Before we dive into strategies to stop overthinking, it’s useful to understand what overthinking is, where it comes from, and how best to think about it. Because when you understand the psychology behind overthinking, it will be much easier to respond to it healthily—and eventually, free yourself from it. Overthinking is the habit of applying analytical thinking and problem-solving in a situation where it is unhelpful or unproductive.
Our ability to think critically and carefully about things—including ourselves—is one of our greatest tools. But like any tool, it can be used well or it can be used poorly. Here’s an analogy I like: Overthinking is like using a chainsaw to cut out pictures for a scrapbook. Even though it’s an incredibly powerful tool, there are many times when it’s not useful and even makes things worse.
Unfortunately, because most of us have been trained and rewarded for using analytical thinking and problem solving for so long, it can be hard to put this tool down and take a different approach when necessary. When you overthink, your judgments get cloudy and your stress gets elevated. You spend too much time on the negative. It can become difficult to act.
But that’s the key to ending the habit of overthinking: acknowledging that more thinking is not always the best tool for the job, becoming more aware of what situations only get worse when you overthink them, and learning alternative strategies that are more helpful.
To illustrate what overthinking looks like in everyday life, let’s walk through a few examples of common types of overthinking:
Worry: Worrying is a form of overthinking where we imagine possible problems or dangers in the future. Of course, anticipating problems or threats in the future is often a good thing to do! But helpful planning is different from unhelpful worry in that worry doesn’t lead to new information or insights that can be helpful
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Depressive Rumination: Rumination is a type of overthinking in which we replay events from the past in an unhelpful way. A depressive rumination is a specific form of brooding or dwelling on our own past mistakes or failures. As opposed to helpful reflection, depressive rumination is unproductive and doesn’t lead to anything but shame, guilt, and sadness at oneself. Depressive rumination is one of the key drivers of not only depression but also, self-criticalness and low self-esteem.
Angry Rumination: Angry rumination is similar to depressive rumination except for the object of overthinking is usually other people and their mistakes rather than yourself. For example, after a fight with your spouse, you find yourself replaying arguments you’ve had with them in the past and going over evidence of why you were right and they were wrong. Although it often feels good in the moment, angry rumination tends to lead to aggression, resentment, and distorted beliefs about other people in our lives.
For example, your spouse is on a plane flight and you start worrying about different ways the plane could crash and kill your spouse. This kind of thinking doesn’t keep your spouse safe, plus it adds a lot of stress and anxiety to you. Worry is one of the most common types of overthinking.
While simply understanding the causes of your overthinking habit won’t be enough to get rid of it, it will help.
The most important thing to realize about what causes overthinking is that it comes from a good place. Like we said earlier, the ability to think critically and analytically is a wonderful tool when applied to problems that can be solved with thinking.
Overthinking is just a misdirected application of a good thing. In other words, the habit of overthinking comes from perfectly understandable and even helpful behaviors.
Also, keep in mind that the initial cause(s) of something can be very different than the maintaining cause(s). A coworker’s sarcastic comment may have been the initial cause or trigger for an episode of anxiety. But your reaction of worry may be the maintaining cause of the anxiety. Similarly, some early trauma or life experience may have initially caused your habit of overthinking, but there are likely maintaining causes in the present that keep it going.
Okay, that’s enough of a preamble. Here are a handful of the most common causes of overthinking:
Early Reinforcement: Most people with a severe habit of overthinking developed the habit early in life, often as a child. And they usually developed it because, at the time, it was the only way they had to deal with scary, difficult experiences. For example, as a child of an alcoholic parent, the habit of worrying obsessively about what would happen if dad came home drunk might have served a very useful function then of keeping you safe or out of harm’s way.
The Illusion of Control: Perhaps the most dominant maintaining cause of overthinking is that it gives us the illusion of control. We don’t like to admit it, but many things in life are outside of our control. Understandably, this leads to a sense of helplessness and anxiety. The issue is, in the short term, overthinking can alleviate that anxiety and helplessness since thinking often feels productive even if it isn’t. This leads to a feeling of (false) control which temporarily alleviates our anxiety. And because anxiety relief is rewarding, it makes the habit of overthinking stronger.
Now that we’ve covered what overthinking is, what it looks like, and where it comes from, let’s dive into the main event: How to stop overthinking!
If you want to stop overthinking, the key thing to realize is that overthinking is a habit. This means that it will not happen overnight and will take a sustained effort. It also means that your progress will be messy—some form of two steps forward one step back.
Also, it means that there’s no one size fits all formula. You will need to experiment with a variety of approaches and strategies and figure out which works best for you given the unique characteristics of your history, personality, current environment, etc.
There are a plethora of methods to stop overthinking, and you will say too many on websites when surfing the internet; some of the most useful can be found here.
Written By - Mohammed Ghattas
Edited By - Sravanthi Cheerladinne
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