Why Overthinking is Not Necessarily a Thinking Problem
Updated: Jun 22
The standard advice about overthinking is cognitively based: challenge your negative thoughts, test them out against evidence, and then notice that the feared outcome(s) are (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 approach and it hasn't made a lasting difference.
The racing thoughts keep returning and the mind remains restless: each resolved worry leaves space for new worries to surface. 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 inwards, through thoughts'. 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!
You will know personally that your overthinking isn't random. Although the focus shifts, the function of overthinking is usually consistent. The mind is searching for a resolution that will remove a sense of threat or unease. The challenge is that the mind keeps searching because no single thought quite achieves this. This is why the advice to simply 'stop thinking' about something is almost always unhelpful, and it increases our feelings of frustration, upset, or fatigue.
In reality, our overthinking minds are searching for safety, so that they can release themselves from endless thought generation and find a way to feel calm and at ease.
Why thinking harder makes it worse
There is a paradox at the heart of overthinking. 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, decision trees and flow charts of thoughts, as we try to think through every possible 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 try to apply analytical thinking to unsolvable problems, the inevitable end result is an eternally spiralling amount of thinking, analysis and unanswered questions.
The emotional and relational function of rumination
The thing that can be more useful than trying to stop or control our thinking is to become curious about what overthinking is trying to protect us from. Rumination almost always has an emotional layer hiding beneath those whirling thoughts.
There may also be a relational history behind overthinking: 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 always scans 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 simply survive.
What therapy can offer
What tends to make a lasting difference is developing a different relationship with our thoughts and any underlying anxieties. Developing the capacity to tolerate uncertainty rather than resolve it through thought, can also be helpful. Understanding what the rumination is trying to protect us from, is also key.
Therapy can help you to change your relationship to the questions that your overthinking mind poses. This will allow you to step off the treadmill of pursuing exact answers to life's uncertainties.
If you find that overthinking keeps returning regardless of how much you try to attend to it, there might be some benefit to exploring this further 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.
