Most daily reactivity happens in an unconscious 'trance' state

Brach describes a common condition she calls trance: being swept along by circling anxious thoughts, habitual bodily tension, and reflexive emotional reactions without any real awareness that it's happening. In trance, she argues, people are cut off from their bodies, disconnected from their hearts, and driven by fears and beliefs operating below the threshold of conscious attention — reacting to old patterns rather than responding to what's actually occurring right now.

She illustrates this with an image of being "lost in a forest" of habitual thought, where simply pausing to notice one's immediate, moment-to-moment experience creates a clearing — a small space of awareness that interrupts the automatic reactive loop. Recognizing you're in trance, she insists, has to come before any healing can begin, since you can't consciously choose a different response to something you aren't even aware is happening.

Takeaway: you can't change a pattern you don't notice — the first step out of reactivity is simply realizing you're caught in it.