What Interstellar Travel Can Teach Us About Anxiety, Curiosity, and Coming Home by Claudio Barrientos, LCSW

Voyager and the What-If Mind

Back in 1977, NASA launched Voyager 1 — a spacecraft the size of a short bus — with one wild goal: travel beyond our solar system and tell us what it finds out there. They even put a Golden Record on board, like a mixtape (remember those?) for the cosmos, filled with music, greetings in different languages, and sounds from Earth.

Years later, when Voyager 1 had drifted past Neptune, Carl Sagan had the idea to turn its camera around. What it captured became the famous "Pale Blue Dot" — our entire world, everything we've ever known, reduced to less than a single pixel in a beam of sunlight (Sagan, 1994).

I was watching The Farthest, the PBS documentary about this mission, and something clicked for me. The engineers behind Voyager had this incredible what-if mind. They had to think through every nightmare scenario:

What if the antenna gets knocked out of alignment?
What if cosmic dust shreds the instruments?
What if a solar flare wipes out communication completely?

That constant problem-solving? It's why the spacecraft is still out there, nearly 50 years later, sending signals from interstellar space.

But here's what got me: that same what-if mind, when we turn it inward — onto our emotions, our relationships, the tender stuff — can become a prison. The same brain that can navigate the stars can also trap us in endless loops of worry and fear.

If we want to come back to Earth — to come home to ourselves — we need something different.

We need curiosity.

The Golden Record

The Golden Record aboard NASA’s Voyager spacecraft, engraved with sounds and music of Earth — representing curiosity, exploration, and human connection.

Curiosity: The Navigation System

Voyager didn't survive by accident. It survived because the people behind it stayed curious — constantly learning, adapting, and adjusting as it flew into the unknown.

Every signal it sent back, every tiny course correction through empty space, required that same openness. If the team had needed absolute certainty before acting, the mission would've died in the first year.

Our minds work the same way. When anxiety kicks in, we grab for control. We try to predict every outcome, run through every scenario. The mind just loops and loops, mistaking all that mental motion for actual progress.

Curiosity breaks the loop.

It shifts your brain from trying to control everything to just... discovering what's there.

Where anxiety closes down, curiosity opens up.
Where fear tightens, curiosity expands.
Where the what-if mind spirals, the what-is mind simply observes.

The Orbit of Anxiety

Inside your brain, this looping pattern has a name. It's called the Default Mode Network — the part that lights up when you ruminate, replay conversations, and worry about things that haven't happened yet (Raichle et al., 2001). It's like Voyager circling the same planet over and over, burning fuel but getting nowhere.

Dr. Judson Brewer, a psychiatrist, neuroscientist and NY Times Bestselling author, describes anxiety as a habit loop (Unwinding Anxiety, 2021):

Trigger: You feel uncertain or uncomfortable
Behavior: You start worrying or overthinking
Reward: You get the illusion that you're doing something useful

Your brain learns: "If I think harder about this, I'll be safer." But that safety is an illusion. It's like trying to steer a spacecraft by white-knuckling the controls — you just burn energy.

Real safety comes from being present.

And presence starts with curiosity.

Turning the Telescope Inward

When anxiety shows up, curiosity becomes your compass. Instead of running from the feeling, you can explore it — not to fix it, but just to see what's actually there.

What does this feel like in my body?
Where do I notice tightness, fluttering, or heat?
What happens if I take one breath into that space?

Each question is a tiny course correction — a way of shifting from panic to presence.

Curiosity doesn't erase anxiety. It transforms it — from a threat into new data for the brain.

The Neuroscience of Wonder

There's actual science behind why this shift feels so freeing. When you get curious, your brain's reward centers — the ventral tegmental area and nucleus accumbens — release dopamine, which fuels motivation and learning (Gruber, Gelman, & Ranganath, 2014).

Curiosity also fires up the hippocampus (pattern recognition and memory) and the prefrontal cortex (attention and emotional regulation), helping you shift from fear mode to exploration mode (Kang et al., 2009).

In other words, curiosity literally rewires your brain for openness.

It's not just a mindset shift. It's biology.

When you practice curiosity, you're not running from uncertainty. You're learning how to move through it.

And just like Voyager, whose antenna has to stay tuned to the faintest signals across billions of miles, curiosity keeps you connected to what's present — the quiet, living pulse of this moment.

A Simple Practice: The Curiosity Pause

Next time you catch yourself spiraling with thoughts of worry or anxiety, try this:

Pause. Take one slow breath.

Notice. Where is your attention right now? What sensations are you feeling?

Name. Silently label what's happening: thinking, worrying, planning — whatever it is.

Get Curious. Ask yourself, "What's this like right now?" or "What's this trying to show me?"

Stay for One More Breath. Let curiosity soften the moment. You're not trying to solve anything.

That's curiosity in action — simple, kind, and real.

Coming Home from Inner Space

The Voyager 1 engineers used the what-if mind to reach other galaxies. But to navigate the inner universe — the tender, messy, and uncertain space of human emotion — we need the what-is mind.

We need curiosity, presence, and the courage to see things as they are, not as we're afraid they might be.

The Pale Blue Dot reminds us that from far enough away, all our fears and worries exist on a single speck of dust floating in sunlight. The Golden Record reminds us that even in all that vastness, we can still send out beauty, hope, and wonder.

Curiosity is that signal — the willingness to explore, to stay open, to keep learning.

So next time your mind starts orbiting around worry or self-doubt, just pause and ask:

What's here, right now, if I get curious?

That's the journey home — one breath, one question, one pale blue dot at a time.

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Struggle with anxiety? Want to work with me? Contact me for a consultation about mindfulness-based therapy and/or coaching.

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Pale Blue Dot photograph of Earth captured by Voyager 1 — symbolizing mindfulness, perspective, and our shared humanity.

References

• Brewer, J. (2021). Unwinding Anxiety: New Science Shows How to Break the Cycles of Worry and Fear to Heal Your Mind. Avery.

• Gruber, M. J., Gelman, B. D., & Ranganath, C. (2014). States of curiosity modulate hippocampus-dependent learning via the dopaminergic circuit. Neuron, 84(2), 486–496.

• Kang, M. J., Hsu, M., Krajbich, I. M., Loewenstein, G., McClure, S. M., Wang, J. T., & Camerer, C. F. (2009). The wick in the candle of learning: Epistemic curiosity activates reward circuitry and enhances memory. Psychological Science, 20(8), 963–973.

• Raichle, M. E., MacLeod, A. M., Snyder, A. Z., Powers, W. J., Gusnard, D. A., & Shulman, G. L. (2001). A default mode of brain function. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 98(2), 676–682.

• Sagan, C. (1994). Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space. Random House.