Overthinking can be a mental quicksand, pulling you deeper into a vortex of unnecessary worry. Let's explore strategies to break free from this cycle, fostering a healthier mindset and promoting a more productive, stress-free life.
Use metacognitive strategies to break free
Many common strategies sound reasonable or useful, but research shows that they can inadvertently cause more harm than good and typically lead to even more overthinking
- Constantly looking out for threats
- Excessive planning
- Seeking answers and reassurance
- Aside from these unhelpful strategies, another key factor that can perpetuate overthinking is your beliefs about thinking
- When we spend too much time analysing our problems and dilemmas, we often end up more at a loss than we were to begin with
- If you come to a point where you depend on these strategies to calm you down and reduce your worries, you’re on a slippery slope
Challenges
Ask yourself if your ruminations have ever led to better decisions, fewer symptoms and more control?
- Most people’s answers are ambivalent
- On the one hand, you feel a sense of safety and control; on the other hand, worry strategies cause tension, restlessness and perhaps even anxiety
- Challenge negative beliefs about the usefulness of worry by evaluating the pros and cons
- Set a worry/rumination time and postpone your worries and rumination to that specific time
- You can’t worry and ruminate extensively about everything that’s gone wrong, while at the same time stay emotionally balanced and without burdensome symptoms
Links & Books
The metacognitive therapy approach is the most effective way to deal with overthinking
- Available resources are limited because this therapeutic approach is still rather new
- Some books include Live More Think Less: Overcoming Depression and Sadness with Metacognitive Therapy (2020) by Adrian Wells
- If you’re a mental healthcare professional, you might find the treatment manual in Adrian Wells’s book “Metacognition Therapy for Anxiety and Depression” useful
- A five-minute interview with Adrian Wells from March 2020 is available on YouTube
What to do
Get to know your trigger thoughts and let them be
- Trigger thoughts can be referred to as ‘trigger thoughts’
- If you pay enough attention, these thoughts can trigger an explosion of bodily sensations and feelings, and a myriad of associations
- The more time you spend engaging in these thoughts, the slower and heavier you will feel
- Recognize what you can and can’t control
- Think of trigger thoughts as like thoughts on a train – each train represents a thought or a sequence of thoughts
- You have a choice over which train to board, and you can control whether or not to engage in a trigger thought
How to Stop Overthinking
Overthinking is a learned strategy that we choose consciously or unconsciously in trying to deal with our thoughts and feelings.
- It’s basically a habit that we fall into, but we can learn to change it. One way of challenging the belief that overthinking is outside your control is to explore whether you’re able to postpone worries and ruminations.
