Feelgoodery: Overthinking & a phone call to My Sister
Feelgoodery is recorded in front of a live studio dog
Hello my friend, I hope you’re having a wonderful day so far. I hope its warm where you are, even if it’s cold outside, I hope you’re nice and cozy and warm inside. Question for you: are you an overthinker? Do you tend to dwell on thoughts, or ruminate where you think about the same thing, normally a negative thing, and think about it over and over and over again, where you go down the rabbit hole?
Maybe you overthink sometimes and not others?
And I ask this because we’re talking about overthinking today. I’m an overthinker, some days are worse than others. And ironically I almost overthunk this episode so much that I wasn’t going to do it. But I am.
And overthinking isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it can help us analyze past situations so we’re better prepared for the future. But it’s when overthinking goes past the point of serving us, and our brains feel so crowded with information and possibilities and perspectives that we become frozen, and we can’t make decisions . . . and we feel claustrophobic inside our own heads. That’s when it really becomes destructive.
So as an overthinker, I wanted to get a little personal today and share some tools and strategies that have really made a difference in my life when it comes to overthinking, as well as some of the clients that I work with. Now I want to note: I am not a therapist, and I highlyyy recommend therapy, especially if overthinking has increased feelings of depression and anxiety and you’re having a hard time moving forward. But I always thinking friends sharing amongst friends about life experience can be a really wonderful way to grow and try things on for size, so that’s what this episode is really about.
Because not everyone other thinks! Do you know this? Not everyone analyzes things a million times in their minds. And my partner Marc, is one of those people. I was trying to explain to him a few weeks back of my though pattern regarding a work problem I was having. And I was trying to explain that I’ve been thinking about it so much, and all of the possilbilites around this problem that my brain just felt full and I was so exahusted with it that I didn’t know what to do. And I asked him if he knew what that meant, and he lovingly but honestly said - “I really don’t, I’m sorry.” and it was a moment of realization for both of us that we think very differently. He doesn’t have a history of anxiety like I do, and his mind, frankly, is a calmer place to live.
So it was sort of an ah-ha moment for both of us, that we are very different when it comes to the way we think. With myself being an overthinker, and Marc being.. And underthinker? Normal Thinker? I’m not sure. Neither is the right way or wrong way, we’re all snowflakes, it’s just when overthinking stops us from moving forward that it really becomes the issue.
And for me, I’ve definitely gotten better over the years, but it still shows up, especially when I’m rundown, or tired . . .it can show up as me having trouble making a decision about what I’m going to where, or what I’m going to eat, or it can also show up in me overanalyzing and email response I got, or the lack of response I had expected, it can show up in deciding what project I want to tackle first, OR. . . where it can really show up, is when I’m trying to launch something for my business that involves a whole bunch of different aspects - from marketing, to emails, to social media and logistics . . the sheer weight of responsibility all of those tasks take can show up in the brain all at once, and overload it to the point of inaction - where NOTHING actually got done, but you’re exhausted nonetheless.
And that can actually be the sneakest TRAP of overthinking. Because you’re brain is thinking about the work you have to do, it’s organizing, it’s processing, so if you overthink that to-do-work in your head, by the time it comes to actually DO THAT WORK, you don’t have the energy to do so, becasue in some weird way, your brain feels like it’s already done a lot of that work.
That’s how it feels in MY head sometimes, but it makes sense in some weird delusional way right.
And if you’re an overthinker, maybe you have a family member that’s ALSO an overthinker, I know for me, my sister, my mother, ALL of us are overthinkers. My father is NOT. But to give more of an example I thought it’d be a good day to call my sister and check in. She hasn’t been on since the coming out episode last year so let’s give her a quick call and get her take on what we’re talking about today.
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Runs in the family. So okay, I said I’d share some tools that have worked and have quited that inner thinker. And before I dive in - I just want to address that I am all for thinking. It’s normal. It’s heathy. It’s when the THINKING prevents you from moving forward, or being happy, that really is when I start to take issue with it.
If you’ve ever seen 30 rock there’s a great scene with tina feys’ character Liz lemon where she’s talking to herself in the mirror, and she says - you did this with your thinking… and really isn’t any other visual as comprehensive as that when it comes to overthinking.
And rather than idea numbers or consideration numbers to intro these thoughts, I was trying to come up with a word that properly encapsulated undoing the OVERTHINKING. So these five considerations are going to be called Overthinking Unloads. Because if you’re an overthinker, the endless thoughts and possibilities start to feel heavy and like they’re weighing you down.
