Overthinking and worry

Overthinking and worry

How many times have you caught yourself finalizing an answer and then again relooking at that answer. I am sure the exercise of redoing and rethinking can be so overwhelming and exhausting.

All of us overthinks a few things once in a while for eg If it’s a huge spend on an electronic item or a home décor or redesign, this is perfect to do but, chronic over-thinkers spend most of their waking time ruminating, which puts pressure on themselves and assume this pressure to be stress.

Overthinking can take many forms: endlessly deliberating when making a decision (and then questioning the decision), attempting to read minds, trying to predict the future, reading into the smallest of details, undoing and redoing plans and decisions in your mind over and over again. It’s like a sports commentary that’s running inside of your mind in form of a self-talk continuously deliberating, criticizing and literally pulling things apart piece by piece and then creating assumptions of the consequences and outcomes.

 

‘What ifs’ and ‘should’s’ take over the mind and overall thinking, as if an invisible jury is sitting in judgement on their lives. There is then a fear of how people are going to view them and interpret their words and actions. They can spend sleepless nights ruminating over thoughts and worry themselves to sickness.

 

"Rumination" is called rumination because we tend to engage in the act of repetitive thinking and often we tend to lose focus on our day to day activities and have emotional eruptions in our behaviour , thoughts, actions and most often, negative, self-relational emotions. If our focus then remains on this rumination then you tend to throw your mind into a loop that we only prefer when we are listening our favourite music. Unfortunately this loop burns you out since one is really not looking at the issue at hand or resolving it instead they are draining themselves emotionally, mentally and physically. This can leave you feeling stuck or stagnant and if there is no awareness of this then you may obviously have a huge impact on your day to day life thereby making you vulnerable to anxiety and depression. One may start feeling a loss of sense or control over themselves and find ourself in some heart diseases due to feeling of overwhelm or even have a suppressed immunity. When one keeps relating to incidents and people in the past and how they may react in future you are robbing yourself of the beautiful opportunity of the gift of present moment and today. This can trap us in a panic and worry cycle and then it will be very difficult to move away from that.

 

Below are some simple ways in which you can rebuild your life by breaking the overthinking pattern.

  1. Training your brain to look at life , people and situations different.
  2. Being mindful and talk yourself out of the situation when you catch yourself falling prey to overthinking / rumination. We are humans and not cows
  3. Distance yourself from the problem and seek solutions as a third person
  4. Challenge yourself by imagining the worse outcomes and check how blessed you may feel under most circumstances.
  5. Check if rephrasing the issue helps, may help you even approach the concerned people differently.
  6. Journal your thoughts if you can and cancel the points that you cant agree with
  7. Connect to your surroundings, to nature, to things in the room etc and use your five senses - what you can hear, see, smell, taste, and feel and notice the changes.
  8. Seek professional help and take support of a life coach and a counsellor to get over this

 

Remember we are as humans born as whole and complete, we are fallable and are allowed to make mistakes and since we are gifted with rational thinking we have the capability to make changes in us and our lives.

 

Happy living !

Author: Sonali Sikdar

Post date: 1st Jan, 2021

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