What You Need to Know About Overthinking & How to Manage It

Your brain is just overactive. It's doing too much. It's trying to predict outcomes. It's trying to create certainty. Hey there and welcome to let's Talk about it with Laurie Streeter. A space to talk honestly and get real about mental health, therapy and all things wellness. I'm Lori, licensed therapist speaker and your host, here to bring you insights, tools and information you can actually use, whether you're navigating anxiety, healing your relationship with food, or trying to figure out which techniques will work for your life. I'm so glad you're here. Here. Let's dive in and let's talk about it. Lori. I cannot stop overthinking everything and I'm driving myself crazy. That is something I hear a lot from my clients. Welcome back to another episode of let's Talk About It. We're going to talk about overthinking. That statement is something that I can't tell you how many times I've heard in one version or another. People I hear a lot say, oh, my God, I cannot stop overthinking. I'm ruminating. I cannot stop my brain from trying to come up with all these scenarios. And rumination is a top anxiety symptom in women. Rumination is very past focused. Worry is very future focused. So we're going to talk today about overthinking, rumination and what the hell we do about it. Because if you get caught in these cycles and spirals, it can make you feel like you are so out of control and like you just can't get out of the tornadoes of thoughts that are happening in your mind. So here we go. Like I said, rumination is very past focused. When someone is dwelling and, oh my God, overthinking about what did I say in that conversation and did they think I was stupid and did I say anything wrong and did I upset them and right. That's rumination. Worry is future focused. What's gonna happen and how are they going to act and are they going to like me? And what if I fall on my face on stage? That's worry. That's very future focused. I'm generalizing this, but if you're someone who gets caught in the overthinking in terms of the past, a lot of times rumination is very past focused. And that worry, the overthinking, the worry part of it is future focused. Your brain does not, with a capital not. It does not like uncertainty. Your brain's constantly looking for answers and to make sense of things. It's. It wants to prove that you're right. And it wants certainty. It's not to be like, well, it could be that or it could be that or maybe the sky's yellow today. I mean, short of there being a storm, the sky's probably not yellow. Right. Your brain is not looking for gray area, it's looking for certainty. I tell my clients all the time, your brain's job is to keep you alive and to make sure that you're safe. It is survival. It's to keep your blood flowing and your muscles going and to keep you alive and your heart pumping and all that stuff. It's not to make sure that you're calm and you have a good day, unfortunately. Right. Your brain's job is to keep you alive. It's looking for certainty. And when it scans a quote unquote threat, it's going to send your body into a response. Fight or flight or maybe that freeze. It's going to send your body into a response that kicks up symptoms that you're like, shit, this is anxiety. I'm dealing with this. But it's your brain's response that something's happening. There's a threat, we're not safe. There's uncertainty here and we need to do something about it. We feel anxiety. Your brain says, oh my God, this is uncertain. So we know anxiety is a response. It's happening for a reason. But the brain doesn't like uncertainty. So this is kind of essentially what's going on with the overthinking. A lot of times overthinking is a coping mechanism to come up with all of the things that could happen to create certainty, to make you feel better. A lot of times women will think that they're alleviating anxiety because they're overthinking it and they're overthinking an upcoming scenario or they're dwelling on something or they're thinking about what they could have done better. Because that makes me feel better right now. Because to come up with all these different scenarios and all these different thoughts, but it's perpetuating this cycle of overthinking. It's not actually alleviating something in the long term. It's just this almost like this coping mechanism that we have learned to use. Or sometimes it's a trauma response. There's all kinds of things going on with the overthinker. Your brain essentially is being an overachiever. It's just doing too much. Let's just call it what it is. It's doing too much. Lol. I want to paint a Picture. And if you're an overthinker, this is probably something that you can resonate with. But just sit for a second and picture this. You stop at Target for a few things. You go through the human checkout lane where there's an actual person because a self checkout lane is too long. And there's an uneventful interaction page. You find everything okay? Yeah, everything's good. Great. Have a nice day. Uneventful, anticlimactic. Nothing's happening. You drive home and later that night you go to go to bed and it hits you. You might have said something stupid. Did you? I don't know. Did I say something stupid to that person at Target when they asked me if I found everything okay, Did I respond with good? Did I have a response that didn't make sense to their question? And now you're ruminating. Now. Something that did not need your attention is getting all of your mental capacity. And the kicker is that it probably didn't happen. But your brain is like, we need certainty here. We need to make sure that that situation was okay and we're safe from it. And did we do anything stupid? Did you say anything stupid? Did you say the right thing? Did you offend them in any way? Let's think about it. Let's think about it all night. I'm going to keep you awake. You're not going to bed. We got to think about this. That's a common scenario that, like, I've written