How to stop overthinking
Slowing the nonstop cycles of worry, hurry, alarm, and overwhelm. Tried and true strategies to help you stop chasing the moment so that you can be in the moment.
Last Friday, I shared some reflections on the cultural norm of overthinking, rationalizing everything, and thinking too much. If you didn’t get a chance to read it, I suggest you do so here.
Before I share the strategies that work, I should probably start by being honest and upfront: I’m not entirely sure it’s possible to stop overthinking for good. The brain does what the brain does and thoughts do what thoughts do. They arise without us choosing them and they range in intensity.
This is not a once-and-for-all solution to stop overthinking for good and prevent The Spiral from ever happening again. This is a note about how to stop overthinking in the moment so you can focus on what you need to do. This is about slowing our thoughts, slowing our pace, and slowing our reactions so we can invite a different response.
Our thoughts think themselves
When we attach ourselves to automatic thoughts, unhelpful beliefs and negative thinking patterns can emerge. Negative thoughts and worries are the fuel our brains need to overthink. Attaching ourselves to these beliefs, especially the nasty and negative ones, can create patterns of stress that are difficult to rewire if we rehearse them frequently. When negative thoughts are practiced often, they become our default belief system and our truth. There’s a helpful rhyme in neuroscience that highlights this point: “neurons that fire together, wire together.” I first heard this from Dr. Dan Siegel, though it has been attributed to other authors. This rhyme is another way of saying that the thoughts we use the most are the thoughts we come back to when we feel uncertain, stressed, or in a new situation.
Instead of getting sucked into your thought spirals, try detaching from your thoughts instead. The practice of detachment, also called cognitive defusion, is one way to let your thoughts be thoughts without adding the thinking fuel it craves to make sense, predict, worry, and guess what’s coming. Detachment is about looking at thoughts rather than from them. Detachment is one way we can take a step back from our thoughts to observe what they are trying to communicate.
Thinking your way through it
One of the biggest mistakes we make when it comes to resolving our unhelpful patterns of overthinking is believing we can think our way through it. Our brain is powerful, but using our own brain to resolve our own brain’s problems can just keep us stuck in The Spiral and reinforce unhelpful thinking styles. Sometimes worry and overthinking feels like productive problem solving. It is again one of those patterns we do that makes us feel like we’re doing something instead of nothing. Adding more thoughts or new ways of thinking doesn’t always resolve overthinking. Sometimes it will, but a lot of the time using thinking to resolve our overthinking just keeps us stuck circling the drain. We don’t always need more thoughts and thinking. Sometimes we need to connect with our emotions, our body, each other, and our environment. Sometimes thinking-based strategies leave us more overly analytical and self-focused than when we started.
Do something different
We spend so much time chasing the moment that we forget to be in the moment. Here are some practical strategies to try that don’t just involve more thinking:
Noticing. In a world where our collective attention span is shifting drastically, it is becoming an essential practice to train our sense awareness towards what’s good, joyful, and freeing rather than hyper-focusing on what’s scary, disastrous, and catastrophic. It is essential for our wellbeing to practice gratitude and mindfulness by noticing good things happening around us. We can notice kind gestures around us as we make room for grief. We can find moments of softness when things are hard. And we can notice small glimmers of light while holding the heaviness of dread. I am making a promise to notice more of what’s good.
QTIP (Quit Taking It Personally). This is one of my favourite tips because it helps us decenter ourselves and remove our identity from our thoughts. This is, of course, easier said than done, but is an essential skill for reducing the cycles of relational stress. It is not always about you. And sometimes it is. For the times it is, you can practice accountability and apology if you need to. Resist the urge to guess what others are thinking or feeling. It is usually not as personal as we first assume it to be.
Do one thing at a time. Humans are not good at multi-tasking, despite our drive and intention to do so. We always seem to be trying to simplify life in order to find more efficient ways of doing things. Why do we multi-task, even though research shows that multi-tasking does not help us finish things faster? Remember to slow down. Remember that doing many things at once is usually more stressful and distracting than it is efficient.
Admit when you don’t know something. Adjacent to our ability to activate a thinking process is our ability to hold knowledge and share it. Today, it seems as though we are all needing to be an expert of something and so the acquisition of knowledge starts to hold some currency and caché. Oppositely, not knowing enough or not being an expert of something could mean being seen as unintelligent or careless in our craft. Not knowing things becomes a threat to our identity, status, and social positioning. While it may feel important or enticing to know a lot of things, sometimes the pursuit of knowing things can add more thinking-related stress. We are showing ourselves compassion when we admit we don’t know something. When we do so, we give others permission to do the same.
Resist hot takes and weigh ins. One of the core features of a deep thinking culture is that it encourages us to have an opinion or unique perspective about everything. You don’t always need to rehearse your argument or form an opinion. You can reduce overthinking by resisting the urge to give a hot take or weigh in from your vantage point. Not only will it help reduce the stress from overthinking, it will also help you mind your business and keep your eyes on your own page.
Stop signing yourself up for problems to solve. You likely have enough problems to solve already. You don’t need to constantly be on the look out for defects to correct or problems to resolve. Listen, I get it. We are a problem solving species. Some of us do way too much problem solving by meddling, involving ourselves, and gossiping about people or situations we have no ability to change or manage. Helping is good when it is helpful. Overthinking is not helping.
Listen more. Similar to our inability to multi-task, another skillset humans cannot build is the ability to listen deeply while we’re talking or actively thinking. If you’re spending a ton of energy thinking about your point of view, taking things personally, or waiting to speak, it likely means you’re not actively listening. Active and empathetic listening is an essential skill for building deeper relationships. Sometimes we forget that listening is still an action that requires effort and it is a skill we can practice on repeat.
Connect with your body. There are many strategies to get more connected and tap into the rich source of knowledge your body has to offer. Thinking isn’t the only form of intelligence, so it may be useful to check in with what your body is saying. You might try a guided breathwork exercise, adopt a routine of Non-Sleep Deep Rest (NSDR), or you may decide it is most helpful to move more and process your thoughts by working out, going for a walk, or doing some chair yoga.
These are just a few of my common practices that help me repattern cycles of overthinking. When it comes to thinking and overthinking, let’s remember this: Thinking isn’t doing. While it may feel like thinking a lot prepares you for action, and for some of us it does, thinking too much usually has a side effect of stirring up big emotions and generating more unhelpful thoughts.
I know I didn’t give you instructions to make a specific change or stop overthinking for good. I’m just not sure that’s entirely possible, especially in a culture that taps into our core instincts and exploits our base emotions for clicks, attention, and you know, big money and profit. Overthinking is a symptom of busied, rushed, and hurried culture that has major pacing issues. If all you do is slow your rhythm and soften your pace, you’re doing yourself a favour.
In order to take more effective action in our lives, we might need to think a lot less. This requires us to honour how emotions are influencing our thinking and how our feelings influence our thoughts.
Go easy on yourself,
Jake
Thank you for these practical tips. I’m in need of each one! I remember a quote from a book (long ago) basically saying “you are not your brain”. This gives me some distance at times but the neurons are like ropes holding me down on the rail road tracks! You have a nuanced and kind approach. Keep helping!