitting still, your mind is busy. You're anticipating, preparing, rehearsing, solving. You might be watching a show, having dinner with a friend, or finally getting a free afternoon, but some part of you is already somewhere else.
And when you try to stop thinking, you can't quite seem to do it.
This kind of overthinking isn't always about having too many thoughts. Sometimes it's about feeling that you need to stay ahead of your own experience. As though you can't fully relax unless you've anticipated what might happen and prepared yourself for it.
For many neurodivergent women, this can be an exhausting way to move through life.
Because it's not simply a matter of having a busy mind. It's what happens when your nervous system doesn't quite believe it's safe to stop.
Anticipatory anxiety, or just how your mind works?
Maybe you've always been someone who thinks ahead. You're organized, capable, thoughtful, and good at anticipating what needs to happen.
Other people might even appreciate this about you.
But there's a difference between planning because it helps you and feeling as though you have to keep planning because you can't settle otherwise.
You might recognize some of these experiences:
Mentally rehearsing conversations before they happen, and replaying them afterwards.
Anticipating what someone might need, how they might react, or what could go wrong.
Finding it difficult to relax because there's always something else you could be doing.
Monitoring other people's moods and adjusting yourself accordingly.
Struggling to settle into something enjoyable because your mind keeps moving to the next task or potential problem.
Feeling uneasy when you don't know what's coming or when you haven't thought something through.
Being physically still while your mind is working through an endless list of possibilities.
Sometimes this is described as anticipatory anxiety. But for some women, it has become so familiar that it doesn't even register as anxiety anymore.
It just feels like how their mind works.
What staying ahead does for you
There's usually a reason a pattern like this develops.
Thinking ahead can offer a sense of control when things feel uncertain. It can help you prepare for difficult interactions, avoid mistakes, anticipate other people's needs, or reduce the possibility of being caught off guard.
It may have helped you navigate relationships, family dynamics, school, work, or environments where being prepared and highly attuned to other people felt important.
For some women, being five steps ahead became a way of staying safe.
If you could anticipate what someone needed, you might avoid conflict. If you could prepare for every possibility, you might avoid criticism. If you could stay alert to changes in someone's mood, you might have a better chance of knowing what was coming.
The problem is that a strategy that once offered protection can become exhausting when it never switches off.
You might find yourself continuing to anticipate problems even when you're not in a situation that requires it. Your mind keeps working, even when there's nothing particularly urgent to solve.
And the more you rely on thinking ahead to feel settled, the harder it can become to tolerate not knowing.
Hypervigilance and masking: the invisible work neurodivergent women do
For many neurodivergent women, this constant mental activity is layered on top of the work of navigating environments that weren't designed with their brains or sensory systems in mind.
There may be an ongoing effort to monitor social interactions, interpret expectations, manage sensory input, remember tasks, compensate for executive functioning challenges, and figure out how to respond in ways that other people find acceptable.
Some of this may involve masking: consciously or unconsciously adapting, concealing, or compensating for aspects of yourself in order to fit into social or professional environments.
It can mean thinking about what you said, how you said it, whether you came across the right way, and what you should do differently next time.
It can also mean anticipating what might be expected of you before anyone has even asked.
This is a tremendous amount of invisible work.
And when you've spent years monitoring yourself and your surroundings, it's not surprising that switching off can feel unfamiliar or even uncomfortable.
You may not experience this as being anxious. You may simply feel that you can never quite let your guard down.
The free afternoon you can't enjoy
Imagine that you have an entire afternoon to yourself.
Nothing urgent needs to be done. You've finished your work, there are no appointments, and you've been looking forward to having some time to relax.
You sit down.
Within a few minutes, you remember something you need to organize. You get up to put a few things away. Then you notice an email you haven't answered. While responding, you remember something else that needs to be planned.
Eventually, you find yourself standing in the kitchen, reorganizing a cupboard, wondering how you got there.
You might tell yourself to stop. You might even feel frustrated that you can't just enjoy the afternoon.
But something about being still doesn't feel quite right.
Perhaps there's a restless feeling in your chest, a tightness in your stomach, or an urge to get up and do something. Maybe you don't notice much in your body at all, just a persistent sense that you should be doing something else.
And even if you manage to sit down again, your mind keeps moving.
The difficulty isn't necessarily that you don't know how to relax. It's that slowing down can bring you into contact with feelings, sensations, or uncertainty that you've learned to stay ahead of.
If this difficulty slowing down feels familiar, you might also recognize some of what I explore in Why You Can't Let Yourself Rest.
You already understand it. So why doesn't it stop?
You might have spent years trying to understand your overthinking.
You know you have perfectionist tendencies. You understand that you take on too much responsibility. You recognize the ways you anticipate other people's needs or try to control outcomes.
Perhaps you've read the books, listened to the podcasts, journalled, and talked it through in therapy.
And yet, when something activates the pattern, you're right back where you started.
