Most people over think every now and then. This can be particularly so when combined with the stresses of normal day living and working, such as making a presentation in work, going for an interview, or taking an exam.

Over thinking on the other hand is not something we want to cultivate as a habit in our lives. Yes sometimes people do end up constantly over thinking as the result of too much stress, anxiety, depression, etc.  But what is over thinking?

(Heads up this is a long blog)

What is over thinking?

Over thinking can come in many formats and is distorted thinking. From over generalisation, catastrophising, mental filters, attempts at mind-reading, the list is long. I’ve included a lot of these thought patterns/traps below.

People who over think run commentaries in their minds. These pull apart decisions they make or what they do, say, wear or have in their home. They will also criticise themselves, and others, attempt to make predictions, second guessing themselves, read into the smallest details, etc. All of this is a negative cycle, as they push out even the possibility of any kind of positive.

One thing is for sure over thinking is exhausting, debilitating and can hold us captive or paralyzed.  We fail to move forward in our lives because of this paralyzes. We end up constantly feeling fearful of every decision. You get caught up in the “should” “could” and “what ifs” and nit-picking.

The rumination and worry only add to our stresses and the worry may keep us up at night.  When over thinking becomes a habit for us it is mentally destructive and draining. It becomes a constant loop, that the more we do it, the harder it is to stop it. So why do we do it?

Why do we over think?

There can be many reasons why someone starts over thinking. For most it usually creeps up on us gradually, it’s not something we start to do one day out of the blue.

We are usually responding to added stress or pressures in our lives. Some other ways why we over think include:

1. Fear of failure, success or the future.
2. Feeling particularly vulnerable – could be after a traumatic event.
3. Perfectionism.
4. Mental health conditions e.g. anxiety, depression, phobias, addictions, eating disorders, etc.
5. Stress.
6. Living with an addict.
7. Feeling out of control.

When we over think we can be simply trying to figure out a way to help ourselves. We fail to recognise the over thinking; we don’t see that there is a pattern to our thoughts at all. We keep problem solving even when over thinking can make things worse. It is clogging up our minds and so therefore we don’t come up with clear decisions and actions we can take.

So raising our awareness to the types of over thinking will be a key component in stopping this behaviour.

Thought Traps/Pattern Themes To Watch Out For.

When catching your thoughts, you may also find that there is a theme to your negative or over thinking.  We call these thought distortions.  So what are the thought types we might see?

ALL OR NOTHING THINKING

You see things in extreme or in black and white terms. For example: “It is either perfect”, or “No this is a mess”, “My friend likes me” or “He doesn’t like me” Perfectionists will use this a lot.

OVER-GENERALISATION

You see a single negative event as proof that other similar events will turn out the same way. For example: If one person behaved in a spiteful way towards you, then all people will behave in this way towards you.

MENTAL FILTERS

You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it, then view the whole situation or day as negative also. For example: You only see the one negative comment made by a friend and it dictates everything you do and say after that comment. Or this can happen by refusing to notice any positives that also occurred during your day or anything that went well or you did well with that task.

DISQUALIFYING THE POSITIVE

You reject positive experiences by insisting they ‘don’t count’ for some reason or another. In this way you can maintain a negative belief that is contradicted by your everyday experiences.

JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS

You make a negative interpretation even though there are no definite facts that support your conclusion. This can happen in the following ways: 1.Mind Reading – you conclude that someone is reacting negatively to you, but you do not check this out with them. 2. Fortune Telling – You anticipate that things will turn out badly, and you feel that your prediction is an already established fact.

MAGNIFICATION (Catastrophising)

You exaggerate the importance of things usually in a negative manner. We can blow something small into huge proportions. You inappropriately shrink any positives and your achievements or desirable qualities also.

EMOTIONAL REASONING

You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are. For example:  “I feel like a failure, therefore, I am one”.

SHOULD/MUST STATEMENTS (Perfectionism can come under this heading)

You set yourself standards of what you perceive you ‘should’ or ‘must’ be doing. These standards are often too high and unrealistic. The emotional consequence is guilt. When you direct should statements towards others, you feel anger, frustration and resentment.

LABELING AND MISLABELING

This is an extreme form of over generalising. Instead of describing your error, you attach a negative label to yourself: For example: ‘I’m a loser’. When someone else’s behaviour bothers you, you attach a general label to them. For example: ‘he’s an idiot’. Mislabelling involves describing an event with language that is highly coloured and emotionally loaded.

PERSONALISING

You see yourself as the cause of some negative external event, when in fact you did not have primary or any responsibility.

How over thinking affects our minds and bodies?

