OVERTHINKERS ANONYMOUS
This podcast is for any and everyone who struggles with overthinking or “getting out of their own head” . It is a no judgement, anonymous, and open platform that we can collectively discuss what is causing us inner turmoil. It will also be a space of encouragement and positive affirmation that you can use to propel your life forward.
OVERTHINKERS ANONYMOUS
Taking Control of Your Thought Life
Have you ever found yourself in the grip of an anxiety attack in the most unexpected of places, like the grocery store between the cereal and snack aisles? I'm Pam Gonsoulin, and I can tell you firsthand that the hidden triggers of these moments are often rooted in the relentless whirlwind of overthinking. On this episode of Overthinkers Anonymous, we unspool the connection between constant rumination and the anxiety that can hijack our everyday lives. With candid discussions and shared experiences, we navigate the choppy waters of mental health, offering a beacon of hope and practical strategies to those who find themselves adrift in thought.
Strap in as we explore the power of commanding our minds with tools that pivot us from the cycle of worry to a place of calm. From breathing exercises to thought redirection, this episode is loaded with actionable advice for rewiring our mental pathways towards positivity and peace. For those who are facing more formidable foes in their mental battles, we underscore the necessity of professional support and the courage it takes to reach out. Join us on this transformative journey as we discover together how to celebrate progress over perfection and cultivate mental well-being that lasts.
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If you need a Life Coach or Mentor to support you on your journey to freedom reach out to me @pamelagonsoulin@att.net
I've been up and down for so long. Crazy how right can become so wrong. The thoughts in my head Keep me on a constant rollercoaster and I just want some peace. Tonight Feels like my heart done, left me stranded, just floating away on a melody, leaving me to all my tears. I just hope somebody here's landed Sides to come and rescue me, cause I've been through so many and the only way to get past the pain Are the prayers that pray to keep my sanity.
Speaker 1:Tell me, have you ever been caught up in your mind, so unaware of time, cause you can't stop thinking, oh, and it feels like You're breaking down inside. You wanna let it ride, but you can't, cause you're overthinking it all. Am I really as good as I think I am, or am I starting in my mind like it's starting on the ground? Father, please tell me again, cause your voice is so felfed within Only days when I'm thinking with it, even after you said that I went. Tell me walk bold, cause you're queen and I'm loving how you dream and your representation. No, you ain't perfect, but, baby, you gon' make it. So stop overthinking.
Speaker 1:Hi and welcome to the Overthinkers Anonymous Podcast, and I am Pam Gonsolin. I'm so glad that you're joining with me today as we endeavor to overcome our overthinking. Can you do me a favor and go and subscribe to this podcast and then, once you subscribe, there should be a button that you can click that you can have the podcast automatically downloaded into your library. What that means is, each and every time there's a new podcast uploaded, it will automatically be downloaded to your library. That way, you can go at any time and listen to it. As you know, podcasts are qualified according to their downloads, and so please go and follow, subscribe to the podcast channel and then download the podcast. Click the tether to automatically download each podcast. And if you would also do me a favor as to invite others to listen in to the podcast, especially if you are being blessed, if you're being receiving something from the podcast, if you're being helped in any kind of way and you would like to extend that help to someone else, let them know about the podcast. Especially if it's someone that you know that is dealing with overthinking, let them know about the podcast. Send them the link so that they, too, can listen and download the podcast.
Speaker 1:Today I want to talk about how overthinking can affect anxiety. Did you know that overthinking can affect your anxiety. Overthinking and anxiety can be a vicious vicious cycle. Anxiety can increase your chances of overthinking, and then overthinking can fuel more anxious thoughts. What does all of that mean? It means that when you're anxious about something, it increases your chances of overthinking the thing because you're anxious about it. And then, when you begin to overthink it, it adds fuel to the fire of your anxiety and your anxious thoughts, and it's a vicious cycle. It just goes from overthinking to then your anxious, from being anxious, to overthinking, and it's a vicious vicious cycle that just goes on and on and around and around. The more that you focus on the negative situations, the bad moments and the scary and potential outcomes, the more likely you are to develop chronic anxiety. So overthinking in and of itself is not a condition, but it can lead now to a condition known as anxiety. The more you think, the more you focus on the negative situations, the more you focus on the bad memories, the scary potential outcomes, the more likely you are to develop anxiety.
