3 Proven Ways To Finally Conquer Your Overthinking

It always makes me cringe when I hear someone say, “Oh, I fall right to sleep when my head hits the pillow.”

Fall right to sleep?

I want to ask them, “Then when do you do all your worrying and overthinking?”

For those of you who are overthinkers — you know what I mean.

It’s the quiet times of the day that can be your toughest. Getting caught in your head with a bombardment of thoughts sends your anxiety through the roof.

It feels like an asteroid attack — flaming balls of destruction hitting you from all sides.

Well, you already have the defenses to conquer your overthinking and your rumination of negative thoughts.

You can train your brain to control your anxious thinking, rather than your anxious thinking controlling you.

Magnifying and Catastrophizing

Overthinking and rumination magnify your issues and challenges. When I was young my father used to say I was always “making a mountain out of a molehill.”

For me, it was more like a huge, scary monster. And it grew bigger with each passing dark moment. Flashing its gnarly teeth at my calm and happiness.

And it frequently happens at night, when your defenses are down — diminishing your mental ability to distract yourself by occupying your mind in other ways.

But why does this happen?

When you overthink, your mind tends to focus on the negative aspects and potential problems associated with a situation. This selective attention can amplify your perception of issues and challenges, making them appear more significant than they actually are.

Overthinking often involves catastrophic thinking — where you imagine the worst possible outcomes. This tendency to exaggerate the potential consequences of a situation can lead to increased stress and a heightened sense of the challenges involved.

Ruminative thinking involves repeatedly going over the same thoughts and concerns, without reaching a resolution. This repetitive nature of rumination can intensify the emotional impact of the issues and challenges, making them seem insurmountable.

Overthinking and rumination are typically associated with heightened emotional responses. When you’re constantly revisiting and dwelling on problems, your emotional reactions become more pronounced, which, in turn, magnifies the perceived severity of the issues.

And all of this is exhausting for you, as it drains your mental energy.

Why Can’t You Stop Ruminating?

You overthink for various reasons, even when you recognize it as pointless and exhausting:

Anxiety and Worry: Overthinking is frequently driven by anxiety and excessive worrying. You may dwell on specific situations, anticipating problems or negative outcomes, which can be mentally exhausting. The fear of making mistakes or facing unfavorable consequences can keep your mind trapped in a cycle of overthinking.

Perfectionism: If you’re a perfectionist, you overthink because you’ve set very high standards for yourself and fear falling short. You scrutinize every decision and action to avoid making mistakes. This constant need for perfection can lead to overthinking.

Lack of Control: You may be trying to regain a sense of control in uncertain or stressful situations that you’re experiencing. By overanalyzing, you believe you can better prepare for potential challenges or uncertainties, even if this approach is ineffective.

Information Overload: That asteroid storm that’s bombarding your thinking is due to consuming information constantly. This overwhelms your decision-making process, leading to overthinking as you try to sift through an excess of options.

Low Self-Esteem: It’s not easy to hear but your rumination may be due to self-doubt and a lack of confidence in your decisions. You’re seeking external validation or spending excessive time analyzing choices to compensate for your self-esteem issues.

Fear of Regret: The fear of making a decision that might lead to regret can be a powerful motivator for overthinking. You overanalyze situations in an attempt to make the “perfect” choice and avoid future regret.

Habit: Your thinking habits are strong and powerful. Overthinking can become a habitual way of processing information and approaching decision-making. Breaking this habit can be challenging, as it often provides a temporary sense of security and control.

Thinking About Your Thinking

When things are quiet and you’re stuck in your head, it’s easy to feel imprisoned by your own thoughts.

You can feel helpless to be able to defend against the onslaught of negative thoughts, especially if they’re turning into big scary monsters.

But you have the power to change your thinking habits and patterns.

Thoughts are part of your mental processes, which can include conscious thoughts, subconscious thoughts, and even automatic thought patterns. Your mental processes can be shaped by your upbringing, culture, and personal experiences.

