How do I stop overthinking?

Hi Dave, 

Thank you for your question, and I'm sorry to hear of the toll that overthinking is having on your mental health. I hope that my answer will be able to provide some guidance for you and help you manage these thoughts that you are having. It can be so frustrating to feel like your thoughts are out of your control, particularly when your overthinking has always felt like a part of you. 

Overthinking is not a mental health diagnosis in itself but is usually a symptom, particularly of anxiety. It would be helpful for you to take a look at the thoughts that you are having and think about what anxieties are underlying them. Is there a fear of failure? A worry about how people will react to you? Perhaps it could be a mixture of different anxieties/worries. 

When we're feeling anxious, it's because our brain is responding to a perceived 'threat'. The problem is that a lot of anxiety can be caused by an imagined threat and these worries aren't actually grounded in reality. This is particularly the case where you've mentioned that you create scenarios in your mind - these scenarios act as the perceived threat but in actuality, there is no concrete 'evidence' for them being real or something that will happen. That doesn't stop them from feeling any less real though, which is why these thoughts have had such a big impact on your wellbeing and life.

To combat this process, it is therefore a case of showing your brain that it is not under threat, and that the thoughts it is having are not representative of what is actually happening. 

Keeping a thought record is one of the most effective tools to combat overthinking. As regularly and consistently as possible, try to keep a log of the thoughts that you are having. This can be in whatever format works best for you e.g. long paragraphs, bullet points, a voice note for yourself. 

Alongside a log of your thoughts, try to identify how this makes you feel too. For example: 'I feel like if I go to work tomorrow, I'm going to mess everything up. This makes me feel embarrassed, like I'm not good enough.'

Then from there, you can start to analyze these thoughts a little more. Starting with what makes that thought and feeling so significant to you? What is it about that feeling that you would like to avoid? 

Then you can start asking yourself whether the thought can be 'proven' with substantial evidence? Is there any concrete evidence which proves that the thought is real or is going to come true? Is there any evidence to the contrary for your thoughts, that could actually disprove it? 

If you described this thought to your friends/family/partner, what would they say about it? Why might their perception of it be different to your own?

Is there any way of reframing this thought in a more positive way? That doesn't mean pretending that everything is perfect, but perhaps looking at it with a different perspective. Using the example above, it could be reframed like 'I feel worried about messing up at work tomorrow. My worry is because I want to do a good job and because I'm ambitious. If I do mess up, it gives me an opportunity to learn from the mistake and do things better next time.'

The tools I've described are very common ones for addressing difficult thinking patterns. When it comes to overthinking, the most pleasant option feels like trying to block them out, or pretend that they don't exist so that we can get on with life. Unfortunately, tackling overthinking requires the difficult option of confronting the thoughts and taking a look at them, trying to figure out what anxieties and underlying feelings are being expressed through these thoughts. 

This process is not easy, but rest assured that overthinking is something that with time and work can become less impactful on your life. Being mindful that this is hard work to be doing, I would also recommend some mindfulness activities. Mindfulness is all about bringing our focus to our biological senses and the world around us, to help us take a step back from our thoughts, particularly if they are overwhelming. I would recommend this webpage as a good starting point for mindfulness.

There are many other mindfulness exercises such as breathing and meditation practices which you can find online too, if you would like to explore this further. 

The tools that I've mentioned above come from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) which is a form of therapy which addresses how our thoughts, feelings and behaviors impact one another. With the overthinking that you're describing, it could be beneficial to seek further CBT support as it could very well help you with the problems that you're having. A CBT-trained therapist would be able to support you in tackling these thoughts, and provide you with further tools like the ones I've described. 

However, CBT is not the only option and there are many types of therapy which could support you in this. Sometimes, just expressing your thoughts with another person can help. Saying them out loud can help us see a different perspective on things, and having somebody there to explore those thoughts and challenge them can make a world of difference. 

I hope that this provides a good starting point as you begin to tackle your overthinking and the impact that it is having on you. I wish you all the best, and certainly hope that you reach a happier place with your thoughts.