Speaker 1:So why does overthinking cause anxiety? Well, there's this word that's called ruminate Ruminate. Have you ever heard of that word? Ruminate? R-u-m-i-n-a-t-e. That word ruminate means when you go over and over a problem again and again. So when you're overthinking, you have a tendency to ruminate, ruminate, meaning you will go over it and over it, again and again, and so, but there's no real resolution, there's no real solution coming from your thoughts. So you get caught up in the thinking loop Remember we talked about that on last time and you end up right back where you started Ruminate, ruminate. You're just going over and over and over. You start at point A and you go to point B, and then you're in back up at point A, and so you're just going over and over, around and around in the circle, around in the loop. There's no real resolution, there's no solution to the problem. You're just caught up in the thoughts. And so what happens is because we ruminate, our ruminations cause us to be anxious, they cause us to be anxious, and so, because of the cycle, because of the loop, you end up with even more worry. You end up with even more anxiety from when you even first started out, and so the overthinking, it fuels the anxiety. You may have been anxious, and sometimes it's okay to be anxious, but then when you begin to think, you begin to ruminate, you begin to go over and over it, your anxiety begin to increase. The level of your anxiety begin to go up because your rumination caused it to increase. It caused you to have more anxiety. It caused you to have more worry.
Speaker 1:An anxiety and worry can be paralyzing. It can be paralyzing. Anxiety takes place when you have persistent, excessive and intense worry and fear about your everyday situations. So if I'm worrying, if I have persistent, intense worry, if I have excessive worry and fear about my everyday situations, then that means I'm functioning with anxiety. That's called anxiety. Anxiety can cause heart racing. It can cause fast breathing, hyperventilation. It can cause sweating. It can cause you to feel tired or, on the other end of the spectrum, it can cause you to feel overly excited. It can cause you to feel overwhelmed. It can even cause chest pain All different types of different pains in your body, all different types of sensations in your body. Anxiety listen, anxiety can really take a toll on your life.
Speaker 1:I remember one time this was years ago, remember I said that I've only realized over the last five to ten years that I had an issue with overthinking. I didn't realize it before. I didn't have the understanding of it before, of what was taking place within my life and within my mind. I thought it was just me, I thought I was just thinking. But there are some years ago, before that.
Speaker 1:One day I was in the store shopping, pushing my basket, pushing my cart in Walmart, and all of a sudden I had an overwhelming feeling that I was getting ready to pass out and I had to hold on to the basket to not fall and hit the floor. It was just like an overwhelming. I was just pushing the basket and all of a sudden I stopped and all of a sudden I just had an overwhelming feeling just come over me and I just felt like I was getting ready to pass out. I was getting ready to fall out in the floor. I think I began to breathe a little faster look like my heart beat a little faster and I didn't understand what. I didn't know what was happening to me.
Speaker 1:So I went to my doctor not long after that and I told her about the episode that I had. Well, my doctor ran all different kinds of tests on me. She found nothing. There was nothing. So what she told me was she said you had an anxiety attack. When she told me that I had an anxiety attack, I was kind of taking her back because I didn't believe her. To be honest, I did not believe her because I was like anxiety, I'm not anxious about anything. I'm not the anxious type of person to be having an anxiety attack to that magnitude. Of course sometimes I might worry about something minute in my mind in my thinking, something minor, but I don't have an issue with anxiety. And so I was like no, I don't think it's anxiety, I think that is something else.
Speaker 1:Flash fast forward to now that I've realized that I have an issue with overthinking. Looking back at that episode I can see now that guess what? It was an actual anxiety attack. I can agree now with the diagnosis that I received, because now I have an understanding. I understand that I have a tendency now to overthink situations and when I overthink, I ruminate, I go over it and over it and over it in my mind and in my. Going over it and over it and ruminating it's fuels now an anxiety attack, it fuels my anxiety. And so I did indeed have an anxiety attack, unbeknownst to me, didn't even believe it, but that was exactly what happened to me and it was brought on by my overthinking. It was brought on by my overthinking. And so, with anxiety attacks, with overthinking, overthinking.
Speaker 1:Sometimes people can see you sweating, they can see you breathing fast, they can see that you might be tired, but guess what? They can't see what's going on in your head. They can't see you overthinking. Only you know what's going on in there. See, my doctor saw some outward symptoms, but she didn't know exactly what was taking place in my mind. Only I knew that. Only I could confirm for her what was taking place, and at the time, because I didn't have the understanding to know what was going on, I thought that she was wrong, when all the while she was correct. And so you know those outward signs that we see sometimes.