There are a number of ways over thinking affects our minds and bodies. Some of these include:

1. Over thinking saps our sense of control over our lives.
2. It robs us of active participation in our day to day life.
3. It increases our chances of getting coronary problems and suppresses our immune system.
4. We become less productive at home and at work as we are unable to complete the tasks we need to do.
5. It leaves us feeling miserable, setting up a despondent mood and possible downward spiral into mental health conditions.
6. It keeps the mind trapped to such an extent that we feel what we are thinking is as natural as breathing. It has become a destructive habit.
7. Our ability to think clearly and make good decisions for ourselves is diminished.
8. It disrupts our sleep.
9. Our stress levels go up and so do our chances of developing associated illnesses.
10. Day to day life starts to feel too much.
11. Set ourselves up for anxiety, depression, etc.

But there are a number of ways we can help ourselves to stop over thinking.

How to stop over thinking.

There are a number of strategies you can put in place to help you stop over thinking. But a good self-care foundation will help you feel more in control of your life again. Add to this raising your sense of awareness of how you over thinking will set the stage for change here. Both of these will be interlinked and will probably be done simultaneously.

Please note: Always remember though if over thinking has become chronic or is connected in any way to a mental health condition or chronic stress then getting professional support is vital.

Strategies to help you take back control.

First off this will take time, so we need to have patience with ourselves. You did not end up over thinking overnight. So even when you feel you’ve had a relapse, know that you can do this and keep going, you will do this with practice and patience.

Also know that when we get into a cycle of over thinking we question and criticise everything. We stop trusting ourselves. Our over thinking is based on our thnking “I am not good enough”. By actively addressing you’re over thinking and regaining control of your life you are also addressing this “not good enough” belief. The tips below will help you to regain that trust in yourself again.

Get some basic self-care going.

Having a basic self-care routine will form the foundation of taking back control of your life.  Over thinking takes away that feeling of control and prevents us from taking active control and part in our lives. So we need to do some small things to get this momentum and sense of control back. Practicing a daily self-care routine will help with this. I have a list here, but it includes meditation, journaling and gratitude, which I’ll talk about next.

Take up meditation

Meditation will be a key to recognising your thought patterns. Even something as simple as a 3 minute breather throughout the day will help. I have a link to how to do this here.

You could also add in a progressive muscle relaxation meditation to help you unwind at the end of the day. Plus this will also help you start to recognise where you are holding tension in your body. Once you recognise this you can begin to release this tension with some targeted stretches.

Journal in the form of a nightly brain dump.

Firstly, start to get all you thoughts, to do’s, shopping list items, phone calls and emails you need to send, etc., out of your head each night. This will afford you some sense of relief as your mind will begin to relax and realise it doesn’t have to keep everything to the fore. It can begin to know these items/things don’t need to be solved while you’re sleeping.

Secondly with over thinking we need to start seeing the patterns (see list above) so by using the nightly brain dump to get everything out of our heads each night we can also start to see any patterns in our thinking also. When we see the patterns we can use this information to raise awareness firstly, accept our thoughts and then we can take action to change them. I’ll talk more about this below.

Practice some gratitude.

There are a number of reasons why we need this. Over thinking crowds out the positives we have in our lives. We need to get these back. Finishing up our nightly brain dump with at least 3 things you are grateful for that day is important (build this up to 10 things over time).

We know gratitude gives our mental health a quick boost and can keep it up for longer than any other technique we can use. I talk more about the benefits of gratitude here.

Do a little visualization each morning.

Again this is all about seeing the positive and we need to cultivate that. It may seem a little fake at times but in time you will see the benefits of this exercise.

Spending even five minutes thinking about a positive future will engage your mind into creating that outcome even on a subconscious basis. We can under-estimate how much we can actually achieve in 5 years. So start to ask yourself what do you want, need and desire in your life?

Most of the time when we over think we become so afraid of success and the future that we crowd those thoughts out with only negatives. We are now taking back control of our lives so that includes allowing ourselves a little time each day to just dream. Remember that the mind doesn’t know what is real or imagined, so let’s put some good stuff in there!

Start to engage all your senses.

Starting to notice what we see, hear, smell, taste or feel will lead to a better engagement with our day to day lives. We need to start getting out of our heads and reengaging with our world. Using our senses will help with this. But we also want to use it for another reason here and that is as a means of positive distraction. I’ll talk about using this as a means of distraction below.

Learn to accept yourself more.

This may seem hard particularly if you have been engaged in some negative thinking. Often feeling not good enough is at the heart of our thinking. Learning to accept ourselves will help us overcome this feeling. Using the tips in this blog is a good beginning here.

We can also start by looking at what are desires, needs and wants are. We often forget that we have these as the over thinking crowds these out in favour of keeping us trapped in our fears. Journaling out what we want, desire and need is one way to do this. Another way is to spend just 5 minutes each day visualizing a positive future. You can find more ideas on this topic here.

Strategies to tackle our over thinking.

The above suggested tips will help create some feeling of control in our lives. But now we need to raise our self-awareness more in regard to our over thinking patterns and to take control of these.

Build your self-awareness.

Awareness will be the beginning of changing your thought patterns. Start by using your journal and meditation practice to help you see what kind of thinking distortions you are prone to and what is triggering you (see list above).

