There's a big difference between the way you see yourself and the way others see you.
I usually see myself as someone who doesn't overthink. However, after finishing this article, I struggled with the title. I had no idea what to call it. I shared this with my roommates and one of them suggested the title you read in the beginning.
Everyday I'm amazed by what we can learn about ourselves by having observant people around us and the willingness to receive feedback from them.
I was overthinking the title, it's true.
But that's the amazing thing about writing. You learn how to solve your own problems and help others do the same in the process.
I've been reading about overthinking and metacognition in order to prepare a specific piece of content for What Drives Youth and I've realized that there are 2 important things that we must take into account to stop overthinking:
The behaviors that make overthinking a possibility in our lives
The relationship with our thoughts
In this article, I’m going to explore both of them.
3 ways to reduce Overthinking
We must understand that overthinking is a pretty natural thing. In the current days we are being bombarded from all these different sources of information and with that amount of data, it's only natural that we end up trapped in thought spirals that increase our stress and anxiety.
So, how can we stop it?
Well, even though it's a process that happens in our heads, there are a couple of habits that increase that tendency.
These are 3 things one can do to immediately reduce Overthinking.
First of all you need to stop constantly looking for threats. There's nothing wrong with it if you feel you're in control, but most of the time it will backfire, leaving you in an emotional turmoil.
Second, you must control your need for reassurance. Seeking it from people close to you is normal, but if you depend on it to calm down, it won't work.
The third thing you must do is to stop with excessive planning. Planning is an excellent tool, but being obsessed with it is not. Besides being time-consuming, you can end up feeling more anxious every time your plan doesn't work out 100% like you thought it would.
Spoiler alert: It will happen.
Once you do these, you'll feel better.
But even when nothing else works, you can always develop a better relationship with your thoughts.
Your Relationship with your Thoughts
People are convinced that they have no control of their thought processes. They believe that these just appear and attract attention and unfortunately, this myth, that overthinking is an innate trait, is still alive. However, that's a lie.
Overthinking is a learned strategy. A habit we, consciously or unconsciously, developed when we need to deal with difficult thoughts or feelings.
The truth is that we can choose whether or not we engage with a thought, regardless of its content or the feelings that come with it.
This is called Metacognitive Therapy.
We have thousands of thoughts a day and most of them just go by without us caring.
Think about it. Can you name 10 thoughts you had yesterday? I bet you can’t, because most of them have no impact on you or your attention.
However, there are some thoughts that stick with us. These are called trigger thoughts and if you pay attention to them, you can trigger an explosion of sensations and feelings, both positive and negative.
The positive ones are easy to deal with, but how about the negative ones?
The Danish psychologist Pia Callesen, suggests an analogy that may help you: What if you think about your thoughts as trains in a busy railway station?
You have all kinds of trains departing for all kinds of destinations. Each train represents a trigger thought that will take you on a ride of its own.
If you see a trigger thought such as "I'm not good enough for this job" approaching and you hop in on that train, you'll probably make stops at "I'm useless" and "Nobody loves me" stations.
Bad idea.
The truth is that you cannot control the trains, they just come and go.
However, you can control if you hop in or not. This is one of the basis of Metacognitive Therapy:
While trigger thoughts are beyond your control, you can control whether you engage with them.
So, with this in mind, discipline yourself to follow only the right trains, the ones that take you to emotional states that you want to visit.
Also, remind yourself that just because you hopped in on a train, that does not mean you need to follow that line until the end.
Start letting go the habit of taking every train and see your life quality increase.