Speaker 1:The same thing goes on with anxiety. Sometimes we can see outward things that are taking place, not knowing that what was happening. Is you having an anxiety attack? Not knowing that is because of you being anxious, because of you overthinking the thing, and so what we need to endeavor to do is to now break the cycle. We have to begin to break the cycle of overthinking and anxiety overthinking and depression, overthinking and all of those other things that go along with that, because the overthinking is simply a symptom of the larger, bigger picture. It's one of the symptoms of the bigger picture, and what it does is it fuses, it adds fire to the bigger picture that's happening, which is the anxiety or the depression. And so we've got to begin now to break that cycle. We've got to begin to break the loop that's taking place. We've got to begin to do that because not only does the overthinking cause you to be anxious, but when we ruminate, especially on things that have hurt us, when we begin to go over that and replay that over, especially when we felt like we've been wrong, if we felt like we've been done wrong, we felt like we were slighted, if we felt hurt or we were disappointed, let down and we replay that and replay it and replay it over and over and over, not only is it gonna cause you to be anxious, but it's gonna cause you to be bitter, it's gonna cause you to be resentful. We're gonna talk about that some more later, but rumination causes bitterness to take place. Rumination opens up the door for resentment to take place. And so one of the things that you can do to help you to be able to break the cycle of overthinking, to break the cycle of the rumination, the over and over again thinking One of the things that you can do is to do what we call a brain dump.
Speaker 1:A brain dump. What is a brain dump? A brain dump is when you journal your thoughts and your feelings or you just write them out. When you write them out, what you're thinking, write out what you're feeling, it sometimes will help you to get them out and then, once they are out, then you can move on. See, I'm quite like that. I can think about something over and over in my mind, but then, once I get it out, if I'm able to talk about it with someone, or if I'm able to write it down and get it out, I feel a whole lot better. It feels like a weight that just lifted up off of me. I feel a whole lot better when I can get it out and then I can do what? Move on. I'm quite like that, and so I find that doing a brain dump can help you.
Speaker 1:If you have someone that you can speak to, that you can share this with, that won't be judgmental, that won't look down on you, that will listen, with a listening heart and a listening ear. If you have someone with a listening shoulder that you can share with, that's a good thing. To do a brain dump. Just go and share what's on your mind, share what's on your heart. If you don't have someone that you can share with, get yourself a journal and write it out. Just write it out. I promise you that once you write it all out I mean write out everything, whatever it is that you're feeling Write it all out. And once you write it all out, you're going to feel a whole lot better. But this will require you. It's gonna require you to have honesty, because you're gonna have to be honest about exactly what it is that you're feeling, and you're gonna have to be honest with why you're feeling that way. Why am I feeling angry about this? Why am I feeling sad about this? Is it because I'm hurt? Is it because I feel slighted? Is it because I'm disappointed? Why am I feeling like this? First, you have to identify what you are feeling. Be honest about what you're feeling and then be honest about why you are feeling that way. And when you can do that and journal it all out or speak it to someone, do a brain dump, you're gonna feel a whole lot better and you're gonna be able to have a premise from where you can move on, because you've let it out and you've let it go.
Speaker 1:Another thing that you could do is to practice breathing exercises. Get out Google and Google some breathing exercises that you can try. There's many different breathing exercises that you can try to help you control your thinking, to control your mind, to control yourself Breathing exercises you can do. Another thing that you could do is when you're having the thoughts, when you're having the over thinking is taking place and the anxiety is taking place. Try and focus on something else. Now, listen, I know it might be hard, but try and focus on something else. Try and focus on something that brought you joy. Try and focus on something that brought you happiness, that brought you a sense of peace, a sense of fulfillment. Try and focus on that instead, and if you can focus on that to be able to calm yourself, then you can begin to deal with your anxious thoughts. Then you can begin to deal with what's causing you to be anxious, what's causing you to overthink, what's causing you to feel that way. In other words, what you're gonna have to do is learn how to retrain your thoughts, retrain your thoughts. Did you know that your thoughts can be retrained? Did you know that you can retrain your mind? Yes, you can retrain your mind, you are actually in control. You are in control. It's your mind, and you are in control of your own mind. So take control and stop letting your thoughts control you. You take control.
