Overthinking

Overthinking

Analysing to the nth degree

Leading down the path to stagnation

If I ever get on the path

Constantly rethinking

écoute et répète

Incessantly

Excessively

But nothing changes in the thought

Between the third time and the tenth

Stagnation, catastrophization

Huge little obstacle, poses an insoluble problem

This is not a flight I fancy

I must wait a while

Return

And overthink some more

This poem I wrote last year sums up my experience. Thankfully, I seem to have mostly conquered this miserable habit. Thinking the same thoughts over and over, trying to figure something out from all angles, coming to no satisfactory conclusion, continuing to think, to gain some sense of mental control. Only to find out that what I overthought about never came to pass anyway. What a waste of time and effort!

While the desire to analyse and dissect is not in itself wrong, it can become obsessive and stifling. You become a prisoner in your own mind. Say it’s a decision you need to make. Of course you need to think about it, weighing up pros and cons. But at some point you need to decide on a course of action. Overthinking it just makes you uncertain what to do. You procrastinate. You think about it some more. You come to no conclusion. You do nothing. Then, when you can put it off no longer, you fearfully make a decision, worried everything will be difficult and go wrong. In fear and trembling you set the ball rolling – and everything is straightforward, runs smoothly, and you wonder why you made a fuss. And yet next time you go through that whole process again. It’s not a nice way to live, foreseeing imaginary problems, exaggerating threats.

Or another scenario. You know you’re going to have to talk to someone and you know what you want to say. So you try to anticipate how they may respond. Then for every possible response you consider counter responses. And so on. You end up with several potential ways the conversation could go. You get fearful. This conversation takes on a terrifying element. You’re expecting a big battle, a huge falling out. Or maybe you’re expecting to embarrass yourself. With sweaty palms, thudding heart, red face you enter the conversation and find out everything is perfectly cordial. You wound yourself up for nothing.

It’s clear to me that what needs to change is our attitude. When we notice we’ve started to overthink, we need to pause. We need to ask ourselves whether this is really necessary, whether the problem is real or imaginary, what will be gained by overthinking. By all means think things through, but agree with yourself you won’t keep covering the same ground over and over - that you’ll make a decision and stick with it. If you notice yourself going over the same thoughts again and again, calmly keep telling yourself, “I’ve been over that and now I understand, I know what I’m doing, I don’t need to think it through again”. If this is hard, go and do something to distract yourself. Maybe try to write your thought processes and decisions on paper. Then when you start to overthink you can say to yourself, “I’ve been through this already and have written it down – I don’t need to think about it again”. Realise that things are not likely to be as bad as you assume. There may well be difficulties but they’re unlikely to be devastating or impossible to overcome. Assess risk sensibly, don’t inflate it unnecessarily. Ask yourself what’s the worst that can happen, then tell yourself that’s extremely unlikely. Remind yourself of past situations when you worried for nothing.

It can take a long while to beat overthinking, but it is worth it. The temptation will often lurk there, but you can beat it.