Lori Streator presents a brief guide on stopping chronic overthinking. She frames overthinking as an exhausting habit often rooted in underlying fears (fear of rejection, failure, judgment) rather than situational events, and advises awareness: identify your "go-to" ruminative thoughts and trace them to deeper subconscious fears so you can more effectively apply in-the-moment techniques (mindfulness, pattern disruptions).
Chapters
What's going on? Welcome back to my channel. We need to talk about overthinking and how to stop overthinking everything that you do. It can be a symptom of anxiety, or it can be a sign that you're just a chronic worrier or that you just let your thoughts too often get out of control. But regardless, overthinking is exhausting. It is so tiring to just be thinking in endless circles every day about everything in life, relationships, your work, everything that you do and you're involved in. It's exhausting and it doesn't help you accomplish anything. So we need to talk about how to stop overthinking everything that you're doing in life. Like I said, overthinking can be a symptom of many things. It can be a symptom of anxiety. But regardless, you need to recognize that without being able to stay, stop your tendency to overthink everything in life or a lot of things in your life. It can cause a huge downward spiral. It doesn't let us feel accomplished, doesn't let us feel good at the end of the day. And then we get to the end of the day having overthought everything that day, and we're wondering, what did I get done? All I did was pretty much think in circles. Now it is quote unquote normal to overthink some things situationally, or if you're in a situation that's causing some pressure in your life or. Or whatever the case may be. Sometimes we do just overthink things. But when it becomes a habit, when you find yourself ruminating on everything in your life throughout the day, every little thing, did I do that right? Did I leave that conversation in a good way? Could I have said this differently? And I've made the joke on Instagram, and it's kind of funny, but it's kind of true. If I did something weird 20 years ago, don't worry, I'm still thinking about it. But we don't want to live like that because it is exhausting. And what it does is it creates a loop in our brain. It's really hard to break that loop so that we can think in a different way. So when your mind starts to think in loops and it just continually cycles over and over and over again, it doesn't help us get anywhere. It doesn't help us accomplish anything, doesn't lead us closer to our goals, doesn't help us think differently or get outside our comfort zones, because we just get stuck in a loop. We get Stuck in a cycle of thinking a certain way. So we want to be able to, to hack our minds and our thoughts, to be able to break out of that endless circle, out of that loop way of thinking so that you can think differently and stop leaving every conversation, every situation, or at the end of every day, having been overthinking everything that's been going on. Now you can go Google how to stop overthinking. There's a ton of really good tips out there. How to be more mindful, how to create pattern disruptions in that loop, thinking. There's all kinds of things that a lot of really great resources will tell you. But what I find is they don't tend to get to the root cause of why we tend to overthink. And that's actually the thing that's going to help you to stop overthinking everything that you're doing. So you can be more mindful. You can put these tips and techniques and tricks into play. And you should, because learning to think in a different way is, is a practice. It's going to take time because more often than not you've probably been overthinking for quite a while and it's a habit to just overthink everything. So it's going to take time to break that habit. But we need to get to the root cause. And this is what I want you to start to think about when you start to overthink things, when you find yourself stuck in that loop. So the first step, well, it's actually the only step other than using techniques and tips and everything that you can Google and that maybe we'll talk about in another video. But the biggest thing is to know when it's happening and how to get to the root of it. Like I said. So you have to be aware when that thought process starts to happen. So if you leave a conversation and you get in your car and, and you start thinking, oh my God, they don't like me, what did I say wrong? And those thoughts start to go. You need to be aware as soon as you can so that you can start to pick up on what your go to thoughts are. Where does your head start to go when it starts to overthink situations or interactions or relationships or whatever you're overthinking about. What are those go to thoughts? And then what you need to do is, where do those come from? The biggest issue with overthinking is the fact that we're worried we didn't do something right, quote, unquote, we didn't do something enough or something could have gone differently. If we're overthinking something, it's because we're worried about something that's going to happen or we're worried about a situation or an interaction that we just left. So there's a fear there. And getting to the root of that fear is what is actually going to help you uproot that overthinking tendency so that you can use mindfulness and pattern disruption and all of the techniques to do something about it in the moment. But the biggest thing is that you have to know where this is coming from. So pay attention. When you start to overthink, what are those go to thoughts? What are they really about? If you're leaving an interaction and you're like, did I say the right thing? Are they mad at me? What is that about? Are you afraid they're not going to like you? Is there a fear of judgment? Is there a fear of failure? Is there a fear of rejection? It's coming from somewhere, I promise. You might not be aware of it, but there's no overthinking that just happens. There's a reason for it. And the reason for it is usually fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of judgment. The overthinking is usually coming from a fear, a fear of something that's going to happen that you're going to do wrong, or like I said, a fear of a situation or an interaction that you just left. So getting to the root cause is going to help you start to dig up those roots, uproot them so that you can move forward and use those techniques to then in the moment disrupt those patterns. But the biggest thing that a lot of these resources that you're reading about Ms. Is this awareness, the awareness of where this is actually coming from. Because if you don't know where your overthinking tendencies and habits are coming from, those deep rooted fears, you're not truly going to be able to fix the problem. You're going to slap some band aids on it, you're going to be a little more mindful, you'll feel better for maybe a short period of time, but. But it's just going to come back because you haven't really addressed the issue. So being really aware of what your go to thoughts are when you're overthinking and then where is it coming from? What are those fears about? What are you overthinking? That overthinking process has a deeper level to it and it's up to you because it's Individual to everybody. It's up to you to figure out what am I afraid of? What am I really overthinking here? It's not the interaction with that person, it's not the situation. It's a deeper thing. It's a I'm afraid I'm going to fail or I'm afraid they're not going to like me. It generally for most of my clients comes down to one, two, maybe three reasons of why they're overthinking everything in their life. It's never usually about the situation. It's about the deeper subconscious thoughts that are running the show, that are causing them to overthink in the moment. So if you find yourself overthinking everything you're doing in life, you have to acknowledge it, you have to be aware of it, you have to recognize those go to thoughts in the moment. Where does your head go? What are those thoughts that you're thinking and what are the fears behind them? What are those deeper layers underneath? That's what pushing those thoughts to the surface. What are those fears? Fear of rejection, fear of failure, fear of judgment. Whatever it might be for you, the fears that are pushing those thoughts to the surface. When you leave a conversation, when you leave a situation, when you leave a presentation, when you leave an interaction, or at the end of the day when you're still ruminating about everything that you have or haven't done that, there's always these subconscious background programs that are running that are pushing this stuff to the surface, that are running the show that you need to deal with. It's not about the present moment. That's what feels uncomfortable. But if you don't address those deeper levels, those subconscious thoughts, you won't be able to fix what's happening in the moment and what's causing you stress or causing you overthinking. We want to figure out where the overthinking is coming from, not just deal with the overthinking in the moment. Because if you just deal with it in the moment, like I said, that's great. But if you can't realize where it's coming from and deal with that deeper layer, it's going to be really hard to make those ongoing thought processes subside, much less stop completely.
