Ep 9: Overthinking Paralyzes Growth: Learning to Trust Yourself

You keep thinking about it.
Running every scenario.
Waiting for clarity to finally hit…

But what if the thing keeping you stuck… is the thinking itself?

In this episode, we’re talking about the hidden trap of overthinking—and how it quietly keeps you paralyzed, exhausted, and disconnected from your own inner knowing.

I’m sharing a raw, real moment from my life—standing in a thrift store, completely breaking down next to a cash register—because I couldn’t avoid the decision in front of me anymore. And what happened after I finally chose might change the way you look at decisions forever.

📌 The Support I Used :
Peace&Calming Oil

🧠 What you’ll walk away with:

• Why overthinking feels productive—but actually keeps you stuck
• The real reason decision-making feels so heavy
• What’s actually causing the emotional overwhelm (it’s not the choice)
• How to stop waiting for certainty and start moving forward
• A simple mindset shift to help you trust yourself again

This episode is for the woman who feels the weight of every decision…
Who’s afraid to get it wrong…
Who keeps waiting until she knows…

But deep down?
You already do.

You don’t need more time.
You don’t need more information.
You don’t need a perfect plan.

You just need to choose.

Transcript

Welcome And Core Message

Speaker 0:06

Welcome to Quiet Courage, the podcast for anybody ready to show up and be seen. I'm Kaycia, and here we explore self-worth, courage, and personal growth with action steps, personal stories, and encouragement to help you claim your power and live confidently. Remembering, your worth isn't something you have to earn. Here we practice living in it every day. So let's take small brave steps together and start building the lives we've been dreaming of.

Why Overthinking Freezes Growth

Speaker 0:38

Hello and welcome back to the Quiet Courage Podcast. I'm Kaycia, your host, and today we're going to be talking about overthinking and how it paralyzes your growth and also how you can shift from overthinking to trusting yourself. If you've ever found yourself paralyzed over a decision, like you go back and forth, back and forth constantly and debating and trying to think of new angles, and you just feel like you can't pick a side. You don't know which way to move. You're stuck in this in-between and it sucks so much. If you've ever been there, this episode is for you. Last week we talked about how to stop letting the fear of judgment hold you back. If you're interested in that, go check out episode eight and let's dive into the content for today. So today we're talking about overthinking and how it paralyzes your growth and how you can start to trust yourself instead of being stuck in this paralysis. Okay? Because the truth is you don't need more time to think. You don't need more information. You don't need a perfect plan. And you're not going to have all information. The longer you think about it doesn't change that you're not going to be able to think of it from every angle and predict what the future holds. So sitting in this place isn't serving you. Overthinking can feel productive. It can feel like you're doing something when you're analyzing things and trying to figure out the best option and what you should do, and but what about this? And kind of like throwing all the options around in your head. It can feel productive, but it's actually avoidance. It's actually avoiding making the next step. Okay. So it just disguises itself as I just need to think it through a little bit more. I just need to be sure. I want what if I make the wrong choice, right? I'm sure if you have dealt with overthinking, you have thought that. And when I get stuck in this overthinking space, but in reality, it's not being productive, it's spinning your wheels. You're carrying this enormous weight on your shoulders of every possible outcome. And if you are stuck deep in this overthinking paralysis, the weight feels palpable. It feels so heavy. And it's it comes with this deep anxiety in my chest. And it I'm sure that if you're resonating with this, you can you know what I'm talking about. This deep anxiety that comes with this overthinking. Like you want to make the right choice, but you're just not sure what it is, and that can be so heavy. But here's the thing: you're not confused, you're just overwhelmed by the pressure to make it right.