and created based on general, like, stories and explanations I hear from my clients. And if you're an overthinker, you probably resonate with some aspect of that story. It literally, we leave, we're good. Maybe you overthink it in the moment, but a lot of times it's at the end of the day, when the day's over, things are quiet, and your brain's like, cool, here's all the crap that we didn't get to today. I'm going to keep you up. And hurry up. Let's start overthinking all of this stuff. And it is enough to drive us bananas. Okay, so let's get into some of the nitty gritty of overthinking. There's something we have called the default mode network. This is when you're not focused on the external and instead focused on internal thought. So it's pretty much like what your brain does when it's not actively engaged in something. Like I said, when you finally lay down at the end of the day to go to bed and things are Quiet. And your mind is like, hey, here's all these thoughts. Hey, here's all the things we didn't get to today. Hey, here's all the things we can ruminate and think about right now. Let's do that. There's like this default mode network when we're not engaged in life, essentially, when there's nothing essentially like external going on that we kind of kick into. The opposite of default mode network is task positive network, or tpn. So this is like when it's active, right? When you're doing something, when you're engaged in the daily life or a conversation or work or whatever it is. So a lot of times when overthinking is happening, we want to distract ourselves because it's a good coping mechanism to give ourselves something to do. Because you can focus on something and put your energy to that and distract. It's when we're kind of in that default mode network when there's nothing external distracting us, that the brain kind of kicks up and it's like, hurry up, overthink. Like, let's get into all of the rumination. For whatever reason, overthinking in and of itself can both be like a symptom of anxiety and a driver of it. So someone who struggles with anxiety, hey, I also struggle with overthinking. Or, and, and, or they can also be like, I'm a perpetual overthinker and it makes all of my other symptoms worse, or it makes my anxiety worse, or I can be fine and then the overthinking comes in and then all of a sudden I having a panic attack or whatever. So that happens a lot of times with symptoms of anxiety. It's just an interesting thing to think about in terms of it being a symptom and a driver. But like, don't worry about getting in the weeds of that. I just thought that was like an interesting kind of thing to throw in there. Overthinking is like the brain constantly seeking to understand. Kind of like we said, the brain wants certainty. So the brain constantly thinking to understand can lead to what we call cognitive distortions. Cognitive distortions are like irrational patterns of thinking that then fuel your anxiety, or it can fuel your anxiety and your symptoms. So when the brain's constantly thinking, I want certainty, I want to understand this, we're ruminating or we're worrying, or we need to come up with all the scenarios or think about all the possible things that could happen, right? And in, in turn, you're like, oh my God, I feel like I'm Going nuts over here. But your brain's just constantly seeking to understand and find predictability and certainty. Now, that can lead to cognitive distortions, like, I'm trying to read everybody's mind, right? We call that mind reading. I am trying to figure out what they're thinking and what they're saying, because if I know what they're thinking and how they're feeling and what they're going to say, I. I can feel better and I can feel less anxious, right? Like, we pretend that we're reading people's minds, you're probably not having this exact thought. But what's happening internally is when you're thinking about conversations, we're trying to read someone's mind so that you can feel better about the anxiety and stop ruminating. Because if I know what you're thinking and you're like, hey, I still like you, we're good, I can stop worrying so much, right? Or I can stop ruminating on something that happened. I. So the brain constantly seeking for this predictability and certainty can lead to us having these irrational patterns of thinking. And that's kind of this, like, compounding struggle that we have with anxiety and with the things that I work on in my office with my clients. Let me give you another example of what overthinking can look like in real life. So if you're writing and editing and rewriting and editing again and asking for help before sending a text or an email, it's not because you don't know what you're doing, but because you don't trust yourself. And maybe you fear that you're going to say or do something wrong and that's causing you to doubt yourself. So now you're overthinking it. So overthinking comes from a place of not that I don't know what I'm doing. I know how to write an email. I know grammatically how to write something. Like, you know the mechanics. You know what you're doing. There's some confidence in the task. It's the assumption of maybe what somebody is going to think of you. And it's the fear of saying or doing something wrong and the possible upsetting someone or the possibility of being rejected that then makes you doubt yourself. Overthinking can create, like, a wild thought pattern and a wild tornado that can, like, cause paralysis of making decisions or can cause us to not do things or hold us back in life because essentially, at the root of it, it can cause us to doubt ourselves even though we know what we're doing. It Just kicks us into this tornado of oh my God, what if, what if, what if, what if, what if this, what if this? And it can just be mind blowing, the impact it has. I would never leave you today without giving you what to do. How do you start to deal with overthinking or if this is something you're struggling with or you've been