So unloading overthinking made sense. And that’s what we’re going to do today. Here are 5 Overthinking Unloads that have made a significant difference in my life, that I present to you for your consideration. As always, take what you need, and leave the rest.
Overthinking Unload #1: Meditation with a Twist
Before you roll your eyes and say of course meditation helps I want to say this. Of course, meditation is enormously beneficial when it comes to our mental health, overthinking included, but what I find is that even when we know that it can help, a lot of us still just don’t do it. And one of the reasons has to do with the fact that we all resonate with different hooks, or REASONS to start committing to a meditation practice. Some people haven’t found their way IN yet because maybe it hasn’t been explained in a way that connects with them, or the WHY hasn’t connected yet. For some, because we all have different brains, for some there hasn’t been a compelling enough explanation to warrant that kind of commitment.
So that HOOK for me, way back when, to actually have me commit to a daily meditation practice, was someone, I forget who, but someone said the following. And it struck the chord I needed. So if you are an overthinker, maybe this will be the hook that works for you too.
Meditation creates more space in your brain.
When you’re an overthinker, you’re brain can feel really full, and gunked up, there’s too much in there and you cant make sense of anything. There’s no ROOM or proper decision making. So the way I think of meditation, is that it’s the time in my day to clear the gunk out and create more space.
For me, I do 15 minutes in the morning. I started with 5 and worked my way up, and I’ll also do 15 minutes in the afternoon on the days I remember. But that first 15 minutes is nonnegotiable.
And it’s amazing how much clearer and calmer I think now that’s it’s part of my practice. And on the days where I miss that first 15, I feel it.
And one TWIST that I’ll offer on this, is a visualization that I use when meditating, based around the idae that we’re clearing space in our head. So as your siting in silence, or listening to calming music, and you’re eyes are closed and your looking inward. Whatever your inner landscape looks like, if it looks cluttered or busy or just feelings full, what I literally do - and the corny-ness factor is a ten here BUT, visualize this cleansing white light that starts as this little bright spec somewhere inside and continues to grow and get bigger and brighter and steralizing all of that gunk that’s bogging you up, it’s a light vacuum, its cleaning things out so you have a blank space to move forward from.
And then you can come out of that meditation with a clean slate. And your brain feels just so roomy, like it just got a fresh coat of paint and you haven’t moved any of the furniture back yet.
So regardless of the visualization or not, I truly have found mediation to be all that it’s cracked up to be.
Overthinking Unload #2: Write it Down
Sometimes if you’re an overthinker, the thoughts in your head can feel very large, and very messy, with almost an infinite number of possibilities growing frmo each and every thought. It can feel out of control. Especilaly with to-do lists, which sometimes start popping up right as your trying to fall asleep.
So that’s where getting it out of your head, and on to paper can really help mitigate over thinking. If you ever saw harry potter and they take the memories out of their hed with their wand, and place them in the bowl, it’s sort of like that.
When you write them down, the todos or the thoughts, you can articulate them, and see them in front of you, instead of floating around disorganized in your head. It’s a way to gain more control when you feel the thoughts are getting the better of you.
For me, the biggest change was getting into the habit of writing down my tomorrow to-dos before I go to bed, especially the order in which I’ll do them. Becuae those two things were the things flooding my brain each night before I went to bed, and it kept me up.
So whatever time of day works for you, if you’re an overthinker, writing things down takes those thoughts and can give them a name. And if you want to visualize yourself actually removing those thoughts so that they now live on the paper, well then that’ just great. And you can pretend youre a wizard, and that’s always fun.
Overthinking Unload #3: Take Action
This is for those times when we overthink to the point where nothing actually gets done. But in a lot of ways, taking action is the antidote to overthinking. And it’s true for me.
I mean this podcast was the perfect example.
I wanted to do a podcast for years, but when I started thinking about it, the weight of the overthinking stopped me from actually starting. Because if I wanted to start a show, that would mean:
I’d have to learn how to produce and learn audio equipment, it would mean i’d have to come up with content for every week, it would mean that people might not listen and what would that mean, it would mean I’d have to ask people to come on the show and what if they say no, it would mean I’d have to make decisions about frequency and how often I recorded…
It just meant all those things. And what I would do, is think about all of those things, all at once, and the result was inaction. Where I was too overwhelmed and overthunk to do it.
