A question every person has probably asked themselves at some point. In my experience as a therapist, I have seen this word being used as a pattern, as an identity (“I am an overthinker”), and as an illness, something to get rid of.

Let us first see what people usually mean when they say they are overthinking. It is taking something small and weaving a whole story around it. It is immediately jumping to the worst possible scenario. It is repeatedly thinking about the same thing. It is converting situations into personal threats and then preparing for them. It is something that disrupts our daily functioning, our work, our relationships, and most importantly our sense of steadiness. Does any of this speak to you? Well, let us see what exactly might be happening here.

We cling to our thoughts
If you think about it, what are thoughts really? They are a bunch of words and images all jumbled together. They are momentary in nature. They come and they go. It is a sign that you have a functioning brain. It moves, it thinks, it reflects. But the problem does not arise when these thoughts come in. It is when we cling to them as if they are facts, as if they are reality.
With every thought we cling to, it takes us into a unique journey. So the first takeaway: we confuse thoughts with facts. We fuse with them. We forget that we and our thoughts are separate.

The evolutionary perspective
If you go back to the time of hunter gatherers, they needed to prepare. They needed to ensure they had everything under control so they would not be attacked by an animal. That is a long time ago. But even though the nature of threat has changed, we still experience emotional fears. We have our relationships to think of. We have our jobs to think of. In short, we still get caught up in survival modes.
Our nervous system can respond to emotional threats in ways similar to physical danger. For the body, a threat can feel like a threat. And so we still use the same control strategies. We still prepare. We still want to ensure there is no harm coming. But what really happens is that the same control becomes suffocating.

What you resist tends to persist
You see, we all have a tendency to look for quick solutions. We want to get rid of everything that disturbs us. So imagine this. If I ask you not to think of a white elephant, what came to your mind? A white elephant, isn’t it?
This is how the mind works. Trying not to think about something often makes it stay longer. Instead of getting rid of it, we make it stay by struggling with it.

Lack of movement
When you are under stress, you are heavily overloaded. When you are overloaded, you lose touch with the present. The present where maybe you needed a bit of a walk. Where you needed to shift places. Where you needed to see a different sight. But since we just stay there, we feel more and more stuck.

So is overthinking the main concern?
No. Often it is our confusion between facts and thoughts. It is our embodied experience that we are under threat every time. It is our tendency to control. It is wanting to get rid of things instead of staying with them. It is losing touch with reality while trying to secure the future.

So what is the answer?
Well, I am going to first ask you to stay with this blog and see what comes up.
But I will leave you with a hint.
The word is safety.
And sometimes, therapy is where the body learns that it does not have to stay on guard all the time.