struggling with, what the hell do you do about it? Because the last thing I want is information about what's happening and then no information about what to do. So if overthinking is your jam, let's figure out how to help it. I want you to remember your brain is trying. It's trying, it's trying to understand and find answers and it's trying to make sure that you contemplate all, all the scenarios because it wants to protect you from potential outcomes. Your brain wants certainty and predictability. Its job is to keep you safe. So I don't want you to think that if you're an overthinker, you're doing something wrong. Your brain, I like to tell my clients this, it's just an overachiever, probably like you. We need to chill it out a little bit and give it some tools so it can feel more confident and doesn't have such a hyper drive reaction. A lot that can contribute to why overthinking happens are things like trauma, nervous system dysregulation, hormonal issues, low self esteem, past experiences, sensitivity, other things like that. So a lot of reasons are why we could be overthinking, why this could be something that we struggle with. So it's also trying to figure out the reason this is happening and where it's coming from and where it started and where you can remember this beginning to be an issue for you. And again, also, what do we do about it? How do we target something that seems like it takes such a powerful hold on us? How do you calm down a tornado? It will take time, it'll take practice and it's going to take patience. But I'm going to give you some things to work on that you can start to practice today. And some of them might seem simple, but these are things that work. And I think that's something that can irritate people, is we all want a magic bullet. We sometimes want something that we've never heard before because it's like, ah, that's going to be the thing. These tips, these techniques you might have heard before, but I want to, to give them to you because they're important and they are what works. And they're very accessible and I use them, I teach clients, and I encourage them. Even though you've tried this in the past, here's why. And with practice over time, you can help regulate the overthinking and bring it down a little bit. So number one is being present, practicing being present, thinking things like breath work, mindfulness, what I like to use 333. Three things you can see, three things you can hear, three things you can touch. It's just way more accessible than the common one that sometimes you hear like five things you can see, four things you can touch, three things you can hear, two things you can smell, one thing you can taste. Like that is too much. That is too big of a grounding technique that is often makes things worse in the process. So I like 333. Your hearing, your sight and your feel, your touch are three of your most accessible senses. So I like the 333 these things. Breathwork, mindfulness, 333. These things keep your brain present and they help you train it to focus on what you want it to focus on. Practicing Being present when you, when you are quote, unquote, fine is what is going to be the key here. A lot of times in the moment someone's anxious, they're overthinking and they're like, okay, Lori said three, three, three, three things I can see and three things I can hear. And then they almost sometimes, sometimes it works, but sometimes they make it worse for themselves because now they're stressed about figuring out the technique because they really haven't practiced it a lot. Sports teams, and I love to give this analogy to my clients, sports teams don't go just play games. They practice and they practice and they run scenarios. And they almost are like using overthinking in a positive way if you think about it. But like they are thinking about possible scenarios and things to overcome so that on game day they are ready for whatever comes their way with techniques like being present, mindfulness, breathwork, 333 other grounding techniques. You have to practice these things when you're okay. So that on game day, when you really need them, they're accessible to you. And you're like, oh, I remember that I do that every day, or I do that a few times a day, or that's the technique I use every night before bed. I've been practicing that. You have to have some confidence in what you're doing. So number one is be present. Being present is a really good thing to start to Practice and implement in your life throughout your day. Couple minutes here, a couple minutes there so that it's accessible when you need it. Number two is set a time limit. If you find yourself rewriting and editing an email or a text or overthinking a conversation, sometimes we need to allow our brains to go there because trying to stop ourselves in the midst of that tornado feels insurmountable. So what I like to teach people is if you catch yourself in that moment and you cannot get out of that spiral, set a timer. Say, okay, fine, I am going to set a timer for 2 minutes, 5 minutes, maybe 10. But that's a little excessive if you've already been overthinking for a bit. But set a timer to think about it and almost force yourself to think about it even more and more and move through it. Setting that timer gives a definitive end point. And then you can say, when this timer goes off, I'm hitting send. When this timer goes off, I'm taking this text message out to my spouse and I'm having them hit send. When this timer goes off, I am going to leave and go for a walk, or I'm going to go pet my dog, or I'm going to go make dinner. There has to be something that you do when that timer goes off. But setting a time and being like, fine, my brain wants to do this, let's do this right, let's rumble. So you allow the container, the space, this time limit to give yourself the permission to do what your brain is doing. And then you're like, and then we're done at that 3 minute mark or whatever it is, Trying to stop yourself again in that midst of the