How Do I Stop Overthinking?

Most of us know what it is like when thinking seems unable to stop.

There are endless examples. A conversation is over, but we are still having it in our head. Something may happen tomorrow, and we have already lived through ten different versions of it. We reconsider a decision we have already made, imagine what somebody else might be thinking, or return again and again to something we cannot change. Just to name a few.

Thinking itself is not the problem. We need thought to plan, remember, learn, solve problems, and make decisions.

But there is a point at which thinking is no longer solving anything.

It is simply continuing.

We may notice this most clearly when the same thoughts begin to return. Nothing new is being discovered. The mind is going over familiar ground, perhaps hoping that one more round of thinking will finally bring certainty, relief, or control.

Usually it does not.

And then another problem appears: we begin trying to stop the thinking with more thinking.

Why am I doing this again?

I need to stop thinking about it.

How can I get this out of my head?

Now thought has made thought itself into another problem.

There may be another way to approach it.

Instead of immediately following the next thought, we can notice that it has appeared.

That sounds almost too simple.

But there is a considerable difference between having a thought and being carried away by it.

A thought about tomorrow appears. Normally we enter it immediately. One possibility leads to another. An imagined conversation begins. Something goes wrong. We prepare an answer. The body starts responding to events that have not happened.

But we can also simply notice:

I am thinking about tomorrow.

Nothing has to be pushed away. We do not have to argue with the thought or decide whether we should be having it.

We have simply noticed what is happening.

That small movement changes our relationship with thought.

We can also ask something very practical:

Is there anything here that actually needs to be thought about now?

Sometimes the answer is yes.

Perhaps a decision needs to be made, a telephone call needs to happen, something needs to be written down, or a real problem needs our attention.

Then thought can do what it does well.

But sometimes there is nothing to solve at this moment. The conversation has already happened. Tomorrow has not arrived. The decision cannot yet be made. We are rehearsing, regretting, predicting, or trying to create certainty where certainty is not available.

Seeing that does not necessarily make the thought disappear.

It does something more useful: it shows us what the thought is doing.

Then attention can return to what is actually happening.

The body is sitting in a chair. A breath is moving. There are sounds in the room. Perhaps there is tension in the chest or stomach. Perhaps an emotion is present underneath all the thinking.

None of this requires us to pretend that a problem does not exist.

If something needs to be done, we can still do it.

But life itself is happening here, while thought may be living somewhere else: in what happened yesterday, what somebody might have meant, what could happen next week, or what we wish had happened differently.

Overthinking often keeps us inside that mental version of life.

We do not have to defeat it.

We can begin by seeing it.

A thought appears. We notice it. If it contains something useful, we can use it. If it does not, we do not necessarily have to follow it into the next thought, and then the next one.

Sometimes it will carry us away anyway.

Then, at some point, we notice that too.

And we are here again.

Perhaps stopping overthinking is therefore not quite the right task.

Thoughts may continue to appear. The mind may continue to remember, predict, rehearse, and comment.

The possibility is simpler:

we do not have to go everywhere thought wants to take us.