How to stop overthinking?
You don't have to stop thinking. You have to learn to think in a useful way.
You don't have to stop thinking. You have to learn to think in a useful way.
Why do I overthink?
Overthinking is not a character flaw: it's a habit of the mind. When you recall a memory, you're not just thinking: you're reactivating an experience, along with the emotions it carries. If you do it every day, the brain turns it into a routine. And the brain loves routines, because they cost little energy, even when they make you suffer.
That's how the loop begins: a thought calls up an emotion, and that emotion calls up the same thought. The brain doesn't look for what is better, it looks for what is already familiar. What you repeat becomes automatic, and what is automatic stops being questioned.
One element is missing from this mechanism: choice. Between the stimulus and your response there is a space. That's where you can step in.
Are overthinking and ruminating the same thing?
They look alike, but they aren't the same.
Ruminating is the movie you play for yourself and keep rewatching. You go over a conversation, a mistake, a choice, and with every replay you reactivate the same emotions. Overthinking looks mostly ahead: you imagine everything that could go wrong, you analyze every possibility and meanwhile you don't decide.
The mechanism, though, is the same. A thought that spins on itself, without leading to a choice or an action. In both cases the mind stays stuck on the problem, while life asks you to move on.
The useful difference is a different one: a thought serves you when it leads you to decide or to do something. If after half an hour you're exactly where you were before, you're not thinking: you're going in circles.
A good technique is to give yourself a deadline to decide. Set how much time you want to spend on that issue, for example until tonight or until Friday. When time is up, choose with what you know. A decision made moves you forward; a hundred thoughts without a decision keep you stuck.
How can I think in a useful way?
The point is not what is in reality. The point is what you're looking for. And what you look for, you find.
Where attention goes, energy flows. And where energy flows, experience grows. If your mind looks for problems, it will find problems. If it looks for solutions, it will start to see them. Thinking in a useful way means taking control of your focus.
The simplest way is to change the question you ask yourself. "Why does this always happen to me?" keeps you inside the problem. Try this instead:
- What do I want, in place of this?
- What can I do right now, even something small?
- What am I learning from this situation?
Questions shift your attention. And when your focus changes, your internal state changes. From there you can access your resources and choose, instead of always reacting the same way.
How do I stop ruminating about the past?
The nice thing about the past is that it's over.
If you keep going back to it, ask yourself why. Often there's a sense of guilt behind it. Then there is only one question: can you do something to make it right? If yes, do it. If not, what's the use of going over it again? It's just a habit.
In the series you'll find a very effective technique for guilt. For now, stop and ask yourself:
- Today, with the resources I have and as the person I am, would I still act that way? Would I still do the same things?
- What did I learn from that situation that I want to keep as a lesson?
Then love yourself, forgive yourself and move on with your life.
How do I interrupt a thought that loops?
A loop doesn't stop by reasoning about it: the more you analyze it, the more you feed it. It stops when you interrupt it.
In NLP this is called a pattern interrupt: a clear action that breaks the circuit at the moment it starts. You can do it in three ways:
- With a phrase. When you feel the thought starting, tell it firmly: "Silenzio, Bruno!", like in the Disney-Pixar movie "Luca". Or create your own phrase, the one that works for you.
- With your body. Stand up, change your posture, take three deep breaths, go out for a walk. When your physiology changes, your internal state changes.
- With a smile. An ironic line said to yourself at the right moment can do what a long explanation can't. When you smile, for an instant you step out of the rigidity with which you were living that situation.
It's not a matter of manners, it's a matter of direction. In that instant of interruption, space opens up for a choice different from the usual automatic reaction.
Why does my mind only see the negative side?
Try this. Look around and count, in 15 seconds, how many yellow objects you can see in the room.
Done? Now close your eyes: how many blue objects are there?
You don't know. Yet they were there even while you were looking for the yellow ones. Your brain has a filter, the Reticular Activating System (RAS), which makes you notice what you're looking for and blinds you to everything else.
The same thing happens with thoughts. If your mind is used to looking for what's wrong, it will always find what's wrong. Everything good that happens loses value: not because it doesn't exist, but because you don't see it. Then confirmation bias kicks in: you confirm what you already think, and you strengthen what you confirm. You create a loop, and you call it reality.
The good news is that the filter can be reoriented. If you change what you look for, what you find changes. It's what you saw in the answer about how to think in a useful way: change the question, and the focus changes.
When do you need a professional's help?
The techniques on this page are for those who want to interrupt a habit of the mind. They are not a treatment and they don't work on clinical issues.
One thing is a thought that keeps coming back and slows you down before you decide. Another is a thought that won't let you sleep, work, be with people. When even the simplest aspects of the day become hard to manage, the way forward is a qualified professional: your doctor, a psychologist, a psychotherapist.
It's not a step back. It's the most useful choice at that moment.
If you want to understand where coaching works and where therapy does, you'll find the difference in NLP, coaching and psychotherapy.
A small exercise
This exercise comes from Technique 2.1 of the book. It doesn't change what the thought tells you: it changes the way you hear it, that is voice, tone and speed. In NLP these are called submodalities.
Think of a sentence your mind repeats when you get stuck, for example "you'll never make it".
- Take a deep breath, close your eyes and listen to it as it is, with its voice and its tone.
- Now repeat it in your mind faster, faster and faster.
- Give it the voice of a character who has always made you laugh: Donald Duck, Stan Laurel, whoever you like.
- Add a silly comedy tune underneath, while that sped-up voice keeps repeating the sentence.
- Take a deep breath, count to three and open your eyes.
- Close them again and go back in your mind to the situation in which you got stuck. Try to find the feeling you had before.
What do you notice? If that sentence is still a little present, take a break and repeat the exercise.
The words are the same as before. Who decides, now, how much weight to give them?
To go deeper
The thought that goes in circles is one of the automatic patterns the book helps you see. In Volume I you learn to recognize the loop; in Volume II you find the techniques to intervene, step by step. The Premium Edition contains both.
Further reading
For a broader map of readings on the topics of this site, from the origins of NLP to decisions and emotions.
Go to Further Reading