Why Your Scattered Mind Isn't Broken—It's Brilliant

Posted on September 14, 2025 by Stacy Braiuca, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.

Why Your Scattered Mind Isn’t Broken—It’s Brilliant
“I’m just so scattered. I can’t focus on one thing. My mind jumps from project to project, and I never finish anything properly.”

Sound familiar?

If you’re a multi-passionate woman who’s been told your scattered mind is a problem to fix, I have news for you: You’ve been lied to.

Your mind isn’t broken—it’s not a deficit. It’s not something that needs to be “cured” or “managed” into submission.

Your scattered mind is actually a sign of brilliance—and I can prove it.

The Multi-Passionate Mind: A Misunderstood Gift
Research in cognitive psychology shows that people with “scattered” thinking patterns often possess what scientists call “cognitive flexibility”—the ability to switch between different concepts and think about multiple concepts simultaneously.

This isn’t a bug in your mental programming; it’s a feature.

Studies from Harvard Business Review reveal that multi-passionate individuals (they call them “polymaths”) are:

3x more likely to identify innovative solutions
2.5x better at connecting seemingly unrelated concepts
40% more adaptable to changing circumstances
Your scattered mind is actually a sophisticated neural network designed for complex problem-solving and creative innovation.

The Shame That Keeps You Small
But here’s what happens: From childhood, we’re told to “pick one thing and stick with it.” We’re shamed for our curiosity, punished for our diverse interests, and made to feel like our natural way of thinking is somehow wrong.

This creates what I call “scattered shame”—a deep belief that our multi-passionate nature is a character flaw rather than a superpower. These shame squirrels become part of our inner squirrel collection, representing the limiting beliefs and negative emotions that hold us back from being who we really want to be.

This shame becomes the breeding ground for anxiety. We second-guess our decisions, worry we’re not focused enough, and exhaust ourselves trying to fit into a single-passion world that was never designed for minds like ours. We end up running on that squirrel wheel of worry instead of celebrating our natural brilliance.

My Journey from Scattered Shame to Strategic Celebration
Hello, I’m Stacy Braiuca, known as the Squirrel Wrangler, and I understand this struggle intimately. For 20 years as a clinical therapist helping others with anxiety, I was secretly struggling with my own Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD). I was like that duck that seems so calm on the surface and paddling like hell underneath the water.

I know what it’s like to lay awake at 2 AM with racing thoughts, to second-guess every decision, and to feel like you’re drowning in your own mind. You know that feeling when your thoughts are completely out of control? Those are your inner squirrels of limiting beliefs, negative emotions and self-doubt, and they are exhausting you.

Then on November 17, 2022, everything changed during a two week intensive Master Practitioner Certification training on Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) and Mental Emotional Release® (MER®) techniques. During a demonstration of the techniques, something clicked at a cellular level. For the first time in decades, my mind went genuinely quiet. Not managed-quiet or medicated-quiet, but naturally, peacefully quiet. I was finally at rest.

And now three years on, the memory of what that anxiety felt like is a blurry old fuzzy memory, like a postcard from somewhere I was but really didn’t like.

The Four Pillar Framework: Organization, Not Elimination
Instead of trying to fix your scattered thinking, what if we organized it strategically?

My Four Pillar Framework that I created in 2001 transforms scattered shame, old programming, and other negativity into long overdue celebration for brilliant multi-passionate minds. Instead of feeling guilty about having multiple interests, you learn to celebrate your diverse capabilities as your unique superpower.

The Four Pillar Framework creates systematic rotation through four life areas:

Body: • Physical health • Energy management
• Somatic awareness

Mind: • Intellectual growth • Skill development • Cognitive expansion

Relationships: • Connection • Communication • Community building

Spirit: • Purpose • Meaning • Transcendent experiences

Rather than juggling multiple interests chaotically, you rotate through these pillars systematically. This gives your multi-passionate mind structure without stifling its natural brilliance.

The Science of Strategic Rotation
Neuroscience research shows that our brains perform optimally when we engage different neural networks in rotation rather than forcing sustained focus on single tasks.

This explains why you feel energized when working on multiple projects and drained when forced to focus on just one thing for extended periods. This is not to negate uses of great productivity techniques like Pomodoro where you focus on one task for 20 minutes and then take a break, etc; but to say that productivity and optimal performance need alignment, not opposition. With programming and practice you can weave the two together like a joyful and beautiful brain and productivity quilt.

Your brain is literally designed for variety, not monotony.

