Coping with overthinking

We’ve all done it. We’ve all overthought something. You can’t stop worrying, you’re looking for clues/evidence to support your thinking, you’re lying awake at night, not concentrating in the day. You feel stressed and think something terrible’s going to happen, or that you’ve already done something awful.

Then you discover that what you thought would happen didn’t, and all that worry was for nothing. Then something else hits you and the cycle starts all over again.

If you’re an over-thinker, you’re probably familiar with this and it’s easy to feel powerless or out of control.

You’re also not alone. A recent study shows that 75% of 25-35year olds and 52% of 45-55year olds overthink.

There are at least 4 types of overthinking:

• rumination about the past

• worry about the future 

• over-analysing decisions

• social anxiety (eg, ‘why did I say that?’ ‘they’ll all think I’m stupid’)

So how can we help ourselves out of this pattern?

Identify your overthinking

We’re often not aware we’re doing it whilst we’re in the middle of it, so we need to get good at noticing it. Perhaps we need to stop ourselves and say out loud ‘I’m overthinking”, or ask a friend to point it out to us when we’re doing it.

Notice the times of day and any situations when you’re overthinking the most. Is it when you’re trying to go to sleep? When you’re driving the car? When you’re alone? When you’re at work? If you become aware of when it might happen then you can prepare yourself to focus on something more helpful.

If this is hard, then try setting an alarm to go off every hour and you can check in with yourself to see if you’re overthinking and how much you’ve been doing since the last check in.

Once we’re getting better at noticing when we’re overthinking, what do we do?

There are 2 things you could try.

1) set limits on overthinking

2) find ways to redirect your thoughts

Set limits

This includes postponing your overthinking by allowing yourself set times when you can indulge your ruminating. This allows your brain to know that you’re not dismissing your worry, but will address it later. You’ll be surprised at how much influence you can have over your thoughts. Try scheduling a time every day for a month, when you will allow yourself to ruminate – set yourself a start and end timer and keep to it. This way your brain begins to learn that you’re serious about this strategy and will let it overthink, but at appropriate times.

Get them out

The next important thing is to get those worries out of your head and onto paper / device. Try:

• free-writing

• listing

• pros vs cons

• ‘circle of control’ activity

By getting your worries out of the mental realm and into the physical, it helps put a structure and boundaries onto your worries.

Redirect your thoughts

Your brain doesn’t like a vacuum. It will create all kinds of thoughts, so we need to find ways to dismiss the ones that aren’t helpful or truthful.

• Think of yourself as the referee. Observe each thought and dismiss those that are not helpful or truthful. Meditation and mindfulness can both help with this.

• Imagine your thoughts as different channels on the TV and you’re the person sitting back with the remote control. You get to pick which channel you pay attention to and turn off the ones you don’t like.

• Have some questions you can ask yourself when you notice you’re ruminating over something. Try to think of questions that will shift your attention and show you what action you can take. eg:

  • what am I grateful for?

  • what do I have control over?

  • how else can I look at this situation that would be more helpful?

When you try to stop overthinking, you need something to fill its place so you don’t fall back into bad habits.

Depending on where we are and who we are with, we may have to find different solutions, but what we all have is now. When you find yourself overthinking bring your focus to where you are, what you are doing, who you are with.

• Use your 5 senses – what can you hear, see, feel, taste and smell?

• Shift your attention from your interior world to your exterior world.

• Use your breath. Bring attention to it. This can slow down our thought processes.

It’s not an easy thing to do, especially in times of stress, but if we keep practicing, it does get easier.

Get specific

Often our overthinking is rather vague, encompassing every possibility and scenario we can imagine. So, shift your thinking to more concrete ideas. Look at the details and get specific.

Eg instead of thinking ‘why am I such a failure?’ turn it to ‘what would have helped in that situation’ or ‘what one step could I take to make this better’ or ‘what is a skill I need to learn or practice that would help?’. Make it something action based as this will help with your focus.

Values

Get familiar with your values. Train your brain to use its energy to think about the things you want more of in your life, what you really care about. This could be anything from more family time, learning new skills, using your strengths more, being able to relax. Ask yourself what’s important right now.

Distraction

This is great for a temporary solution but be aware it could lead to avoidance and this will actually strengthen your overthinking and your problems.

However, sometimes we just need to break the cycle of overthinking and this is when you can use distraction.

Scrolling through Instagram or binge watching Netflix, might help in the short term, but once you’ve given your brain that short rest, you should spend time doing something you enjoy and get ready to face your issues. Ignoring them long term isn’t beneficial.

When you overthink, do you notice patterns? Are you more likely to do it at a certain time, or in a certain scenario? What helps you slow down your thoughts? What might help?