I overthink everything. I will often replay conversations in my head for months, thinking about whether I said the right thing or what I should have said instead. I analyse – or agonise – over seemingly small decisions like what to have for dinner or how to reply to an email. It is not uncommon for me to cringe daily at embarrassing things that happened, or I did, years ago.
I’ve always thought “it’s just who I am” but lately I’ve noticed I’m spending too much time dwelling on the past, thoughts ruminating, second-guessing and worrying about things that haven’t happened and might never (the usual…nuclear war etc). Frankly, it’s started taking up too much headspace. It also drives my partner mad. So when I heard that clinical psychologist and author Dr Jessamy Hibberd, has written a book on the topic, The Overthinking Cure, I wondered, can my worry-pot of a mind really be cured?
The first thing to state, Dr Jessamy says, is that overthinking isn’t just an annoying trait, it is actively harming my mental and physical health. “Overthinking should come with a health warning,” she says. “Research shows that it lowers your mood and increases the likelihood of anxiety and depression. It steals your time and energy and takes joy from your life. It steals your confidence and self-worth, and makes you lose trust in yourself. It’s exhausting, and often leaves you feeling overwhelmed, angry or sad.”
It physically affects you, too, contributing to higher blood pressure, raised cortisol levels and chronic stress, which can lead to inflammation and disrupted sleep. “Longer term, research shows it can contribute to higher rates of heart disease, ulcers and chronic pain too.”
Granted, in small doses and in certain scenarios, there are times when being able to pore over something is useful. But it is clear that long-term, extensive overthinking is not helping me. I find it hard to know when my rumination is straying into overthinking territory and becoming a problem. There’s a fine line, Dr Jessamy says.
Overthinking can stem from wanting to gain a sense of control, she concedes, “but instead of bringing clarity, you become trapped in a negative loop replaying the same thoughts and analysing every possible outcome”. Also known as “analysis paralysis”. “Obviously we want to reflect on life to work out solutions, but it’s when this slides into repetitive thinking and you get stuck in doom spirals of not feeling good enough that you need to be careful.”
For example, you make a mistake at work and your thinking goes from trying to find a concrete solution to a loop of abstract questions: What’s wrong with me? Why aren’t I getting my life right? Why am I always like this?
‘You can’t choose what happens to you, but you can choose how you react’
Overthinking is a “faulty coping mechanism,” according to Dr Jessamy, and she uses the Buddhist “second arrow” analogy of suffering to explain this. It is the idea that while we can’t choose what happens to us (the so-called first arrow), we can control how we react to it (the second arrow), “and it’s this that causes much of our emotional suffering rather than the events themselves,” she writes. “I’m not suggesting we deny pain or suffering, or that we should think positively all the time, but [your reaction] can make things better or worse.”
Dr Jessamy outlines seven classic types of overthinker in her book – and chronic overthinkers like me will identify with multiple, if not all.
One, “the dweller”, immediately strikes a chord. Instead of letting go of past experiences or setbacks, you replay them over and over, effectively reliving the experience. It can feel punitive. “People often talk about trying to fall asleep, and suddenly they’re back reliving an embarrassing moment from 10 years ago,” she observes. “We put ourselves under so much scrutiny, people say and do embarrassing things all the time, the difference is that not everyone will spend the next three days replaying it.” Self-criticism fuels this overthinking, she adds, and perfectionism is strongly associated with overthinking.
Other overthinking styles that sound familiar include “the catastrophiser”, who imagines every worst-case scenario, and “the over-analyser”, who constantly replays social interactions in their head. I don’t really want to think about how much time I have wasted obsessing over whether someone really likes me, or if something I said could have come across in the wrong way. “Ultimately, we can’t read other people’s minds,” she says.
The rules for tackling overthinking
The first rule is: don’t overthink when you’re feeling bad. “Our brain dredges up all the memories of times that we have felt [bad], so suddenly you’re caught up in not just what’s happened, but everything that you’re worried about past, present and future.”
Instead, when the overthinking starts, she talks about broadening your “spotlight of attention” to take in the full picture of life, rather than narrowly fixating on one issue. “When you’re overthinking, your spotlight is stuck on this tiny detail,” she says. “Negative emotions narrow your spotlight like blinkers, casting everything else into darkness. When you’re in a bad mood, you tend to focus on all the things you’re messing up, whereas when your mood is higher, it broadens the spotlight.”