This can be deeply frustrating.
Insight can help you recognize and understand a pattern. But understanding why you do something doesn't necessarily change what happens in your body when that pattern gets activated.
You can know that a situation is safe and still experience tension, urgency, or an almost automatic need to prepare for what might happen next.
This is where working with the body can offer something different.
Rather than trying to think your way out of overthinking, somatic therapy invites you to become curious about what's happening underneath it.
What happens when you pause?
What do you notice in your body when you aren't preparing, anticipating, or solving something?
And what might that experience be telling you?
The intention isn't to force yourself to relax or make your mind go quiet. It's to begin understanding the experience that makes staying ahead feel necessary.
A small experiment: sixty seconds of not preparing
This isn't about stopping your thoughts or making yourself feel calm. It's simply an opportunity to notice what happens when you don't immediately follow the urge to prepare or solve something.
If it feels comfortable, try this:
Pause. Choose a moment when you're not in the middle of something urgent. Give yourself sixty seconds without trying to get ahead of anything.
Notice the pull. Is there an urge to check something, plan something, get up, or mentally rehearse a conversation? You don't have to stop it. Just notice.
Find the body experience. If you can, bring some attention to what is happening physically. Is there tension, restlessness, pressure, tightness, or something else?
Stay curious. Notice what happens if you give that sensation a little room without immediately trying to change it. If it feels comfortable, allow your exhale to lengthen slightly. There's nothing you need to force or change.
Wonder what the pattern is protecting. Is there something about not knowing, not preparing, or not being in control that feels difficult? You might ask yourself what a part of you is trying to prevent.
If this feels overwhelming, you don't need to stay with it. Open your eyes, look around the room, notice your surroundings, and return to something that helps you feel grounded.
The point isn't to get it right. It's to begin noticing what happens beneath the thinking.
What this can look like in therapy
I sometimes work with women who are articulate, insightful, and very good at understanding themselves.
They can explain their perfectionism, their anxiety, their relationship patterns, and the reasons they find it difficult to switch off. They may have spent years trying to make sense of why they feel the way they do.
And still, their minds keep working.
In somatic therapy, we might begin by slowing things down enough to notice what's happening in the moment. Rather than staying only with the explanation, we become curious about the physical experience that accompanies it.
What happens in the chest when there's nothing left to do? What does the urge to anticipate feel like? Is there a familiar sense of urgency, or perhaps something harder to name?
Sometimes, as we pay attention, an older feeling or expectation begins to emerge. It might be a sense that letting your guard down isn't safe, or that something will go wrong if you're not paying attention.
We don't need to assume that's what is happening, or push toward a particular realization. We follow what's present, at a pace that feels manageable.
This is one way of working with patterns that insight alone hasn't shifted. It gives us an opportunity to explore the experience underneath the thinking, rather than asking you to think even harder about why you think so much.
You don't have to stop planning. You just get to choose.
Being thoughtful, prepared, and able to anticipate what might happen aren't inherently problems.
You don't need to become someone who never thinks ahead. You don't need to abandon your ability to plan, organize, or notice what other people might need.
But what if you didn't have to be five steps ahead all the time?
What if you could enjoy an afternoon without mentally running through everything that might need your attention?
What if you could be in a conversation without simultaneously monitoring how it's going?
What if you could let something be unfinished, uncertain, or outside your control without feeling compelled to solve it immediately?
The work isn't about getting rid of the parts of you that have learned to stay alert. It's about understanding them, and gradually creating more room for other ways of being.
Somatic therapy can help you explore these patterns through your present-moment experience, rather than relying on insight alone.
In my work, I also draw on approaches such as Brainspotting and Deep Brain Reorienting (DBR).
Brainspotting uses eye position and focused attention to support the processing of distressing experiences and the emotional responses associated with them.
Deep Brain Reorienting works with early orienting and startle responses that can occur before we consciously identify an emotion or make sense of what is happening. It offers a way to explore some of the earliest responses involved in distress.
Both approaches can be integrated into somatic therapy, depending on what you're experiencing and what feels appropriate for your work.
If you're a neurodivergent woman who is exhausted from constantly thinking, anticipating, and preparing, you may not need another strategy for managing your thoughts.
You may need space to understand why switching off feels so difficult in the first place.
I offer online somatic therapy for neurodivergent women experiencing overwhelm, burnout, overthinking, and the exhaustion of always being one step ahead.
You can learn more about somatic therapy for neurodivergent women and how we might work together.
About Shari Lee Block
Shari Lee Block, MSW, RSW, is a somatic therapist with over 20 years of experience. Her work integrates somatic therapy, Brainspotting, Deep Brain Reorienting (DBR), and an understanding of neurodivergence. She works with neurodivergent women (and anyone else who resonates with what she offers) navigating burnout, overwhelm, and the often invisible work of trying to make life feel manageable.
If you're wondering whether this kind of work might be right for you, you're welcome to arrange a consultation.