You can unleash your power to stop “making mountains out of molehills”:

1. Self Awareness

Your first step to taking control of your anxious thinking is self awareness. Stop battling your thoughts and accept them.

Realize that you are not your thoughts. They don’t define who you are.

Your thoughts aren’t a direct reflection of your identity, essence, or true self. Instead, they’re mental events and processes that occur within your mind — influenced by a variety of factors, including your environment, emotions, experiences, and conditioning.

Thoughts come and go. They aren’t permanent or unchanging — in fact, they can change moment to moment.

And your thoughts are subjective and can be biased or distorted. They may not always represent objective reality or truth. Recognizing this helps you avoid over-identifying with negative or irrational thinking.

2. Mindfulness

When my overthinking and rumination spiral out of control, I always picture the same scene in my head:

I’m sitting on an empty beach (my happy place). I focus on all of the sensory parts of the beach — how it looks, smells, feels, sounds, and even what I taste.

I imagine three containers on a cliff behind me. One container is marked, “Personal,” another is marked “Business” and the other has a skull and cross bones on it with a fire burning inside.

As each stressful, anxious, or unwanted thought crosses my mind, I picture that thought on a piece of paper and a bird swooping down to take that thought to one of the containers.

If the nagging thought is concerning something Personal or Business, I imagine the bird taking that thought and flying it to the appropriate container.

If it’s a toxic thought that I have no future use for, the bird takes that and drops it in the container with the fire.

Mindfulness is an incredibly effective tool to stop overthinking and rumination. It teaches you to observe your thoughts without attaching judgment to them.

Instead of labeling thoughts as good or bad, you simply notice them as passing mental events (and for me, filing them away for later). This non-judgmental perspective can prevent you from getting entangled in negative thought patterns.

Mindfulness encourages self-acceptance and self-compassion. When you’re kind to yourself and accepting of your thoughts and feelings, you’re less likely to engage in harsh self-criticism or to ruminate on negative self-perceptions.

Mindfulness is a skill — it must be learned and practiced to be most effective.

3. Meditative Breathing

You need to get out of your head and into your body. Body sensation and sensory awareness can quickly reduce your overthinking.

When your thoughts spiral out of control, shift your focus to the inner workings of your body — especially your breathing.

Focusing on your breath or body sensations can anchor you in the present moment — helping to regulate your emotions. This is particularly valuable when overthinking and rumination are driven by heightened emotional responses.

Deep, deliberate breathing triggers your body’s relaxation response. This reduces the physiological and psychological symptoms associated with stress and anxiety, which are often linked to overthinking. As your body relaxes, your mind becomes calmer.

Focusing on your breath shifts your attention from your racing thoughts to the physical sensations in your body. This grounding effect can help you reconnect with your body, reducing mental chatter.

Meditative breathing requires patience and persistence. Over time, this helps you develop patience with your own thought processes, reducing the urgency to constantly analyze or control them.

You can also do a progressive muscle body scan. This helps release physical tension and promotes relaxation. Overthinking often coexists with bodily tension and stress, so progressive relaxation can provide physical relief.

Start from your toes and work your way up, systematically tensing and then relaxing each muscle group. As you do this, focus on the sensations and the feeling of relaxation in each muscle group.

Breathe slowly and deeply, and maintain your attention on the body scan. If your mind starts to wander, gently guide your attention back to the muscle you are working on.

Complete the scan from your toes to your head.

By intentionally redirecting your attention to your breath or a specific sensory experience, you interrupt the repetitive negative thought loops — the loud carnival that’s going on in your head.

While overthinking can be counterproductive and draining, understanding its underlying causes is the first step toward managing it. Developing self-awareness, practicing mindfulness, and using meditative breathing can help you gain better control over your thought processes and reduce unnecessary overthinking.

No more big scary monsters!

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