tornado sometimes just feels impossible. So it's like, fine, here's a time limit. I'm going to sit here, I'm going to make myself overthink this or I'm going to make myself stop and hit send. When this is done, you're going to start to break that pattern. There's going to be some discomfort there. Especially if it's an email or a text message and you're hitting send, there is going to be some discomfort because your brain maybe hasn't reached that certainty yet. But teaching yourself that there is a time limit also teaches yourself that we don't just get to overthink and ruminate as long as we want. I'm not allowing that anymore. It allows for a sense of control. Letting yourself ruminate on something like indefinitely negatively reinforces overthinking. Because remember, your brain's job is to look for certainty. So if you do this too long and you don't start to put limits on it and container it, you're saying, fine brain, you just get to overthink this and do what you want and look for outcomes and try to make predictions as much as you want. It's making it worse and you're negatively reinforcing this idea that overthinking works. Overthinking doesn't work. It's giving you anxiety, it's causing symptoms, it's making you not feel good, and it's giving you self doubt. So we want to rein that in. And the last tip, technique, mechanism, whatever you want to call it, are questions to ask yourself if you catch yourself in the overthinking cycle. What am I truly concerned will happen? What outcome or result am I trying to control here? What is true or factual versus what is my mind creating? So the first one, what am I truly concerned will happen? I'm worried that if I said something stupid, the person's not going to like me anymore. Okay? So I'm afraid of rejection. That's what we're dealing with here, right? You got to try to get to the root of things so you can figure out how to dig the roots out and start to address it in an even better manner. What outcome or results am I trying to control? Remember, your brain's job is to keep you alive and to create certainty. So it's looking for predictability, it's trying to think of all these scenarios so it can predict an outcome and make sure that something is going to go its way. So what am I trying to control here? What am I actually trying to make sure doesn't happen or make sure does happen? And again, then you can address that and then what is true or factual versus what is my mind creating? And anxiety causes us to create stories that we then believe, but they're actually lies, right? So what is truly happening in this moment? Okay, so I had that conversation with the person at target. They said, how are you today? I said I was good, how are you? They said they were fine. They asked me if I found everything okay and I said yes, facts. That's what happened. My brain is trying to wiggle room its way and find a problem. So thinking about factually, what is the evidence here? What actually happened versus what is my brain starting to make up? These questions will help you identify what's going on in your mind and hopefully help you move the process forward. Because now it's giving you something productive to think about instead of Just overthinking on whatever you're overthinking about. You're actually trying to get to the root of kind of why it's happening in the first place, which will help you again, address it in a more effective manner. All right, deep breath. Even if your brain tries to convince you you don't have to try to figure everything out in order to protect yourself from outcomes, your brain's trying to help, but it's too doing too much. You can start to practice these things and work on training your brain to focus on what you want it to focus on and not go crazy when you're at rest. Remember that default mode network when there's nothing external going on and you're at rest and your brain's like, let's think about all this stuff, hurry up, we're going to overthink for a while. You can train your way out of that. It takes patience, it takes practice, it takes effort. But we can teach our brains to do something else. That's what we're working on here. So you gotta remember this isn't you. There's nothing wrong with you. Your brain is just overactive. It's doing too much. It's trying to predict outcomes, it's trying to create certainty. Pick one of the tools I mentioned, one of those three things or something else that works for you, and practice it, and practice it regularly and practice it when you're okay. Don't just try to implement it in the moment or when you're trying to put out a fire. Practice it regularly, use it, add more to your toolbox and then you'll have more techniques to deploy. And the quicker you recognize that the overthinking is happening, the sooner you can start to deploy these tools and techniques. So pick something, practice it, get a good handle on it, add something else, and then you can be like, oh, that works for me. That doesn't work for me, that works for me. When I'm ruminating, that one's really good for me. If I'm worrying about something that's going to happen in a week, you really start to gain a sense of self awareness and what technique to use when and what's going to work best for you. So this one was to all my fellow overthinkers out there, because I'm guilty of this too, and it is definitely something I've worked on. It can get better. Practice, practice, practice. Consistency, consistency, consistency. And we can get your brain to chill out a little bit. Until next time, take care of yourself. Thanks for hanging out. With me today on let's Talk about it with Laurie Streeter. If this episode resonated with you, it would mean so much if you'd leave a five star review, share it with a friend, or come say hi on Instagram Loristree Reader. Your support will help this podcast grow and I so appreciate you being here today. I want to help people just like you feel like they're not alone and gain the tools they need to grow. Until next time, take care.