Why Overthinking is Not a Thinking Problem

The standard advice about overthinking is cognitive in nature: challenge the thought, test it out against evidence, and then notice that the feared outcome is (hopefully) unlikely. For some people, in some situations, this can be useful. But if you describe yourself as a 'chronic overthinker', it is likely that you have tried this out and it hasn't really made a lasting difference. The racing thoughts keep returning and the mind remains restless: each resolved worry leaves space for new worries to emerge. This pattern suggests that approaching overthinking as primarily a thinking problem, will only take us so far.

What overthinking actually is

Another explanation for overthinking (or rumination), is that it might be better understood as 'anxiety expressed through thought.' The content of overthinking can vary: You might experience your busy internal narrative focusing on work, relationships, past decisions, future uncertainties or all of the above!

Although the focus shifts, the function of overthinking is usually consistent. The mind is searching for a resolution to relieve a sense of threat or perhaps unease, and it keeps searching because no thought quite does the job.

This is why the advice to simply 'stop thinking' about things, is almost entirely unhelpful. You will know personally that the thinking isn't arbitrary. In it's own way, overthinking is serving a purpose, or at least attempting to. Interrupting rumination without addressing what our overthinking minds are trying to manage or achieve, produces a brief pause and then the thoughts resume, often with additional frustration, upset, or fatigue.

Why thinking harder makes it worse

There is a paradox at the heart of overthinking, because the harder you try to resolve these mind puzzles through thought, the more entrenched the cycle tends to become. We start to create huge conditional matrices of thoughts, or decision trees and flow charts in our thinking as we try to think through every possibble path, option and consequence. Analysis works well for problems that have clear solutions. Most of the things we ruminate about (uncertainty, past or future events, other people’s inner worlds) are not those kinds of problems. As you may know from personal experience, when we apply analytical thinking to unsolvable problems, problems simply can't be satisfyingly solved. The inevitable end result is an eternally spiralling amount of thinking, analysis and unanswered questioned.

The emotional and relational function of rumination

The thing that can be more useful than trying to stop or control the thinking is becoming curious about what overthinking is trying to protect us from. Rumination almost always has an emotional dimension to it which is less visible than the content of those whirling thoughts. There is often a relational history behind it too: those of us who grew up in environments where uncertainty felt genuinely threatening, often developed hypervigilance and internalised anxiety as adaptive responses. A mind that is always scanning for what could/will go wrong was, at some point, a mind that needed to do so to stay safe, manage the day to day experience of uncertainty, or put simply, survive.

What therapy can offer

What tends to make a lasting difference is not the management of thoughts but developing a different relationship with them and the underlying anxiety. Developing the capacity to tolerate uncertainty rather than resolve it through thought, can be helpful, as well as understanding what the rumination is trying to protect us from. That kind of understanding tends to produce change not because it provides complete answers, but because it changes the relationship to the questions that our overthinking minds pose. We may not realise that the overthinking mind is actually searching for safety, so that it can release itself from endless thought generation and find a way to feel calm and at ease.

If you find that overthinking keeps returning regardless of how much you attend to it, there might be some benefit in exploring it in therapy.

Erin Reid is a counselling psychologist offering online, telephone and 'Walk and Talk' therapy. She works with adolescents, adults, couples, and families across the UK and internationally. Visit www.drerinreid.com to find out more.