Mens Immota
Mens Immota | /mɛnz ɪmˈmoʊ.tə/ | noun
Mens Immota means unshaken mind in Latin. It represents the ability to remain mentally and emotionally steady in the face of chaos or adversity.
This chapter explores how cultivating inner stability allows you to manage overwhelm and maintain control of your reactions, even when the world around you is unpredictable.
Managing Overwhelm
Combat the Overwhelm
When the world is unraveling, when fear and exhaustion creep in, when everything feels too much, you will need to know how to take back control. Not just for survival, but for sanity.
Dysregulation is a tool of oppression. They want you overwhelmed. They want you scattered, exhausted, reactive. Because a woman who cannot steady herself is easier to manipulate, easier to break, easier to silence.
How to Reground When Spiraling
There are ways to return to yourself, to regain control when the spiral starts. You don’t need to wait for the world to fix itself. You can take back your own mind and body. If you find yourself dysregulated or spiraling, try one of the following methods to calm your mind.
Anchor Yourself in the Present: When your thoughts are racing or your body feels out of control, bring yourself back to now. Try these methods:
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5-4-3-2-1 Method: Name 5 things you can see, 4 things you can touch, 3 things you can hear, 2 things you can smell, 1 thing you can taste.
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Touch something solid—a table, a wall, your own hand. Apply firm pressure. Physical sensation cuts through mental chaos.
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Cold exposure: Splash ice water on your face. Hold an ice cube in your hand. Shock your system back to the present.
Regulate Your Breathing: If you’re spiraling, with shallow, rapid breaths. Control your breath, and you control your body. Try the following:
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Box Breathing: Inhale for 4 seconds, hold for 4, exhale for 4, hold for 4. Repeat.
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Humming or Vibration: Activates the vagus nerve, calming your nervous system. Try humming, chanting, or even deep growling sounds.
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Straw Breathing: Breathe out slowly through pursed lips as if exhaling through a straw. The longer exhale will help your nervous system reset.
Shift Your Physical State: If your body is frozen, move. If your body is hyperactive, slow it down. If you need to break a cycle, explore these options:
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For Shutdowns & Freeze Responses: Shake your hands, stomp your feet, do wall push-ups, rock back and forth. Remind your body it is allowed to move.
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For Overwhelm & Hyperactivity: Weighted blankets, compression garments, or even lying on the floor can create a sense of containment and comfort.
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Tactile Reset: Rubbing your hands together, tapping on your chest (butterfly tapping), or squeezing a stress ball can break mental loops.
You can also override a spiral with a sensory resets.
When your mind is trapped in a spiral, waiting for clarity to return is a losing game. The fastest way out isn’t through willpower, it’s through the body. Your senses are the levers you can pull when logic fails. Shock the system via your senses, disrupt the loop, and force a reset.
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Use Taste: Strong mints, sour candy, or spicy foods can shock your system out of a mental loop.
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Use Smell: Essential oils, fresh coffee beans, or even opening a window for fresh air can provide a rapid reset.
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Use Sound: A song with predictable structure can guide a chaotic brain back into rhythm.
Control What You Can—Let Go of What You Can't
Not everything is yours to carry. The mind, when overwhelmed, will try to hold on to everything—every worry, every regret, every imagined catastrophe. The trick is knowing what is within your control and what must be set aside. Clarity comes not from wrestling with every thought but from deciding which ones are worth your time. Try these methods:
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Write it down: Thoughts trapped in your head multiply. Get them on paper. Burn them if you must.
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Categorize: Ask: Can I control this? If yes, plan one action. If no, release it.
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Mantras for Control: Have a few short phrases you repeat when overwhelmed, such as: “I am not my thoughts.” “I am still here.” “Breathe. Stand. Move.”
Neurodiversity Considerations
There is no single roadmap to a steady mind. What works for one brain may fail spectacularly for another. The key is not to fight against your nature, but to understand it. Different neurotypes require different strategies—adaptation is survival.
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For ADHD Brains: Movement may be your best regulation tool. Try walking while thinking, pacing while planning, or tapping a rhythm to refocus.
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For Autistic Brains: Stimming is not a flaw—it is a tool. If rocking, hand-flapping, or fidgeting helps, embrace it.
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For Anxiety-Prone Brains: Predictable repetition (mantras, counting, repetitive music) can create mental safety.
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For PTSD Brains: Triggers can hijack your reality. Have an “emergency reality check” phrase such as: “The threat is not here. I am safe.” Engage senses to re-anchor.
They count on you losing control. They count on you spiraling. Because when you’re at war with yourself, you cannot fight the war outside. But you? You are not so easily broken. You will learn the ways back to yourself. And once you know them, they can never take them from you.
"Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment." — Buddha
Historical Reflection
Harriet Jacobs
A cage does not have to be made of iron to break a person. It can be made of walls too low to stand, of air too stale to breathe, of time stretching endlessly with no promise of escape. Harriet Jacobs knew this all too well. She spent seven years hiding in an attic crawlspace, confined not by shackles but by the knowledge that stepping outside meant certain capture, certain torment, certain death. And yet—she did not let them take her mind.
Born into slavery, Harriet Jacobs endured violence, exploitation, and the ever-present threat of being sold away from those she loved. But she refused to be owned. When she learned that her enslaver intended to force her into complete submission, she made a choice—she ran, but not in the way they expected. Instead of fleeing north, she hid in the attic of her grandmother’s house, a space so small she could never fully stand, so dark that the only light came through a tiny peephole she carved herself.
For most, such confinement would have shattered the mind. But Jacobs understood that while her body was trapped, her thoughts did not have to be. She developed ways to keep herself present, to steady herself when despair threatened to take hold. She listened to the voices of her children playing below, anchoring herself in their laughter. She focused on the rhythms of the world outside—the way the seasons changed, the sounds of passing footsteps. And most of all, she wrote. In the solitude of that crawlspace, she shaped the story of her own survival, long before the world knew her name.
When she finally escaped to the North, she did not simply flee into anonymity. She turned her suffering into testimony. Her autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, was not just a personal account—it was a weapon against the system that had tried to crush her. She refused to be silent. She refused to be erased.
Harriet Jacobs was never truly free until she could stand in the open, but her greatest act of defiance was that she never surrendered herself—not to fear, not to despair, not to the weight of all she had endured. She held on to her mind, to her story, to her own sense of self. And because of that, she won.