Mindfulness Matters—But Not in the Way You Might Think.

A psychoanalytic reflection on Ezra Klein’s podcast on mindfulness: “Why Does My Mind Keep Thinking That?”

In his recent podcast episode, Why Does My Mind Keep Thinking That?, Ezra Klein speaks with psychiatrist and Buddhist practitioner Mark Epstein about the mind’s habit of circling—returning again and again to the same thoughts, doubts, and worries. It’s a familiar complaint in psychotherapy: Why does my mind keep doing this? Why can’t I let it go?

Understandably, people often seek therapy looking for ways to interrupt these thought loops. And many contemporary treatment models rise to meet that demand—offering techniques to reframe, redirect, or neutralize distressing thoughts. These approaches can be useful in certain contexts, especially in moments of crisis. But when symptom relief becomes the primary goal, something essential can be lost.

From the perspective of depth-oriented psychotherapy repetitive thinking isn’t a flaw to fix—it’s a communication. Symptoms, including intrusive or cyclical thoughts, often reflect unresolved conflicts, unformulated experiences, or internal dilemmas that have no other outlet. When we rush to soothe or suppress them, we may succeed in feeling better—but only temporarily. The underlying structure remains unchanged.

This is one of the core tensions in psychotherapy today: treatments that focus on helping the ego regain control versus approaches that seek to understand what the ego might be defending against. When therapy becomes too focused on managing the mind, it can end up colluding with the very defenses that keep deeper emotional truths at bay. In doing so, it may inadvertently reinforce the patterns a person came to therapy hoping to change.

Mindfulness—when understood narrowly—can sometimes be recruited in this way, as another tool to distance oneself from discomfort. But as Epstein and Klein point out, mindfulness in its original form is something much more radical: a practice of noticing without fleeing. It is about developing a capacity to stay present with what the mind is doing, without rushing to correct or control it.

This overlaps meaningfully with psychoanalytic work. Both traditions value curiosity over correction, and both are interested in what emerges when we stay with experience rather than push it away. In analytic therapy, we make space to explore the function of a thought, not just its content. Why this? Why now? What purpose might this mental repetition serve?

When mindfulness is practiced in the service of this kind of inquiry, it ceases to be a quick fix. It becomes a way of relating to the mind itself—a way of fostering contact with emotional truths that might otherwise remain obscured. Rather than trying to make thoughts disappear, we begin to listen to them as we would a dream: with openness, interest, and a recognition that meaning is rarely obvious at first glance.

So yes—mindfulness matters. But not because it helps us clear the mind or banish unwanted thoughts. It matters because it helps us stay close enough to our inner world to understand it. And in psychoanalytic therapy, that understanding is the beginning of real change.