Cycle Breaker and Change Maker | Introduction to Overthinking

In today's episode I will be discussing overthinking.   In my last episode I discussed catastrophizing, I consider overthinking to be catastrophizing’s equally unhelpful sibling.  Overthinking and catastrophizing can stem from similar pasts as a way to cope with trauma, however, like siblings they have their own unique elements.

 Do you ever find yourself constantly ruminating, going over a situation over and over again in your mind as if on replay, or,  do you catch yourself thinking through as many possible scenarios as you can before moving forward?  Do you feel it is safer to think about than to act on a decision?  If so, you could be experiencing overthinking due to trauma.  If you are experiencing overthinking, it can cause you to become hyper-focused on your own thoughts, grow anxious about your inability to understand and manage them and end up preventing you from taking action.  This can cause stagnation and can be incredibly uncomfortable and stifling.

Transcript

Introduction to Overthinking

 In today's episode I will be discussing overthinking.   In my last episode I discussed catastrophizing, I consider overthinking to be catastrophizing’s equally unhelpful sibling.  Overthinking and catastrophizing can stem from similar pasts as a way to cope with trauma, however, like siblings they have their own unique elements.

 Do you ever find yourself constantly ruminating, going over a situation over and over again in your mind as if on replay, or,  do you catch yourself thinking through as many possible scenarios as you can before moving forward?  Do you feel it is safer to think about than to act on a decision?  If so, you could be experiencing overthinking due to trauma.  If you are experiencing overthinking, it can cause you to become hyper-focused on your own thoughts, grow anxious about your inability to understand and manage them and end up preventing you from taking action.  This can cause stagnation and can be incredibly uncomfortable and stifling.

 So what exactly is Overthinking?
 
Overthinking can be a coping mechanism that develops as a response to a past trauma.   People typically overthink either about the future by worrying about the future or about the past by getting stuck in or ruminating past events.   Overthinking occurs when you put too much time and effort into thinking about or analyzing something in a way that is not helpful, and is actually harmful - repeatedly focusing on the same thought or the same situation in your mind can become disruptive to your life.  While at first overthinking can present itself like it is problem-solving, it is not, this is because problem solving is actually a strategic method of thinking.  When you problem solve you are able to make decisions and move forward which comes with a great propelling energy.  Overthinking though has the opposite effect, you can experience feelings of distress, analysis paralysis and decision fatigue.  

Why does overthinking happen?
 
Similarly to its sibling catastrophizing which I discussed in episode 12, overthinking is a coping mechanism that helps us feel more in control of a possible outcome.  If you have experienced childhood trauma or if you had over-controlling caregivers, by overthinking you can feel as if you have a sense of safety and security in your environment.  This of course at first, feels very good and safe and makes sense because we have a primitive human need to feel safe.  When what should be straightforward decisions make you freeze you can see how overthinking becomes very unhelpful - it takes up so much emotional energy that you can be left feeling both physically and emotionally drained.

I want to make it clear that overthinking, just like catastrophizing and hyper-independence which I have discussed in past episodes and hypervigilance and oversharing which I will discuss in future episodes are not signs of weakness, they are not character flaws - they are coping mechanisms that have been developed out of a need for survival.  They were absolutely needed and helpful at times in your life, as you move away from those past events you can look at these responses for what they truly are - survival responses.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with the fact that you needed to develop these, if they are no longer helpful and are hindering you there are ways to work with the responses so that they can propel you forward instead of letting them make you feel trapped.

 My story and how overthinking has impacted me as an adult:

For as long as I can remember, I have been able to spot overthinking in others almost  immediately, I’ve had peers that spent hours thinking about their outfits, weather or not to go on social outings, and how they should respond to messages and I mean hours of needing to discuss, edit and revise to the point that others would become impatient and upset with them.  Those were all not issues I faced, or so I thought.  Overthinking started to rear its ugly head when my life load became very large. I have developed an incredibly high threshold for most things, so when I started to have trouble making decisions I didn’t understand what was going on, it was completely opposite to my usual way of navigating through life.  I experienced going from having my ability to make rapid critical decisions under pressure to seeing every possible option in my mind at once and feeling like I could not select a single one because I was playing out every single one at the same time.  I started to go over and over something that happened in the past - what if I had said this, what if I had said that what would the outcome have been.  All of this was such a waste of time because as we all know logically, we cannot change the past or dictate the future, we do not have that type of control.  When you are dealing with trauma recovery,  it can feel so deceptively helpful to think that we can actually take control of the past and the future. 

What have I done to break the cycle of trauma that has led to overthinking for me?
 
 Step 1:

Noticing that I was stuck in an unhelpful thinking pattern and acknowledging that it was having a negative impact on my happiness.  When I started to have trouble making decisions like what toppings to put on a pizza, it finally hit me - this wasn’t my normal way of functioning.  Decisions that were arguably simple and not life threatening began to feel like they were, this is where I recognized something needed to change.

 Step 2:

Naming it.  Once I was able to say to myself that I was ruminating, obsessing on details, in analysis paralysis again it was so freeing - instead of just feeling something so uncomfortable, I was calling it something.  This helped me look at it for what it was, a thinking pattern, a symptom like a runny nose of a cold - something that did not have to exist forever.

 Step 3:
 
Doing it anyway.  This was uncomfortable at first, but I had to start just doing it anyway - there was no way I could know if a decision was right or wrong because I could ot predict the future so I had to give it a try.  If the decision was correct, great, if it was incorrect it became a learning experience.  The world did not end, it began - I have learned more from mistakes and challenging experiences in my life than from anything else.  Part of being human is that largely, we need to experience something in order to truly believe it.

 My experience - how implementing the steps I have shared led to a positive outcome:

I remember the first time I said out loud - I cannot make another decision today.  I remember I felt exhausted, like I was going to collapse if I had to make another decision about anything.  This was not because I was making more decisions than I was in the past, this was not because the decisions were more complicated than in the past - I was already used to making thousands of calls in a day with rapid speed - this was was because I had started to overthink all of my decisions in a valiant effort to control outcomes. When I heard myself say I could not make another decision it made me stop and look at why.  Why was my mind so loud and where had my confidence in decision making gone?  Why was I seeing everything and anything all at once and why was it so paralyzing?   

Looking back on that time I was under an incredible amount of stress dealing with navigating an extremely complicated medical system full of hurdles to get a past abuser help in order to protect themselves and others, this was all on top of my normal life load which I normally could handle with grace.  The trauma this was bringing up was infiltrating my everyday decision making.

I realized I was stuck and not in fact gaining any control.  So I started to take action.  I started to look at decisions differently -is this a life or death decision?  Does this decision have a massive financial impact?  No, so it is not as an important decision as I have made it out to be, it doesn’t deserve that much of my time and attention because it is taking away from what matters more, my well being.

I started making decisions, and if I got stuck, I caught myself and reminded myself that I did not need to let overthinking gain control over me, I was in the driver's seat, I was in the position of power and, I have not looked back since.  This is something that you can train yourself to do too, start with something small and work your way up from that.  Never underestimate your ability to change.