Are You an Overthinker?

Are you and Overthinker? I know I am. I overthink everything, and it doesn’t really help much. It causes me a lot of stress.

Living In Your Head

When you are an overthinker you spend a lot of time living in your head. This expressing itself in several ways combined into ruminating thoughts.

Ruminating thoughts are repetitive, negative thought patterns that focus on past mistakes, future worries, or current problems, often without leading to solutions. 

Do you spend too much time wondering about what went wrong in the past, the mistakes you made, the hurt others have caused you, the things that happened that belittled or embarrassed you?

Or maybe you can’t stop thinking about the future, what is going to happen, how are you going to carry on, what will your future look like, can your problems be solved.

Maybe it’s what happening right now that is worrying you and taking up all of your headspace. Today’s problems will still be there tomorrow and you can’t shake them off you spend all of your headspace with no solutions in sight.

This persistent dwelling on negative experiences can worsen mental health conditions like depression and anxiety, and interfere with daily functioning. 

How Does Overthinking Present Itself?

You might be constantly distracted, make even more mistakes that worry you even more. While spending all this time in your head overthinking everything, you may believe you are going to come up with a solution a way of making all these things better. However, they often lead to having the opposite effect and just making things worse.

Overthinking can cause depression, anxiety and other mental health conditions. They can affect your everyday life and cause you to avoid situations that might trigger you, and break down social interactions.

How to Stop Overthinking?

I’m not going to say it’s easy, nothing in life is easy. But, there are ways that can help you stop living in your head and live more in your body instead. Self care is very important.

Mindfulness and meditation are prime techniques on helping to break the cycle of overthinking and negative thoughts. Learning how to be in the present moment even for just a short time each day can be very helpful.

Focusing on other activities can also help, join a group, start a new hobby, shift your attention away from negative thoughts by replacing them with something enjoyable.

Getting out in nature or just going for a walk can stop the thoughts from taking over. If you find that they still overtake your mind while doing this then pop in some ear pods and listen to some music or a podcast. Distract yourself as much as you can.

Avoid the things that trigger your overthinking, this can be a person, a place, a previous or a previous bad habit. All these things can be helped. If your problems are more serious then it’s time to seek help.

If the overthinking is down to life or monetary problems then seek help from the appropriate places. You can get help if you are in debt, about to lose your home, struggling with basic needs. The help is there you just need to find it.

If it’s down to mental problems then you made need some therapy and the first place of call is your GP but there are many online places where you can refer yourself for help. A lot of them are based locally, so do a little research and find somewhere that could help or at least put you in touch with a place that can.

Writing down thoughts can decrease their potency and maybe help you process them better. I am a big believer in keeping journals and they help me a lot.

When I last went through a life changing experience I overthought everything, I lived in my own head so much that everything else around me was falling apart and I wasn’t noticing until it was too late. I ended up writing down all my feelings and ranting on paper. Some might think it’s crazy to write it all down but it really does help to get it out of your head. What you do with it afterwards is up to you. I kept mine and I look back now and find it hard to believe that I felt like that but it keeps me grounded in the present and stops me from looking back. Or you can just delete it all if it’s digital, or burn it if it’s on paper, both are cathartic.

I also write down a lot of my problems, thoughts and feelings now. It helps me to keep it all in a place where I can work through it bit by bit and stop it from taking up too much headspace.

But journalling doesn’t always have to be writing down your problems. Keeping a journal of the good things, collecting helpful quotes, being creative, even just colouring in can all help with staying mindful. Give your brain a break and stop overthinking.

If you have found this helpful, you might find some of the things in my shop useful in helping you. I have many journals and mind cards to help, just take a look at the shop link at the top of my page. Everything is on sale at the moment because once everything is gone I’m closing my shop. This has been a great venture but it’s time to end now.

Enjoy my mindfulness journals, Mind Cards, Kid’s Mind Cards, plain journals, bullet journals and more right here. I also have a few candles and wax melts left.