The Squirrel Wrangling Method: From Shame to Celebration
My personal breakthrough led to the development of my proprietary Squirrel Wrangling Method—a systematic approach that combines NLP and MER® techniques with my Four Pillar Framework and several other frameworks I have curated over the years.

Using my systematic rotation of body, mind, relationships and spirit, we find and release old programming using a combination of NLP, MER® (where we choose one area of your life to focus in on), Hypnosis, and many other methods. Then we dig in to uncover, address, and reprogram those negative emotions, limiting beliefs and self-doubt by using the Mental Emotional Release® process and other tools.

So we not only address the concerns, but we eliminate them for good by reprogramming the very roots of where they began in your lives. Then we go into your future with more magic!

Real Results from Real Women
When my clients embrace their multi-passionate nature instead of fighting it:

Sarah, 42, Marketing Executive: “I stopped feeling guilty about my ‘scattered’ interests and started seeing them as my competitive advantage. I’m now leading three innovative projects at work because I can see connections others miss.”

Maria, 38, Entrepreneur: “The Four Pillar rotation gave me permission to be fully me. I launched two businesses this year—not because I’m scattered, but because I’m strategically brilliant.”

Jennifer, 45, Teacher and Artist: “I used to think I needed to choose between teaching and art. Now I see how they feed each other. My students love my creative teaching methods, and my art is inspired by their questions.”

My clients go from feeling broken by their scattered nature to celebrating their new clarity and their multi-passionate genius with concrete tools that actually rebuild the empowering structures in their lives, not just address the symptoms they were fighting.

What I love most is that moment when a client messages me and says something like “I slept through the night for the first time in months” or “I made a decision today without asking three people what they thought first.” What they report are not always big dramatic transformations. They often have those quiet everyday victories where they realize their mind isn’t their enemy anymore. And they are often more powerful than the nuclear level drama changes.

From Scattered Shame to Strategic Celebration
Imagine waking up tomorrow and instead of feeling guilty about your multiple interests, you felt excited about your diverse capabilities.

Instead of second-guessing your multi-passionate nature, you trusted it as your unique genius.

Instead of trying to fit into someone else’s single-focus model, you created your own multi-dimensional success story.

This isn’t fantasy—this is what happens when brilliant multi-passionate minds stop trying to be something they’re not and start celebrating what they are.

And the best part…. your own projects now flourish in a way you never had dreamed possible before.

Your Scattered Mind Is Your Superpower
The world needs your multi-passionate perspective. We need people who can connect dots others don’t even see, who can innovate across disciplines, and who can adapt to our rapidly changing world.

Your scattered mind isn’t the problem—the systems that tell you to suppress it are the problem.

When you can wrangle your inner squirrels—those limiting beliefs, negative emotions, and baggage—you stop living in survival mode and you start experiencing the peace and joy that’s been waiting for you all along.

I’m not just somebody who studied this in textbooks. As both an active clinician and someone who lived with GAD for years while working professionally with others dealing with the same thing, I know with absolute certainty that these techniques actually work because they put my own anxiety disorder into remission.

After struggling with my own anxiety disorder for so long, witnessing someone else experience that magic moment when they break free from that mental prison and just breathe is everything to me.

Ready to transform scattered shame into strategic celebration? Contact me to discover how the Squirrel Wrangling Method can help you organize your brilliance without dimming your light.

Because the world needs more multi-passionate women who know their worth.

References and Resources
Psychological Science. (2019). Cognitive flexibility and multi-passionate thinking patterns.
Nature Reviews Neuroscience. (2021). Neural network optimization through strategic rotation.
About Mental Emotional Release® (MER®): Mental Emotional Release® is a proprietary technique developed by Dr. Matthew James, adapted from his father’s pioneering work with Timeline Therapy®. Dr. Matt James leads Empowerment, Inc., the world’s foremost organization specializing in alternative and integrative approaches to psychology, human understanding, and personal growth, fostering values of pono (integrity), ho’omanaloa (empowerment), kina’ole (excellence), aloha (happiness), and lokahi (unity).

About the Author: Stacy Braiuca, known as the Squirrel Wrangler, holds degrees as a BSW, MSW, MPH, and clinical licenses as an LCSW, LSCSW, and LICSW. She is a Master Practitioner of NLP, Mental Emotional Release®, and Hypnosis certified by the Association of Integrative Psychology. Because when you can wrangle your inner squirrels, you stop living in survival mode and you start experiencing the peace and joy that’s been waiting for you all along.