I have often heard it said how some people are a prisoner of their own mind (though I think neuroscience is slowly showing that the mind may not be a thing as that the functions previously attributed to it are just the brain itself).
Others have a more metaphysical take on it.
In Buddhism I know there is a saying about how the mind is great servant but a terrible master. I can attest to that since I often let my thoughts wander and craft stories or lines of logic that don’t make sense at all and sometimes how I truly feel about things tends to get buried in the “noise”. For others it might be being consumed by certain emotions or thought patterns and they can’t see clearly.
From what I gather there is no mind, just the brain according to neuroscience. Dualism doesn’t seem to have much left in it.
I was looking for thoughts on the links but that’s ok.
I think it’s more of a phrase when someone is locked into a certain method of thinking and can’t really escape it. But then there would have to be a mind for that to be the case and despite us having used that word for hundreds of years there doesn’t seem to be evidence for it. Let alone any functions it has that the brain doesn’t do. It’s similar to the notion of the self, even if it did exist there would be nothing for it to do.