Have you ever noticed the voice that does not stop when you do?
Your body is tired, the lights are off, yet your mind is still running. “What if this happens? What if that does not? What if tomorrow is worse?” That voice loops at night when the world is quiet — a constant background noise that never seems to rest.
I recall a time when that voice seemed louder than the day itself. Lying in bed, I would replay conversations, catastrophise outcomes, and script responses to things that had not even happened. The more I tried to silence it, the louder it became. It felt like resilience was slipping further away the harder I fought.
Why suppression backfires
Science shows why. Trying to suppress thoughts only fuels them. Psychologists call this the rebound effect. The brain interprets suppression as a threat, keeping the alarm system switched on.
By contrast, expression — naming the thought or emotion, writing it down, or putting it outside of yourself — calms the limbic system and re-engages the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that makes sense of the noise. The voice does not need to be silenced. It needs to be given another place to speak.
Your brain on “naming it”
The turning point comes when we start noticing — really noticing — what we are feeling. Naming those emotions is often the first step to loosening their grip.
Scientists call this affect labeling. When you give a feeling a name — anxious, restless, frustrated — your brain begins to handle it differently. Brain imaging studies show that this process reduces activity in the brain’s alarm circuits while strengthening the prefrontal regions responsible for regulation and problem-solving. In plain terms: once it is named, it loses some of its grip. You are no longer only inside the experience — you can see it from the outside. Simply saying, “I feel anxious,” can work like a release valve. The weight does not vanish, but it becomes lighter and easier to hold.
Writing makes it visible
Another way to create relief is writing. Decades of research on expressive writing have shown that capturing one’s thoughts and feelings can reduce stress, improve mood, support better sleep, and even enhance immune function. Once something is on the page, the brain no longer has to continually rehearse it in the background. You can look at it, sort it, or set it aside. Expression shifts what is held inside the body into language, where it loses some of its grip. What once felt endless begins to take shape. Moreover, once it takes shape, it can shift.
Creating space to put things down
This is why private, symbolic practices of release matter. They do not depend on eloquence or the “right” words. They are not therapy or coaching. Sometimes they end with keeping what you wrote, other times with destroying it. Either way, the act of externalising is enough to interrupt the cycle.
Because what we cannot name, we continue to carry within us. And sometimes, the smallest relief comes not from solving everything, but from finally putting it into words — and watching the weight lose its grip.
The science behind it is clear. The practice itself is simple. And the effect can be profound: a person walks in carrying something silently and leaves knowing they no longer own the same space inside them.
If you do nothing else today, take thirty seconds to name what you feel. That small act tells your nervous system you are no longer being chased by it.
Resilience is not about how much more you can absorb. It is about what you are willing to put down.