If you struggle with anxiety, low mood, stress, or if you just feel like you’re on edge a lot of the time, you’re not alone. Many people I work with say similar things:
“My mind just won’t switch off.”
“I overthink everything.”
“I know I’m being irrational, but I can’t stop.”
“It just takes the smallest thing and I feel overwhelmed and want to bury my head.”
“I keep telling myself I’m not good enough.”
“I feel anxious for no reason.”
Anxiety and stress are often at the base of so many other physical and mental health conditions. It weaves its way into sleep problems (struggling to fall sleep, or wide awake in the middle of the night?), impacts you emotionally (low mood, mood swings, irritability, lack of motivation), physically (digestive issues, IBS, stress headaches, high blood pressure, tense muscles) – the list goes on.
Before we look at solutions though, let’s help you understand why this is happening in the first place. Because once you understand how your brain works, so much of the shame and self-blame starts to fall away, and we can start to accept our behaviour, without judging ourselves – a seemingly small but actually hugely important step in moving forward.
So let’s take a look at what’s going on inside your brain — and why your anxious thoughts are actually very natural, even when they feel completely unhelpful.
Why Do I Behave Like This?
In order to understand why we sometimes behave irrationally, in ways that aren’t helpful, or feel negative, I want to introduce you to a very important part of your brain.
This is what we call the Primitive Mind (PM) — also known as the limbic system.
This is the part of the brain that drives emotions like anxiety, anger, jealousy and low mood. It’s also the part that tends to take over when we’re stressed, overwhelmed, or under pressure.
And here’s something really important to understand straight away: this is not a fault or a flaw. This is how we humans are wired.
Once you understand that what’s happening is your Primitive Mind doing its job, it gives you a really useful framework for understanding why your brain behaves the way it does — and how we can help you operate less from this primitive state and more from your Intellectual Mind – the prefrontal cortex – the part of the brain that assesses situations properly, problem-solves, thinks rationally, and imagines positive futures.
So, What Is My Primitive Mind?
Your Primitive Mind is made up of a few key parts of the brain working together.
* the amygdala – the sentry, on the lookout for danger – also known as your fight, flight or freeze centre
* the hippocampus – the filing cabinet – stores those learned behaviour patterns and emotional memories.
* the hypothalamus – the pharmacist – dispenses and regulates the chemical responses in your body and mind eg stress hormones so you’re physically and mentally in a state to fight, flee or freeze!
Our ancestors relied heavily on this part of the brain to survive day-to-day life. They were dealing with real, physical dangers — bear attacks, enemy tribesmen, harsh and unpredictable environments.
Why Is My Primitive Mind So Negative and Obsessive?
The Primitive Mind evolved to keep us alive in those conditions. Because of that, it is naturally a negative mind – not in a personal way, but in a survival way.
Its job is to look for danger, to imagine worst-case scenarios, to prepare you in case something bad happens. That is its sole purpose.
So, if you find yourself constantly scanning for what could go wrong, checking and re-checking things, turning situations over and over in your mind, worrying endlessly — that’s your Primitive Mind at work.
From its point of view, if it’s scanning for danger all the time, then you’re more likely to stay safe. It’s relying on all those previous templates stored in its filing cabinet — the hippocampus — that say, “Last time this felt scary, this is what we did, and we survived. Let’s do that again.”
When your Primitive Mind is active, it keeps you in a state of obsessive hypervigilance. Anxiety is high. Your body and mind are prepped to react at any given moment, giving you a constant state of high alert.
Another important thing to know about the Primitive Mind is that it only lives in the present moment. It has no long-term view of what’s good for you. It’s not interested in your happiness next year or your confidence in the future. And it absolutely is not interested in change!
It’s only interested in getting you out of what it believes is imminent danger — whether that danger is real or just perceived.
The issue is that those behaviours might not be very healthy now.
Maybe your survival state makes you snappy or angry.
Maybe it keeps you feeling low and withdrawn.
Maybe it has you constantly on edge, anxious about the smallest changes.
