Nicola hare - The reset therapist
Why Can't I Switch Off?
There are people who finish work at 5pm and genuinely leave it there. They close the laptop, stop thinking about the emails, and mentally clock out.
And then there are the rest of us.
The people replaying conversations in the shower. Mentally rewriting tomorrow’s to-do list at midnight. Feeling guilty while resting. Constantly scanning for what needs fixing, improving, anticipating, or managing.
If you’ve ever wondered why you can’t switch off, Transactional Analysis (TA) offers a surprisingly compassionate explanation.
What Is Transactional Analysis?
Transactional Analysis, developed by psychiatrist Eric Berne, is a psychological framework that explores how we think, feel, communicate, and relate to others.
One of the concepts of TA is the idea that we operate from three different ego states; Parent, Adult and Child.
Parent – the learned voices, rules, expectations, and beliefs we absorbed growing up
Adult – the rational, grounded, present-day part of us
Child – the emotional, adaptive, playful, or fearful part formed through early experiences
When we struggle to switch off, it’s often because the Parent or Child ego state is running the show — usually without us realising. Beliefs and rules created then buried in childhood are often behind our inabilty to switch off.
The Internal Driver That Never Stops
TA talks about something called drivers — this is the 'rules' part. If our worth feels condiciton and we do not feel ok about ourselves in childhood, we can decide that we can feel ok if...
If I can BE PERFECT / TRY HARD / PLEASE OTHERS / BE STRONG / HURRY UP
Because we created one or more of these rules or Driver Behaviours in order to feel ok and have worth, not doing them can cause anxiety. Yet doing them can be exhausting. Stopping to rest, therefore, can feel very uncomfortable and anxiety provoking.
How can you switch off if you must be perfect just to feel ok about yourself? Or if your rule is that you must always try hard and be working towards a goal?
Where is the chance to switch off if you are always ignoring your wants and needs to take care of other peoples? Stopping doesn't feel safe so you have to keep pushing yourself down to meet the needs of those around you. Switching off can feel wrong and selfish even when you know that logically it is good for you to do so.
The Be Strong (and carry on) by it's very nature doesn't want you to just be. It requires you to ignore your wants and needs and be the rock for others, to shoulder and push forwards regardless of your felt sense.
If you are in a Hurry Up driver, rushing though tasks and feeling like you've failed if they take longer than you'd have liked, this is also not conducive to being able to give yourself permission to switch off.
If you can’t switch off, there’s a good chance one or more of these drivers is permanently switched on in the background.
What are you attempting to escape from?
Another reason we may struggle to switch off is that staying busy means we can escape unresolved difficult feelings that may reside inside us. If we stop, we will be withourselves, with the difficult feelings we may be attmpting to run from.
You may avoid slowing down because stopping risks feeling emotions you’ve been suppressing for years.
Busyness becomes emotional armour. For many people, silence creates contact with feelings they’ve spent years outrunning:
uncertainty
sadness
anger
loneliness
fear of failure
fear of not being enough
So the mind keeps moving.
Not because it wants to torture you but because it learned movement equals safety.
Why Rest Feels Unsafe
One of the most powerful ideas in Transactional Analysis is that many of our adult behaviours were once intelligent survival strategies.
Maybe being productive earned praise.
Maybe being the good, easy one prevented conflict.
Maybe overachieving meant you were noticed.
Maybe hyper-awareness kept you emotionally protected.
Maybe you were hurried along or hurrying was role-modelled to you.
The problem is that what once helped us survive can later become the thing that exhausts us.
Your inability to switch off is not a weakness, it is not poor time management.
It may actually be a nervous system that learned that I am safest when I am useful, prepared, productive, or needed.
That’s not a scheduling issue.
That’s conditioning.
The Critical Parent Voice
Many people who can’t switch off have an extremely active Critical Parent ego state.
This is the internal voice that says:
“You should be doing more.”
“You haven’t earned rest yet.”
“Don’t be lazy.”
“Other people work harder.”
“You’re falling behind.”
Even during downtime, this voice keeps right on going. Evaluating, correcting, and pressuring.
Meanwhile, the Adult ego state — the calm, present, reality-based part of us — struggles to get a word in. It becomes contaminated by Critical Parent rules and demands.
The result? Even when you stop, your mind never does.
The Hidden Fear Beneath Overthinking
From a TA perspective, chronic mental activity is often protective. If I keep thinking I can stay prepared, avoid mistakes, stay valuable and needed. I stay in control.
Switching off can therefore feel psychologically dangerous, even if logically you know you’re safe.
So How Do You Actually Switch Off?
TA doesn’t just explain behaviour — it aims to increase awareness and choice.
It’s learning how to operate from your Adult state instead of unconscious drivers.
That means beginning to notice:
Which inner voice is speaking
What pressure you’re responding to
Whether the urgency is real or inherited
Whether productivity has become tied to self-worth
Real rest starts when we stop treating ourselves like machines that must constantly justify their existence. It’s about giving yourself permission to exist without performing or getting to know the blocks and protections that are currently preventing you from doing so.
Who taught you that you always have to be switched on? Maybe this way served you once but is it serving you now?
Once you understand the script you’ve been living by, you finally get the chance to rewrite it.
A Transactional Analysis Perspective
Contact
info@nicolahare.com
