Imagine you’re standing in a room.

It is completely dark.

Not oh, my eyes will adjust in a minute dark.

Pitch black.

You can’t see your hand in front of your face.

You know there’s a door somewhere, and you would very much like to leave.

So how do you get there?

You could stand perfectly still and think about it.

The door must be over there!

Maybe.

No, actually, judging from when I came in, perhaps it’s slightly to the left.

Excellent analysis.

Still in the room.

You could think harder.

You could reconstruct the floor plan.

You could think positively about doors.

I am a person who finds doors.

Still dark.

So eventually, what do you actually do?

You put your hands out.

You take a step.

Shuffle.

Feel.

There’s a wall.

Okay.

Move along it.

There’s the edge of something.

Ease around it.

Another step.

Another feel.

Until eventually —

there’s the door.

You feel your way out.

And emotional darkness works much the same way.

When we’re really inside something — fear, grief, anger, hopelessness, whatever it happens to be — we often try to solve it by thinking harder. And research has proven that that just makes your brain worse.

Why do I feel like this?

What does it mean?

What should I do?

What if this happens?

What if that happens?

Maybe if I analyse it for another three hours I’ll finally have the thought that releases me.

Except the thinking is happening inside the room.

The state you’re in influences what feels believable, what you notice and what possibilities you can even imagine.

So you go around again.

And again.

And call it problem-solving.

Sometimes you don’t need the answer.

You need movement.

What feels a little steadier?

What gives you a tiny bit of relief?

What thought makes your shoulders drop half a centimetre?

What makes you breathe differently?

What’s the emotional equivalent of putting your hand against the wall and saying:

Okay. This way.

You don’t need to see the door from where you are.

You don’t need a complete map of the room.

You don’t even need to know how many steps it will take.

You just need enough information for the next step.

That’s what I mean when I say:

You can’t think your way out of a dark place.

You feel your way.

And sometimes one of the easiest ways to change what you’re feeling is surprisingly mundane:

find something to think about that doesn’t suck.