When I Got Stuck In a Mental Loop

Speaker 3:28

So let me set the scene for you. Okay. I don't know if I just had my baby or I was be it was before I had my baby and I was debating if I was gonna stay home or not. But I remember this weight of am I gonna keep working or am I gonna stay home and raise this baby? was so heavy on my chest. And it was like months of this weight on my chest of trying to figure out what's the best option. Like, yes, if I keep working, we're gonna have more income and that's gonna be great for my family. But if I if I stay home, then I get to raise my baby and I get to spend all these special moments with him, and it just began this continual debate for a very, very long time. Um, and I was stuck in this eternal, like, I was just stuck there. I wanted to make the right choice. I didn't know what the choice was, and I felt like this constant mental loop. I I felt pressure, the anxiety in my chest, I felt fear, I felt like the responsibility of like, what if I make this wrong? So I was just trying to mentally figure this all out, and I was just trying to analyze the perfect scenario. And if I could think about it enough, if I could figure out what was absolutely best for my family, then I'd make the decision. And then I was in a thrift store, conveniently standing five, ten feet away from the register, you know, where like everybody comes to check out. Yeah, conveniently standing there in front of everybody. And there's this woman I knew, she was an older woman, um, who came talk to me and hang out and was asking me some questions. And she just happened to ask me the right question. I don't remember exactly what question it was, but it was a question that was about what like what I was gonna do, if I was gonna stay home and raise a baby, or if I was gonna go back to work. The weight that I had been carrying around, which felt huge on my shoulders, just came crashing out. And there I was crying. No, not really crying, I was sobbing in public, five, ten feet away from the cash register, where I remember there's people checking like came to check out and they just kind of like awkwardly walked out because I had been holding this weight and I had been like holding in debate for so long, and if the situation felt so heavy, the decision felt so heavy that it was like all this water was built up behind the stam, and when that that right question was answered, whoosh, it all came out. And the truth was that if I had listened to my gut, like if I got quiet and listened, I knew what I wanted to do. I knew the answer. But I wasn't I didn't trust myself enough to know like that I'd figure uh figure it out along the way. After that conversation and after like the huge wall of emotion that came out, I was like, okay, I'm making a decision. And I made the decision, even though I didn't have everything figured out, I made the decision, even though I couldn't predict exactly what that would look like. And I can tell you this the second that I made that decision, it was the exact moment that I made that decision, the all of the weight lifted. And it was the craziest thing to me because I had been carrying this huge emotional weight for so long. Like it was like I expected a process that I was gonna have to walk through to get to the other side, but it was this moment that I made that decision that this huge weight lifted off my shoulders. And I've actually had this con this conversation about this with other women who are stuck in indecision and have told them the moment you make that decision, I promise you, the emotional weight will lift. And they have come back and told me, like, oh my gosh, Keisha, yeah, that's true. When I made the decision, the weight of this anxiety just left.

Managing Anxiety In The Moment

Speaker 7:28

A tool that I use when I feel overly anxious is peace and calming. Um, I it's it is essential oil. Y'all, you're gonna learn like as you listen to this podcast that I love natural health. Okay, that's another one of my like things that I could talk all day about. Um, but I didn't want to jump on some like anxiety pill or things like that. Like I knew that if I just could solve this problem, I'll feel better, right? And so I just put peace and calming on my wrist, I wore it on my bracelets and on a necklace, I put it on my backbone because that's the way you can access like all of your body because your nerve endings are there too. And I put it on the bottom of my feet. Like I use that as a big support. If that's something that you want to use, I'll link in the show notes too. Um, just another tool to help you out as you are navigating this anxiety. But I promise you, once you make that decision, it will get a heck of a lot better. So jumping back to my story, I had decided that I was gonna stay home with my baby for a while. And the moment I decided, I didn't even call my boss yet and tell her. I didn't make any of those moves. It just the whole thing just left all that weight just

Clarity Shows Up After Choice

Speaker 8:41

lifted. What I'd like to tell you if you're stuck in this anxiety and this overthinking paralysis, that's is not helping your growth, right? And you know that, right? But the clarity that you're looking for, for me, it didn't come before the decision was made. It came after. I was waiting for all the mess in my head to clear and then feel good, and then like, oh yeah, this is the right path I'm supposed to go on, but that's not the way it rolled. So it was like there was chaos, and I was stuck in this debate until I made the decision, and then all of the that extra emotional weight just cleared. So if you're waiting for the the clarity to come, it comes after the decision. The breakthrough is that it wasn't through the pain, it wasn't from the decision. The pain was from avoiding the decision. This pain that you're feeling right now when you're stuck in over analysis and you're paralyzed and you know you want to go and do big things, but you don't know which path to take. That pain is because you're avoiding the decision. Here's the thing sometimes, I want to say often, we know the decision that we want to make. We know the best choice for ourselves, but we may not trust ourselves, right? So, for instance, the decision that I wanted to make, I wanted to stay home with my kid. But then I was worried about okay, what is my husband gonna think? Also, what is my boss gonna think? Here's the thing: you don't, you're not supposed to know how everything works out. And in my brain, I'm always wanting to know like what's the exact right decision because I want to make the right choice for my family, for my life, for the trajectory of my life, for my career, all the things. And you may be feeling this too. You're like, I just want to know what the exact thing that I should do. You're not gonna know the exact thing, you're not gonna know exactly how everything is going to work out. But if you're waiting for certainty in knowing how everything's gonna work out, you're waiting to know exactly the right decision, like without one doubt about it, you're gonna be stuck there. You're gonna be stuck there for a long time. You don't need to wait till you know and you feel 100% certain on everything. Okay, that's just avoiding the decision, and the weight of that is too heavy. It's too heavy for me to hold, is too heavy for you to full to hold. The reality is that things change, life changes, circumstances changes, new information comes, and even unexpected opportunities appear.

