Most people would like a gap sometime on Sunday night for a quiet moment to yourself, but even when a space appears, within seconds a thought jumps in. Your brain has started running through tomorrow’s to-do list anyway, circling back to something someone said last week, or drafting a reply to a message you haven’t even opened yet.
It’s as if thoughts just start playing in your head without being asked for, and you inadvertently engage with them anyway.
In addition to the challenge of not getting the benefits of some quiet time, there’s often an additional layer that can feel like something’s wrong when this happens. Maybe you tell yourself you’re bad at relaxing, or you give yourself a hard time for not knowing how to switch off. It’s like you know you want to be relaxing on a Sunday night, but these thoughts just keep popping in.
It might feel frustrating, like your mind is letting you down by not being able to let you enjoy the gap, but it’s often the brain doing exactly what it’s been developed to do. Neuroscientist Marcus Raichle identified a specific network in the brain that switches on precisely when you’re not focused on anything external. It’s called the ‘ Default Mode Network’, and was first identified in 2001 and has been widely replicated since. When your attention isn’t occupied by a task, this network activates and starts generating thoughts on its own without any instruction from you to do it at all.
It's a bit like hearing a podcast playing on a device in another room that had been left on. You can't quite place where the sound is coming from, but the device is simply doing what it was programmed to do, quietly filling the silence whether you wanted it to or not.
And the same is often true of your mind when it generates thoughts during quiet times. The brain is doing what this particular network is meant to do. It’s very similar to the way your lungs keep breathing without you deciding to take each breath. It happens automatically in the background, without you having any say in the matter.
This is important to be aware of because so much of the discomfort and frustration around a wandering mind comes from the negative meaning we attach to it. If you believe a quiet moment should be completely silent and free from thought, then when a thought finds its way straight into the gap, it can feel like you’re doing something wrong. So you start trying to force stillness, which usually just adds another layer of effort and frustration on top of what was already there.
But the wandering mind is likely just the default mode network doing its job. It’s not worth berating yourself over, and making the situation worse. Often it's this extra layer (the thoughts about the situation) that create most of the stress, way more than the situation itself.
You can still aim to get to a place where there is silence, or peacefulness, through learning new ways of letting thoughts go, or through meditation or another technique (and there’s more about that coming soon). But it’s important not to give yourself a hard time just because you have a gap and a thought creeps straight in. It’s your brain doing what it’s meant to be doing, and that’s ok.
The next time your mind drifts off somewhere uninvited, in the middle of trying to rest, or in a moment you’d hoped would be still, see if you can notice it without adding a judgement on top. It's simply the brain running its normal background process, the same way it always has.
You don’t always have to silence your mind, but if you can recognise the activity for what it is, and not give yourself a hard time in the process, it’s more likely to make your Sunday night a little less stressful.