I think the motto for overthinkers really is: Everything, Everywhere, All at Once
But the antidote to that overthinking, was just starting somewhere. Taking action in SOME FORM. Because action starts to snowball, and when you take action and monotask on that one part, the rest of the brain calms down because you’re focus is ON something.
So for the show, it started with buying the mic, and then learning about hosting, and then having brainstorming the name which did involve overthinking.
But the TRICK for the ACTION, that I found to be the most true, was that I had to start EARLY in the day. The longer you go into the day without action, the more time you have to start overthinking. The more overthinking you do, the more tired you will be and then before you know it the day is over and nothing is done but your brain is fried.
Nip it in the bud and take action early, because then it’s easier to take more action from there.
Overthinking Unload #4: CBD and Chamomile Became my Best Friends
I’m a big fan of CBD, which stands for cannabidiol, and it’s a naturally occurring compound found in cannabis, or POT. BUT, it does not get you high like THC. Insead, it interacts with the endocannabinoid system in our bodies, which plays a role in regulating a lot of physiological processes, like mood, appetite and sleep. Personally, it made a big difference when it comes to my anxiety and overthinking.
And one thing that you might resonate with if you deal with anxiety, or overthinking, is that it can come in waves, you can have a few days where for whatever reason, it’s higher than normal. And it’s normal to fluctuate. So generally, on those days where I know stress is higher, I would take CBD in the morning before things escalated, it’s the nipping it in the bud. So I created a calmer baseline by incorporating CBD in the moring, as opposed to being super stressed out and havign to come down from an extreme. And normally that’s how I continue to use it.
But when we feel calmer, we’re less likely to start overthinking and that’s what I have found to be true for me.
The second really underrated herb when it comes to overthinking, in my opinion, is chamomile. And the reason I wanted to highlight it is because it is so accessible. You can go to Tim Hortons and get a chamomile tea, and it really is a profound substance when it comes to anxiety and overthinking. Chamomile contains an antioxidant called apigenn that has the ability to interact with receptors in the brain and decrease anxiety and there are so many way to use it. I’ve said it before, but it’s not just a nighttime drink, especially if you deal with anxiety. Yes it can help you sleep, but if you are having a stretch of anxiety or you’ve been overthinking a lot latley, having chamomile during the day can be a very subtle but effective way to calm your brain down so you can think from a more grounded vantage point.
Of course everyone is different and responds differently, CBD especially so please always consult with your health care provider. —
That sound means that it’s time for today’s feelgood thing, little weird things that we spotlight so we can train our negative brains to start finding the good more often, because they are so good at finding the bad.
Today’s feelgood thing is when things aren’t as bad as we thought they were gonna be. As overthinkers, we tend to always think that the worst is gonna happen, that the presentation will be awful, that we won’t get the job because we’re a bad interviewer, or that that confrontation is going to be terrible.. BUT.. most of the time, what do we say when people ask after the fact - we say ‘it wasn’t so bad’... in fact, we’ve probably said that a LOT over our lives, yet STILL haven’t learned this lesson, that things, most of the time, are never as bad as we think they’re going to be. So for the sake of our negative brains, this feelgood thing, this moment right now, is just to collect all of the times we’ve acknowledges that ‘it wasnt so bad’, so that maybe we will stop catastrophizing our futures.
I realize that other feelgood things have included the first fart of the mornign and other stilly crap, but this more serious feelgood thing felt a little more appropriate today. We’ll be back to our regular scheduled gastro-themed moments shortly.
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So before we wrap this up, please feel free to share this episode to someone who you think could use it, feel free to share on social media and I’ll repost. And I just want to say thank you to those who have taken the time to leave this show a 5 star rating or review, it means a lot. And if you haven’t, and have gotten something from this show or a past episode, your stamp of approval for this show does make a notable impact for me, and allows this show to gain traction in the sea of millions of podcasts. So your shares, reviews and 5 star ratings, they do matter. Thank you always.
And with that, we will say goodbye for another week. If you’re an overthinker, it can feel like there’s this ballon in your head, that’s deflated when you wake up each day, but gets blown up bigger and bigger with each new thought or possibility or worst case scenario that you blow into it. And by the end of those overthinking days, that balloon is huge and your brain just feels full, where you can’t make sense of anything. But chances are, that balloon? It’s filled with a lot of hot air that’s just taking up what precious space you have. Overthinking can be normal but don’t let it take you away from the awesome present moment that is you. Unload when and how you can, and I hope you have a wonderful day. I will see you next time on feelgoodery.
And now for the legal stuff - the information provided in this podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. Please always consult with your health care provider.