How To Stop Overthinking
By Christina Fenske
Step 1: Build Your Self-Awareness To Create Change
In order to build self-awareness you must first notice and pay close attention to your patterns of thinking, emotions and behaviours. Before you can begin to address or cope with your habit of overthinking, you need to learn to be aware of it when it’s happening.
Any time you find yourself second-guessing yourself or feeling stressed or anxious, take a step back and objectively view the situation and how you’re responding. In that moment of awareness is the root of the change you want to create.
Creating self-awareness is not an easy task but worth it. One’s ability to monitor our own inner and external world can be helpful. Our thoughts and feelings can bring about various signals. These signals can alert us to what’s happening within our own minds and bodies.
Step 2: Focus on What Can Go Right
Concentrate on what is going right or well in your life, instead of what’s going wrong because what we focus on, is what we get more of. Our thoughts guide our feelings, which lead to our actions.
In many cases, overthinking is caused by a single emotion: fear. When you focus on all the negative things that might happen, it’s easy to become paralyzed. Next time you sense that you starting to head in that direction, stop. Visualize all the things that can go right and keep those thoughts present and up front.
Building self-awareness keeps us from being vulnerable to these signals, but instead to objectively and thoughtfully respond to them. Self-aware people understand their internal experience and their impact on the external experience of others.
Step 3: Distraction and Participating in Happiness
Distract yourself with positive, healthy and happy thoughts which can frequently help us to avoid overthinking. Some good ways to distract are through breathing exercises, meditation, dance, exercise, playing an instrument, crocheting, drawing, and painting which can create some distance between you and the issues adequately to at least assist in shutting down the over-analysis.
Step 4: Putting Things Into Perspective
Most of us can easily make things in our world bigger, more negative, and often worse than they actually are. It’s best not to make a mountain out of a molehill, but to keep things in perspective. It can be helpful to ask yourself, how much will this matter in a few months from now, or a year from now. This question can assist us in reframing the situation and can stop the overthinking.
Step 5: Stop Waiting For Things To Be Perfect
This one is essential. If we wait for perfection, we can be waiting forever because nothing is ever perfect. We can stop waiting now. The pressure of trying to be perfect can be overwhelming, impractical, illogical, and for some debilitating. When you begin to think, “Things need to be perfect” is the time you should let yourself know, “Progress, not perfection.”
Step 6: Reframe Fear
You may be afraid because you felt you failed in the past, or you may have a difficult time attempting to try again or overgeneralizing some additional failure. We do want to remember that just because something didn’t work out previously doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re going to have the same outcome again. An opportunity is a chance at a new beginning and a crucial place to happen again.
Step 7: Create A Worry Time
Utilize a timer and set aside time to worry for 10-15 minutes. This is the only time to think, worry and overthink the situation. Once your time is up for your worry time, spend 5-10 minutes writing down all the things that are bothering you, causing overthinking or causing your anxiousness. You may want to throw this paper in the garbage and move forward with something more positive and within your control.
Step 8: Understand That You’re Not A Fortune Teller
Absolutely no one can predict the future so we should be focusing on the present. If we spend too much time trying to predict the future, than you’re not living in the now and you may lose out on opportunities because your spending too much time in the past or future. It isn’t helpful to spend time concentrating on the future because we can’t do anything about it. It’s more important to focus on the things that give you joy.
Step 9: Acceptance of You’re Best
Remind yourself that your best is good enough and that it doesn’t have to be perfect. Grounding ourselves in the now is a good way to avoid the fear of not being good enough, smart enough, or hard working enough. Accept that your best is good enough, and you are not able to control some things so you’ve done what you can, maybe permanently or temporarily.
Step 10: Practicing Gratitude
It’s difficult to have a grateful and regretful thought in the same moment, which you might as well spend your time focusing on the positive instead of the negative. Try this exercise every morning at the start of your day, write down all of the things that you’re grateful for.
We are all vulnerable to overthinking which can be perpetuated by stress. If you have good coping strategies for dealing with it, it can at least increase your ability to manage some of the stressful, negative or anxious thinking, by turning it into something more helpful, productive and effective.
If you enjoyed this article, you may also enjoy this 13 Tips To Reduce Worry. Email us, if you need help with your worry, or overthinking at admin@ovcs.ca.