Use Values To Decide Faster

Speaker 11:21

You you can't predict the best path, but what you can do is you can choose the best option for you, the part that you feel most aligned with. And I feel like knowing who you are and what you value is very key to knowing what you align with. For me, I very much value my faith and I value my kids and my family. And if there's one thing that I can do in this world, I want to speak into them and I want to help them to be the most competent and amazing version of themselves that they can be. And I want them to know that their worth isn't dependent on anything that this world has to offer. Our we are all created by God with our worth. Like we are reflections of Him. So I want my kids to know that, and like so where I am, when I check back into like where I stand, it very much helps me to make the next decision. Okay. And that's for like my faith in my family, but also for my career. I know that I'm an encourager. That's who I am. That's what I love doing, is I love encouraging people. So that's how I've kind of made this new pivot in my life is going back to my values. What do I value? I strongly value encouraging other people. And so if you can take a moment to pause and kind of think about what your values are, what do you value? What are the things that when you're 90, you're gonna look back at your life and you're gonna be like, man, I'm so happy I did that. Those are your values, and so once you kind of know where you stand with your values, then it makes it a little bit easier to step out into those decisions and make a decision that's best aligned for your life. And even if it feels a little bit chaotic, you can go back to your values and be like, okay, what do I value? All right, and now I'm gonna go with the decision that most aligns with what I value for my life.

Permission To Pivot With New Info

Speaker 13:17

Here's a great thing that I learned in the is probably of like the past like two, three years that has helped transform the way that I think about these new decisions, is once you get new information, you can make a new choice. Okay, so if you are stuck in analysis and paralyzed about I gotta make the right decision and how this is like you know, this is preventing your growth as a human and your career and your family, like all the things, and you don't know what to do, you have permission to make a new choice. What that means is you have permission to go down the choice, the road, let's say it's a road that you believe is best for you right now. And if you learn new information, right, because you're gonna be going down that road, you're gonna be experiencing new things, interacting with new people. And if you start walking down that road and you're like, oh man, this actually is not for me. This is not for me, you have permission to change your mind. I think that's why a lot of people get stuck in this in this um paralysis, is because they're feel like they're deciding for the rest of their life. No, you are deciding for the next step in your life, and as soon as you get new information, you have permission to change your mind. You have permission to pivot, you have permission to go with what aligns best for you. And an identity statement that can be beneficial for you if you're looking for something like how do you write this into your life? You can say, I am someone who makes decisions and I trust myself to figure it out, right? So you're making that decision, you're stepping out of this paralysis state, and trusting yourself to figure it out is trusting yourself that once you acquire new information, you can then make a new decision. You don't have to stick with the decision you made five months ago, six months ago, whenever it was. I think trusting yourself is is also looking at your values because we're all different, we all value different things, right? And so looking at your values where you stand and making a decision based off of your values. Because if you make a decision based off your values, I can promise you it's gonna be a lot easier to trust the next steps that you're gonna make. Because then you're not acting as somebody else, you're showing up in this world as who you were created to be, which takes a whole lot of pressure off of yourself.

Next Step Action And Feedback

Speaker 15:51

The practical steps here is you don't need to know everything, you don't need the full map. You only need to decide to take the next step. And so you go from a decision and take that action on your decision, and then you get feedback, right? You get feedback and then you make an adjustment. Um, so this is actually how the clarity is built in your life. It's not this clarity that we're looking for when we're stuck in paralysis, it's not built in that pre-decision time, as I was tempted to think it was, and maybe you've been tempted before to think that maybe if I just think about this long enough, then I will I'll have the clarity and I'll figure it out. The clarity is actually built after the decision. Okay, so you make the decision, you get feedback. Say you decide to go to school, you jump into some classes, and you're like, oh, I love this, or oh, I hate this. Either way, it's feedback, okay? And then you make the next adjustment or you continue, or you you know, do whatever you need to do. But those that's like the path towards clarity in your life. To recap, if we could just let go of that pressure of having to figure it all out and having to have it all perfect the first time, man, that would benefit you. I know it'd benefit me. That I don't need to be perfect, I don't need to know at all. All I need to do is take the next step. Even when I say that, the pressure feel it just feels lighter. All I need to do is take the next step, right? You don't need to analyze how your entire life trajectory is gonna go if you misstep. Just take the next step, look around, get some feedback, and analyze it. Do I need to do I need to pivot? Do I need to keep going? That's all that's all we're doing here. Okay, so if you feel stuck right now, it may be because you're afraid to trust yourself. And trusting yourself is just aligning with those values and making the next step and knowing that you can adjust and pivot along the way. Okay, so your next step is is make that choice. If you've been listening and you know that you have something that you've been in paralysis, like decision paralysis about, just make the choice. I can tell I can tell you as a person who was walked through paralysis analysis so many times that it's not it's not worth going months without making this decision. I see you, I believe in you, and I cheering you on every step of the way.

Encouragement

Speaker 18:32

Thanks for listening into this episode. Next week we're gonna talk about how to speak up when you're the quiet one without changing who you are. I'm so excited to jump in next week with you, so come on back for another conversation. Thank you for joining me on today's episode of Quiet Courage. Remember, courage is the first step to confidence, and together we practice showing up, taking brave steps, and building that confidence every day. If this episode encouraged you, I'd be so thankful if you'd share with a friend. Keep taking those small steps, and I'll see you on the next episode.