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A distraught woman (I’ll call her Nadine), age 35, sat in my office last week and said, “‘Stop overthinking’ may be the stupidest phrase in the English language.” She went on to say that her well-meaning boyfriend was trying to help her feel better, but it did not stop the spiraling of thoughts in her head. In this post, I give further thought to some of the many other counseling clients I’ve had over the years who have shared similar frustrations about well-meaning others telling them to stop overthinking, and the fact that the more accessible feelings that give rise to overthinking are easier to manage than the spiraling thought loops they trigger.
When Well-Meaning Advice Misdiagnoses the Problem
Many self-help articles say the same thing: Notice your thoughts, challenge them, and “just stop overthinking.” And every overthinker nods along—at two in the morning while rereading a text from six months ago. I have a news bulletin for you. What if overthinking is more of an emotional problem than a cognitive problem? What if your mind is not spinning into loops because it loves suffering, but rather something in your body needs to be felt? Could it be that overthinking is what happens when your emotions get rerouted into your intellect instead of being directly processed? What I’m saying is that overthinking may result from your brain trying to process a feeling it wasn’t allowed to have.
Overthinking Is Avoidance Dressed Up as Problem-Solving
It looks productive, but research shows that the more we individualize a response, the more stressed out we eventually become. The overthinking loop is not solving the problem you are facing. Rather, it keeps you from the raw feeling so you don’t have to face it. Thinking about anxiety is not the same as moving through it. Consider Yolanda, who spent three hours rehearsing a difficult conversation with her boss. Yet she never acknowledged to herself that underneath, she was feeling terrified of being fired.
The Emotion That Started in the Loop Is Usually Small
Overthinkers usually think their spiral means something is deeply wrong. In reality, from my counseling practice, the original trigger is frequently mundane. I have heard accounts of a small rejection, a flash of embarrassment, or a moment of transient uncertainty. But because the feeling never got acknowledged, the brain keeps returning to the scene. It hunts for a resolution that can come only from acknowledging the feelings, not from seeking certainty in an uncertain world. For example, David spent two days obsessing over why his friend had not texted him back. Really, what was going on was him escalating a transient feeling of “I don’t matter,” which he did not allow himself to feel.
This pattern of getting caught up in thought and failing to see the underlying feelings is not limited to adults. In Freeing Your Child From Overthinking, I discuss how children find themselves in the same loops. They tend to ruminate not because they only think too much, but rather, they lack the awareness and language to share how they feel. I help parents understand that the entry point is often more reliably the emotions underneath than the thoughts on top.
The Path Out of Overthinking Is Through Your Body
Nothing may be more counterintuitive than realizing that you don’t think your way out of overthinking. Instead, you drop out of it through your body. The brain gets quiet when the body finally gets heard. For example, Kim was looping on meeting her boyfriend’s parents for hours. When she paused, put her hand on her chest, and said, “I feel nervous,” she felt less physically tense, and her thought spiral went away. She learned that her overthinking mind wasn’t broken. Rather, it was working overtime on a job that did not belong to it.