Because our emotions influence how you see things, before taking her steps to address your overthinking, she recommends taking what she calls a “capacity check”. When you’re tired or stressed, “your thoughts become much stickier, and you’re more likely to become entangled in them”, which then takes up even more capacity, making it harder to cope, she explains.
By this she basically means making an effort to look after yourself, eat well, move more, prioritise sleep and factor in activities that boost dopamine or give a release of endorphins. For me that’s walking in nature, going to the gym, and spending time with family and friends. She also recommends adding structure to your life where possible to reduce “decision fatigue”, whether that’s laying your clothes out the night before or making a meal plan for the week.
‘The cure: notice, choose, challenge, accept, and face your fears’
Now that I’ve diagnosed myself with several of her overthinking characters I’m ready to try to work on improving – this, she says, is done in five steps.
When I start to feel an overthinking moment coming on I have to first notice the thought. This is about learning to recognise repetitive thought patterns and when you’re slipping into them. Dr Jessamy recommends doing a “thought audit”, making a list of my personal overthinking triggers. For example, when I feel like someone is criticising me, being inauthentic or judging me, or if a friend doesn’t reply to a heart-felt message or a work pitch goes unanswered.
She suggests keeping a diary to see how they play out, naming them to create a sense of distance, and even saying them out loud.
Next: choose what you let into your spotlight of attention. Recognise that you can choose which thoughts to let in. The main point here is that overthinking is within your control. If this is hard, she suggests doing something you enjoy to distract yourself, which research shows you only have to do for eight minutes to break the cycle. That could be listening to an audiobook, putting music on, doing breathing exercises, or, a new one to me, butterfly tapping.
Step three: Challenge your thinking. Depending on which overthinking traps most resonate with you, Dr Jessamy offers ways of reframing thoughts, to help cement the idea that “thoughts and feelings aren’t facts”. Things like asking yourself how you would view a situation if it were happening to a friend, giving people the benefit of the doubt when second guessing them and, ultimately, asking yourself simply “is this worth my time and energy”?
She gives examples of how practising gratitude can build resilience against overthinking, too, and recommends sharing your grateful thoughts with the people you are thinking about as a sign of appreciation. She and her husband email theirs to each other.
Step four: Accept the reality of how life is. “If we set really high expectations about how life should go, then there’s so much room for things to go wrong,” Dr Jessamy says, offering tools to overcome the “expectation gap” and build tolerance to uncertainty, which can trigger overthinking (in my case, why haven’t they replied?) and sit with the discomfort it brings.
One way to do this would be to think of times when things might have gone wrong, but everything still worked out in the end – something I realise I actually already do sometimes. She encourages activities in which you intentionally seek out discomfort, like getting out of breath, sitting with difficult tasks, reading a book that challenges you ideologically or taking a cold shower which, she says, can all help to build resilience longer-term.
‘We regret inaction more than action’
Finally, step five: Face your fears to overcome them. “Overthinking stops you doing things, so taking action is the antidote,” Dr Jessamy says. “This opens up your life. You learn that sometimes things go wrong and you don’t actually mind or you learn something from it or it’s not as bad as you thought. It’s a bit like future-proofing your life against overthinking, building your confidence means you can trust your instincts more.”
This involves thinking about the bigger picture, what do I want from life? I made a list of things I wanted to do that pushed me out of my comfort zone – which include actively seeking out rejection or being vulnerable with others – and made myself do one each day.
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“We regret inaction more than action – the goals you didn’t chase, the things you didn’t say, the risks you didn’t take,” Dr Jessamy says.
So am I cured? As a life-long overthinker, this isn’t going to be a quick fix but I do now have a raft of simple techniques to pull myself out of doom spirals and take back control of my thoughts, and, crucially, I understand now that it’s important I do. It’s easy to dismiss overthinking as harmless, a little bit of a time waster, but after speaking to Dr Jessamy I realise there’s more to it than that – it can really hold you back in life.
When I find myself about to deep dive into an unnecessary analysis, overthinking a reply, a meaningless exchange or find myself raking up past events, I can hear her words in the back of my head, a reminder to distract and break the loop.
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