We always need to raise our awareness to what is happening firstly. Accepting these patterns and triggers is the next step, its part of accepting yourself also. When we do this we can then begin to make the changes or take some other kind of action.

So ask yourself:

1. What am I thinking about?
2. When is this happening?
3. Is something triggering you?
4. Does it happen after you are with a particular person?
5. Or is it a task or event?
6. Is it time related, perhaps at the end of a particular day or time?
7. Do I see a pattern, time, trigger to my over thinking?

Start to challenge your thinking and rephrase how you speak to yourself.

We are trying to create a psychological distance here. Over thinking causes us to feel out of control in our life, we can become paralyzed and caught up in one single emotion – fear. We need to take some simple action steps to take back control. So we can use a number of techniques here.

1. Don’t tell yourself to not think about something. You know you will! We simply can’t help it. So let go of using this type of response.
2. Don’t think of what can go wrong, but what can go right. Once we start to see the pattern we can take action to challenge our thinking. Even if at the start you analyze the thought and question it after the fact, it is a god start. The brain will come on board with practice. Start challenging your thought by putting things into perspective. Will this even matter a few months from now or a year from now?
3. Review your thoughts in another way by rephrasing what you are thinking and saying to yourself. So instead of saying “I can’t believe that happened” say “ What can I do to prevent this happening again”. Now list all the actions you can take to help you here. Remember you are in control here, so ask for help to brainstorm some ideas if you need to.
4. Challenge your fears. Have you recognized your central fears in your pattern of thoughts? What are these, fear of failure, future, success? Yes we can fear success.

We can again use rephrasing and challenging here but we also have to watch out for what we are feeding our minds too. What are you listening to, watching? Become more aware of these things especially on a subconscious level. Having a radio or TV playing in the background can mean we are taking in some subconscious negative information without knowing it. All of this can build into your negative thought cycle.

A few simple do and don’ts to help protect your positive mindset can be found here.

5. Now is also the time to realize that no one can predict the future. We can’t control how others will respond either. We need to let these ideas go. Try to focus on the present moment and the task at hand. Meditation will help you here as will creating a worry period. (I’ll talk about this below)

Distract yourself using your senses.

Over thinking is a habit and we need to replace it with some more positive habits in order to push it out. We can use our senses to do just that.

By adopting even a quick meditation that helps us focus on the here and now using our senses is very helpful. This one below is used as a grounding technique by many. So if you recognize your thinking is getting out of hand then simply focus on the following instead for a few minutes.

1. Describe 5 things you can see right now.
2. Can you name 4 things you can feel right now.
3. Name 3 things you hear right now
4. Please name 2 things you can smell right now.
5. Name 1 good thing about yourself.

Secondly, we can engage our senses with some positive habits including hobbies and interests. I have a six part series that gives you lots of ideas to incorporate all the senses in positive activities you can find the first one here.

Stop the perfectionism.

Perfectionism is unrealistic, simply impractical and can be very debilitating. When we start to think “this needs to be perfect” we need to rephrase it into “This is good enough!”

Using phrases or affirmations to remind ourselves we are good enough can be very useful here.  Think of some simply affirmations you can use to boost your self-esteem also. For example: “I am good enough.” “Progress not perfection” Place these where you can see them throughout the day or better still say them 10 times a day to yourself. You can see more information on letting go of perfectionism here.

Create a worry period.

Creating a worry period is all about setting a boundary with yourself. Set a timer for five minutes and allow yourself that time to think, worry, and analyze. Then when the timer goes off, set it again and spend 10 minutes writing down all the things that came up. Let it all out. Then throw the paper out or burn it. Reward yourself with some something fun to do: call a positive friend, read a book, listen to some upbeat music, have a soak in the bath, etc. Use the lists from my blogs on using your senses for more ideas.

Get busy get better.

We can use this phrase in two ways 1. Get up and start to move about. Use up some of that anxious energy. Create a list of various timed tasks you know you can use to expel some energy. So if you are feeling anxious or getting caught up in your head look at your list and do something off to expel the energy.

2. When we keep our focus on daily tasks we are distracting ourselves. We don’t have the time to spend thinking. Our focus is now on what we are doing in that moment. So make sure you have a routine of daily tasks, work and personal, that you can keep yourself busy with throughout the day.

Remember over thinking can happen to anyone at anytime. Setting up a good system as outlined above will help you regains control. It will help you turn your distorted thinking into something more positive, useful, less anxious and stressful.

My Book

Did you know I talk more about parenting and self-care, plus more topics, in my book and workbook The Building Blocks Of Self-Care? You can purchase it here.

Work With Me.

Remember you are allowed to ask for support. No one is an island. If you need extra support then you can also work with me. We all struggle with stress and overwhelm from time to time. If you find this has become a problem for you and you’d like some support then schedule an appointment with me.