The Primitive Mind isn’t checking whether those responses are helpful — it’s just trying to protect you.
Anger, Depression, Anxiety – The Primitive Protective Responses
When your brain thinks you’re in danger or crisis, it reacts immediately to keep you safe.
Anger, depression and anxiety are actually all primitive responses to help protect us
Let’s look at each one more closely.
*Anger and the Primitive Mind
For our ancestors, danger often came in the form of wild animals or other tribesmen. If they sensed physical danger, anger was a useful response because it increased strength and readiness to defend.
That wiring is still there.
So if you ever find yourself responding with sudden anger — shouting, snapping, feeling overwhelmed — especially when someone has been endlessly picking at you, that’s your Primitive Mind stepping in.
It’s an unconscious response, designed to defend against physical danger. The only difference is that these days, those “threats” are less like tigers or polar bears and more like the emotional threat of reading the news, a disagreement with your partner, your boss, that friend… or, dare I say it, even your kids.
*Low Mood and the Primitive Mind
Low mood also makes a lot of sense when we look at it through this lens.
If our primitive ancestors looked outside and saw dangerous environmental conditions — snow, ice, lack of food — they wouldn’t go out and hunt. That would be too risky.
Instead, they’d preserve their energy, go back into the cave, pull the bearskin over their heads, and not come out again while conditions were dangerous. Those characteristics: sleeping lots, not wanting to get out of bed, no energy or motivation – are recognisable if you’re suffering from low mood.
In this state, the Primitive Mind is directing the behaviour into a survival state and holding someone there in an unconscious pattern — again, with the intention of protection.
*Anxiety and the Primitive Mind
Anxiety is probably the most obvious Primitive Mind response.
If a polar bear suddenly appeared, the amygdala would immediately set off the fight, flight or freeze response. The hippocampus would search for a template of how to behave when you meet a polar bear. The hypothalamus would release the appropriate chemicals to prepare the body.
That’s what creates the classic anxiety symptoms: heart racing, sweating, churning stomach, hypersensitive to change.
These are very effective if you’re facing a bear, but there aren’t many polar bears lurking in the darkest alleyways of The Lanes in Brighton these days. Instead, our modern life threats might look more like that big meeting we have tomorrow, bills that need paying, that important exam, a social event that we don’t want to attend.
The brain reacts in exactly the same way.
How Anxiety Builds Over Time
Now here’s something really important to understand.
The Primitive Mind does not know the difference between imagination and reality.
Let that sink in for a moment.
Each and every time you have a negative thought, replay an argument in your head, imagine how badly that meeting might go, or picture how uncomfortable a situation could feel, your brain stores that as an actual event that was threatening and turned out badly.
The hippocampus logs it as something you’ve experienced negatively — and therefore something to be feared again in the future.
So even if something hasn’t happened yet, your brain treats it as if it has.
Each of these experiences, real or imagined, gets added to your stress bucket. And the fuller that stress bucket becomes, the heavier it feels, and the more it keeps you stuck in Primitive Mind mode.
How Solution Focused Hypnotherapy Works
Understanding your Primitive Mind changes the way you see yourself.
You’re not broken.
You’re not weak.
You’re not failing at coping.
You’re human — with a brain that evolved from surviving a primitive world.
Solution Focused Hypnotherapy works by using proven techniques based in neuroscientific understanding.
Hypnosis allows us to calm the brain, communicate directly with the Primitive Mind, helping it learn that it doesn’t need to stay on red alert all the time.
Over time, this creates real, lasting change – not because you’re forcing yourself to think differently but because your brain genuinely feels calmer, clearer and more able to cope with life again.
Through the Solution Focused Therapy work, together we find healthier ways to respond that align more with the person who you want to be, with the values and the life that you define for yourself in our sessions. We calm the Primitive Mind, allowing for change to happen, and strengthen the Intellectual Mind where you can more freely live your life making positive, healthy and creative choices.
With the right understanding and support, your brain can learn that it’s safe again — and when that happens, everything starts to feel easier.
