Skillpower—Caring for Ourselves Mentally

This week we’re focusing on mental self-care and how changing the conditions inside the brain can make daily thinking more workable. When the brain has too much stimulation to process, familiar loops—especially food-related ones—appear more quickly, and everyday tasks feel harder than they should.

One member described something that kept happening whenever she tried to start a simple afternoon task. She sat down with the intention to focus, but almost immediately her thoughts began to stack on top of each other. She remembered something she hadn’t finished, noticed the urge to check a notification, felt her internal pace speed up, and suddenly her attention was split three different ways. Nothing dramatic was happening, but she couldn’t get traction. The task felt harder than it should, and by the end of the day she felt mentally worn down.

The brain responds directly to the conditions around it. When there is too much stimulation—screens, unfinished tasks, notifications, rapid shifts in attention—the frontal lobe has to work harder just to stay engaged. That extra strain makes simple thinking feel more complicated. It becomes harder to stay with one idea, harder to sort through information, and harder to direct your attention where you want it to go.

Mental self-care works by lowering that strain. Even small reductions in stimulation give the brain more room to organize thoughts, hold focus, and process what’s in front of you without being pulled in multiple directions. When the brain has more capacity, thinking feels smoother and less effortful. You aren’t pushing harder—your brain simply has better conditions to work in.

Skill of the Week: Lowering Competing Inputs

This week, we’re practicing how to reduce the number of demands the brain is processing at the same time. When the brain is asked to track multiple cues, tasks, or interruptions at once, it shifts into a faster, more reactive mode. Lowering those competing inputs gives the brain the conditions it needs to think more clearly.

Here’s how to work with it:

• Reduce how many things are pulling on attention
Close unnecessary tabs or windows, silence notifications for short periods, and set aside anything that is not part of the task in front of you. Fewer active inputs make it easier for the brain to stay steady.

• Give the brain one direction at a time
Choose a single point of focus — even briefly. When the brain doesn’t have to juggle multiple threads, thinking becomes more organized and less effortful.

• Insert short pauses to reset the system
A brief pause before beginning the next step interrupts the momentum of scattered thinking. This gives the brain a chance to settle before taking on the next demand.

These small shifts reduce unnecessary load on the brain, making it easier to stay with what you’re doing and allowing mental self-care to support clearer, more workable thinking.

If you’d like to watch this week’s lesson video, you can find it here

As you practice this skill, remember that none of us are doing this alone. We’re learning how to create better conditions for the brain together, one workable step at a time.

Join the Weekly Skillpower Workshop

If you’d like to walk through this together, you’re welcome to join the live Skillpower workshop. You may attend either session:

Wednesday at 11 AM EST
Wednesday at 7 PM EST

🔗 Join here
Please edit your Zoom name to include SP when joining so we know you’re part of the Skillpower program.

We’re rebuilding this gently, steadily, and together—one small moment of clarity at a time.

Warmly,

Sheila Gravely
ARC Director, Certified FARA