Speaker 1:Sometimes you might have to stop yourself mid-thought and say and talk to yourself. I know they used to say, well, if you talk to yourself, something was wrong with you. But I beg to differ. Sometimes it's good to talk to yourself, cause I'm talking to myself and I'm telling myself okay, we're gonna stop this thought right here. I'm not gonna think this no more. I'm tired hearing this in my mind, I'm tired of hearing this thought and it's time for it to stop. I'm thinking about something else. I refuse to keep thinking about that. I'm gonna start thinking about something else. I'm gonna start thinking about that time when I was on vacation and I enjoyed myself. I'm gonna start thinking about that time when I just felt so good and I was feeling so happy. I'm gonna start thinking about, instead of all of that other stuff. I'm gonna start thinking about that time when I was just laying out on my sofa in peace, watching TV, eating some ice cream, and I felt so much peace. I'm gonna think about that, instead of the negative thoughts, I'm gonna think about the peaceful thoughts, the joyful thoughts, instead of the negative, the bad thoughts. Mm-hmm, you are in control. Retrain your thoughts, speak to yourself, speak to your mind. You can speak to your mind and tell your mind what to think. Yes, you can.
Speaker 1:Now there are going to be times and there will be some people who won't be able to take control of their thoughts. They won't be able to take control of their mind. Most times, that's going to be due to a chemical imbalance that's taking place within the mind, meaning that your mind is not healthy. When your mind is not in a healthy place, guess what? There are those that are in place that you can seek out to help you with that. They're there to help you to get your mind into a healthy place. There's therapists that you can seek out. There's psychiatrists, there's psychologists that you can seek out to help you to get your mind into a healthy place.
Speaker 1:Listen, when your body is in an unhealthy place, when you're feeling sick in your body, you go to the doctor, so the same should be true for your mind. When you feel like you're having an issue with controlling your mind, controlling your thoughts, you're unable to do so, then that's the times that you need to seek out help. Those are the times where you need to seek out a therapist, you need to seek out a psychologist, you need to seek out a psychiatrist when you're struggling to control it. You're struggling to control it, you need help, you need assistance, and so there's no shame in that. If you need help, you need help. The point of it is that you to get your mind into a healthy place, just like the point of it should be to have your body in a healthy place, so we should be in a healthy place spirit, soul and body. What is your soul? Your soul is your mind, and so our mind should be healthy as well as our bodies Healthy, right.
Speaker 1:So take control over your mind, take control over your thought life and your thought patterns. Let's endeavor to do that this week. I want you to focus on gaining control over your mind and gaining control over your thought life, and thereby guess what You're going to gain control over your entire life. As a man thinks in his heart, so is he. In other words, what and how you think determines who and what you are. I'm going to say that again for you as a man thinks in his heart, so is he.
Speaker 1:The emphasis is on the thinking. So, in other words, as a man thinks, so is he. So what and how you think determines who and what you are. Think the correct thoughts and you will have the correct outcome. Think the wrong thoughts and you will have the wrong outcomes. So maybe your outcomes haven't been great because your thoughts haven't been great. So if you can change your thoughts, then you can change your outcome. Oh my, that's real good. If you can change your thought life, you can change your outcomes, because it's got to go on first in your mind. It's got to happen first in your mind, because it's your mind that controls the rest of your body. Yeah, it's your mind that controls the rest of your body, and so if you can gain control over your mind, then you can gain control over the rest of your life.
Speaker 1:So this week, I want us to endeavor to take back control of your mind. I want you to endeavor to do that this week and I want you to follow some of the steps that I've laid out. Do a brain dump, get some breathing exercises, try and retrain your thoughts, focus on, stop focusing on the negative and start focusing on the positive things. Stop focusing on the negative stuff and find something positive to focus on. Find something positive to focus on. Well, you know what you might say.
Speaker 1:Well, there's nothing positive about my life. There's nothing positive about my life right now. I'm not in a good place, I'm not in a good spot. There's nothing positive about my life. Well, the very fact that you're still breathing and you still have a life, that's a positive. That's something to focus on. That's a positive that can help you. If you focus on that, I'm still alive, and so that means, if I'm still alive, I still have an opportunity. I still have another chance to do something different. I still have another chance to have a different outcome for my life. It's not over yet, because I'm still here. I'm still alive.
Speaker 1:So this week, I want you to focus on an endeavor to take back control of your mind and then meet me back here on next week as we go further with overcoming our overthinking. In the next few weeks, I'm going to bring on a special guest panelist that I just cannot wait for you guys to hear. I'm absolutely positive that you're not only going to enjoy hearing from her, but you are going to learn something to help you to get through. You're going to learn something to help you, and so that's all I have today. I want to see you here on next week. Join me here next week for a brand new episode, but in the meantime, this week, take back control of your mind, take back control over your thought life and if you're struggling to do it on your own, seek out help. Seek out help. There's nothing wrong with getting help. Seek out help. But we're going to control our minds, we're going to control our thoughts. That way, we're going to control our outcomes and have better outcomes than we've been having before. Until next week, bye-bye.