FREE WORKBOOK
FOR OVERTHINKERS
A practical guide to noticing earlier.
A short workbook to help you recognise the small shifts that happen before overthinking, overwhelm or familiar reactions gather momentum.
Learn what to look for, try simple ways to create more room in the moment, and use a five-day noticing experiment to begin recognising your own patterns earlier.
By submitting this form, you agree to receive ongoing updates
Why do I still react when I know better?
You can understand your patterns, know what usually helps and still find yourself overthinking, overwhelmed or reacting in ways you did not intend.
That is because a reaction often begins before we consciously recognise it. Small changes in body state, attention, mood and interpretation can already be shaping what feels true and what seems necessary.
Before Reaction Takes Over workbook helps you begin recognising those earlier shifts — while there is still more room to work with what happens next.
When thinking about the problem becomes the next problem.
- You replay conversations, decisions or things that have already happened.
- You spend a lot of time anticipating what might go wrong or trying to work out what to do next.
- You become more irritable, overwhelmed, withdrawn or reactive when your capacity is low.
- You can often spot other people’s patterns more easily than your own.
- You understand yourself quite well, but still find it hard to respond differently when it matters.
Over time, all that mental effort can become exhausting, especially when it fails to bring the clarity, relief or change you were hoping for.
There's another way to work with the moment.
Sometimes the very thinking we use to find relief can become part of what keeps the system under pressure.
The Noticing Way begins from a different question: what if we learn to work with experience while it is still unfolding?
Through small, repeatable micro-skills, you learn to work with shifts in the body, attention and mind, creating more room before familiar responses gather momentum.
EXPLORE THE NOTICING WAY“The moment before reaction is often small enough to miss — and important enough to change what happens next.”
Joanna JoustA, the noticing way
PSYCHOTHERAPIST
AUTHOR
EDUCATOR
Work with me.
I’m Joanna Joustra, a practising psychotherapist, relationship counsellor, author and educator, with ten years of clinical experience and three decades in contemplative practice and education.
My work sits at the intersection of psychology, the study of consciousness and contemporary understandings of how experience is shaped. I’m particularly interested in what happens before familiar patterns of thinking and reaction become established, and in how greater awareness at those earlier points can support more flexible ways of responding.
A large part of my work is translating complex ideas into practical ways of understanding ourselves and each other. That work led to The Noticing Way, a framework developed through years of clinical and educational practice.
Today, I write, teach and speak about psychological and relational literacy, the overextended mind, and the small moments in which greater awareness can create more room for care, choice and connection.
My aim is to make these ideas useful well beyond the therapy room — in everyday life, professional practice and organisations.
FREE WORKBOOK FOR OVERTHINKERS
Before Reaction Takes Over
A practical guide to noticing earlier
A short workbook to help you recognise the small shifts that happen before overthinking, overwhelm or familiar reactions gather momentum.
Learn what to look for, try simple ways to create more room in the moment, and use a five-day noticing experiment to begin recognising your own patterns earlier.
By submitting this form, you agree to receive ongoing updates.
