When Your Brain Brings Back Old Favorites
How to Meet Familiar Thought Patterns with New Tools
Hey friend.
Welcome back to Running to Myself. I’m your host Trisha Stanton.
Today I want to talk about something that comes up for almost every single person I coach. And if I’m honest, it comes up for me too. Even after years of learning these tools and teaching them.
Recently, a client was describing a situation that had come up for her and she said,
“I feel like all these old thoughts are coming up and it’s taking me right back to where I used to be.”
If you’ve ever felt that way, you’re not alone.
We talked about how learning to manage your mind does not mean the negative thoughts never come up again. It doesn’t mean your brain gets permanently rewired into calm confidence.
The purpose of learning to manage your mind is so you have the power to decide which thoughts get to stay.
It’s to control what gets to take up residence in your mind.
I often picture the mind like a house. Thoughts are always knocking. Some show up politely. Some sneak in when you’re tired. Some kick the door open like they pay rent.
Mind management is not about never letting thoughts in. It’s about noticing when an old one gets cozy and deciding whether it actually belongs there.
And yes, sometimes you have to exterminate.
I assured my client that no one is immune from having to battle it out in their mind sometimes. And that absolutely includes me.
So today I want to share something a little more vulnerable. I love sharing lessons and stories from the other side of growth. What I don’t always share is how messy it can get inside my own head, even after years of doing this work and being coached myself.
What I want you to hear clearly is this.
The need to manage your thoughts is never going to go away.
As long as you have thoughts, you either manage them or they manage you.
There are some beliefs you will fully outgrow. Some will lose their power and stop showing up altogether.
And then there are others. Older ones. Familiar ones. The kind that can resurface when you least expect them and try to pull you backward.
That’s what my client was experiencing. And just a few days later, it was my turn.
Thought patterns I was convinced I had already dealt with started popping up with surprising intensity. My brain seemed to gather every insecurity it could find and spray them at me with the force of a firehose.
If you’ve ever been in that place, you know how overwhelming it can feel. Especially when you start wondering why this is happening at all.
So let’s zoom out for a moment.
Context matters.
I had been out of my daily routine for several consecutive days because I was helping at my daughter’s massage studio. I chose that. I would make the same choice again.
And I also know this about myself. Being out of my routine for more than a couple of days stresses my nervous system.
Add to that some medical and insurance hurdles that were costly and concerning. Add the holidays approaching, which always bring another round of practicing what I teach about accepting people right where they are, even when that means loving from afar.
And then came the final straw in my mental warfare.
My husband asked, “Are you upset?”
To his credit, he did not say calm down.
But in that moment, when he genuinely could not understand why I might be upset, my brain thought, Oh good. A target.
Suddenly all my frustration had somewhere to land and it was him. Poor guy had absolutely no idea what was happening in my head. He was just accurately reading my body language.
And listen, give a menopausal woman a place to direct her frustration and that can be very tempting.
Fortunately for both of us, I had to leave the house quickly.
That moment mattered.
Because as I was driving, I started to see what was actually happening. My brain was offering me every negative thought it could find, from every corner of my life, all at once.
It was a perfect storm. Not because things were unmanageable. But because my nervous system was stretched, my routine was disrupted, and my brain was doing what brains do under stress.
Looking for problems. Looking for danger. Looking for proof that things are not okay.
That was my cue to step in.
Not perfectly. Not cheerfully. But intentionally.
And this is where I want to slow down and share what this looks like in practice, because this is where the real work happens.
The first thing I did was simply name what was happening.
Not with judgment. Not with frustration. Just awareness.
I didn’t think, “What is wrong with me?”
I thought, “Oh. This is one of those moments.”
“My brain is offering me old thoughts again.”
That small shift matters. When you name it that way, you’re no longer inside the thought. You’re observing it.
The second thing I did was check the conditions I was operating under.
Before trying to reason my way out of anything, I asked myself a few simple questions.
How rested am I?
How regulated does my body feel?
How far am I from my normal rhythm?
A dysregulated nervous system will always tell louder and scarier stories. That’s not a mindset failure. That’s biology.
Sometimes the most helpful thing you can do is not argue with a thought but give your body what it needs. Water. Rest. Space. A pause.
Then I slowed the spiral down to one thought at a time.
My brain wanted to present everything all at once. Past mistakes. Current stress. Future what ifs.
I didn’t have to address the whole pile.
I took one thought and gently examined it.
Was I actually angry at my husband? No.
Was he the problem? Also no.
Would I be able to work through the medical and insurance hurdles in front of me? Yes. Maybe not how I wanted, but yes.
I wasn’t trying to be positive. I was being honest.
Next, I reminded myself of something that is easy to forget in moments like these.
Discomfort is not danger.
Feeling unsettled does not mean something is wrong.
Feeling anxious does not mean I am unsafe.
Feeling triggered does not mean I am going backward.
My brain was confusing discomfort with threat. My job was to remind it that I could feel uncomfortable and still be okay.
Then I chose the next kind thought, not the perfect one.
I didn’t leap to gratitude or optimism.
Sometimes the most believable thought is something like,
“This is hard and I can handle it.”
“I don’t have to solve everything today.”
“This feeling will move through.”
Belief grows through gentleness, not force.
And finally, I let the whole process be what it is. A practice.
Some days I catch the spiral early. Some days I notice it after I’ve already been in it for a while.
Both count.
Mind management is not about never struggling. It’s about shortening the time between struggle and awareness.
I’ll be honest. This isn’t always fun. Sometimes I want to throw a pity party. Sometimes I want to declare the day a loss and crawl into bed.
Not every day is a good day.
But I have lived on both sides of this work. And I am forever convinced that building this muscle is one of the most valuable things I have learned in my adult life.
Friend, if old thoughts are showing up for you right now, nothing has gone wrong.
You are not broken.
You are not back at the beginning.
You are practicing.
And practice is exactly where change happens.
Thanks for being here with me today.
Take care of your mind. It’s worth managing.
