How To Fight Your Overthinking Mind

It’s 2 a.m. You’re exhausted, but you can’t sleep. Your body wants rest. Your mind has other plans.

A conversation you had three days ago suddenly needs to be analyzed again. A decision you made last year seems questionable. Tomorrow’s problems are already keeping you awake tonight.

You tell yourself to stop thinking about it. That only makes you think about it more.

I’ve been there. My 2 a.m. thought spiral often centers on cancer. But the fear doesn’t stop there. It moves to the people I love, the future I might not get to see, and the thought of leaving people behind.

The more I try to find certainty, the more questions my mind seems to produce.

Eventually, I had to learn something important: Not every thought deserves an answer, and not every worry can be solved tonight.

-Me

Why Does My Brain Keep Returning To The Same Thought

Does your brain often replay the same thought, over and over again, until it’s almost a Pavlovian response? It feels like as soon as the world is quiet, the thought comes back. It keeps coming, even though there’s nothing new to reconsider. You have no new insights into a better solution.

Your brain is keeping things open. The door you want to close is still open up there, in your head. There are things that ended badly, and you haven’t reconciled them. There is still a “what if” that lingers. And our brains want closure.

The heavier the weight, the more repetitive the thoughts. Everything that carries strong emotions is stored more strongly in our minds and retrieved easily. The emotion is like the highlighters we used in college, making our brains more likely to see those emotionally loaded thoughts again.

Sometimes, you’re just in the middle of a loop. It’s a mental habit loop, or what psychologists call rumination. When you repeatedly think about the same worries, regrets, or fears without resolution, you're ruminating.

Unfortunately, every time you focus on the thought, your brain’s neural pathway for that memory strengthens, and it becomes more likely to return again. Why is this a bad thing?

Imagine that you have a very real problem. One that keeps repeating itself in your brain. It’s screaming at you, over and over. Now imagine you know a poor solution with some history of working, but also of making things worse. And that’s the only solution you have. The more that thought repeats, the more likely you are to give in to the temptation of even a poor solution.

Thinking Versus Overthinking

Thinking is the process of using one’s mind to consider or reason about something. But thinking isn’t the problem. The problem is overthinking.

When you are overthinking, you’re generally thought to be stuck in the process of a repetitive, unproductive thought.

Since thoughts can be focused on a lot of different things, the research on overthinking is typically split between ruminations about the past or present, and worries about the future. Both end up in constant thought loops that don’t seem to have a resolution.

The “Can I Do Anything About This Test”

It’s 3:45 a.m., and I am miserable. I can’t seem to shut down, and even the dying have responsibilities and hopes. And that’s when it hit me in the face. Get up and do something else.

I needed a distraction, but what? Honestly, I had to accept that, at 3:45 a. m., there was nothing I could do about my overthinking, my endless loop of worry, or my fear of what’s coming at me.

Then, instead of asking what I could do, I asked, " Can I do anything about this?

Not right then. I couldn’t do anything about it. So, I had to find something to distract myself enough that I could forcefully break the loop. Nothing was going to change the fact that I’m worried about the future, but I wasn’t going to change it right then.

Why Do We Ask Questions That Have No Answer

Have you ever asked, “Why me?”

It’s not a question with an answer. It’s not you who is always the problem. And there might not be anything wrong with you. Sometimes, unfortunate things happen.

But unanswered questions linger in the mind. They’ll stick with you for years. And if there aren’t any answers, because some things just are, it’s better not to ask.

Giving The Brain A Deadline

If you’re on the fence about a major life decision, something that’s stressful, or a future move, try giving your brain a deadline.

Repeatedly telling yourself that you have until a date and time to make a decision reinforces that it’s going to be over at a certain point. Some worry, some cause of all your future anxiousness, will come to a close.

And give yourself a deadline on your past ruminations. How long do you plan to brood over the mistakes you made?

In both worry and rumination, there comes a time when you have to take control. They can create problems with your focus on the future, your mental health, and your physical health when you’re not sleeping well.

Try Writing It Down Instead of Carrying It

Maybe you need to get it out of your head. And your brain needs to release it to something else. Try writing it down and tell yourself you’ll look at it later. That sends a message to your brain that you’ll consciously look at it when you have the time and energy to think about it thoroughly.

Learn To Accept Uncertainty

One thing that a person can work on is finding out how to accept uncertainty.

What that means is acknowledging what you cannot control, focusing on what you can, and gradually building tolerance by using intentional strategies and your practical coping abilities. Recognize that uncertainty is a part of life and that you can’t control everything. Accept that some outcomes are unknowable and that discomfort is a normal response.

Stay focused on the things you can control. When I came down with Cancer, I had to focus on the controllable parts of my situation. There had to be plans on top of plans to deal with foreseeable challenges. Doctors made predictions. I couldn’t let myself predict every outcome. Only the one that mattered.

The only certainty in this world is that it’s uncertain what’s going to happen tomorrow. Your best bet is to be ready.

Try Doing A 5 Minute Reset

When you feel like things are spiraling, on any given day, it doesn’t require a long break or session of meditation. You might get a handle in just five minutes. There are five techniques I found that were put out by Paula Gurnett.

The Physiological Sigh: Calm Your Nervous System

• Take a deep inhale through the nose.

• Before exhaling, take a second short inhale to fully expand the lungs.

• Slowly exhale through your mouth until your lungs feel empty.

• Repeat for 1–4 minutes

If you are in the middle of a day and your thoughts are chaotic, try this because breathing is one of the few ways to directly influence your nervous system.

Try the Grounding Technique

When your anxiety overwhelms you, your attention will often narrow around worst-case scenarios. The 5–4–3–2–1 method from behavioral therapies works because it helps engage your senses and interrupts spiraling thought patterns. You pick:

• Five things you can see

• Four things you can feel

• Three things you can hear

• Two things you can smell

• One thing you can taste

Why does something this simple work? Because it can pull our focus into the present, while anxiety often pulls our focus to the future.

I’d heard of this while going through some cognitive behavioral therapy due to a workplace traumatic incident. Long-term pain left me as a grumbler, with a dark sense of humor about a solution that would be permanent. My department got wind of it and sent me to therapy.

It may seem like it's simple, but that’s part of why it works.

Labeling Your Emotions And Not Fighting Them

We often respond to our anxiety by fighting it. Ironically, suppressing our emotions often intensifies how they feel.

Instead of thinking everything is terrible, try putting a label on what you’re feeling. I’m feeling ANXIOUS. I’m feeling OVERWHELMED. I’m feeling SCARED about things.

It helps put a sort of distance between you and the emotion. Instead of you’re scared, now you’re feeling scared. You feel it; it’s not what you are.

5-Minutes Of Movement

Stress, like many of your feelings, can manifest itself physically. If stress energy never gets used, the energy lingers. When feeling stressed, try some simple movement ideas.

• A five-minute walk

• Five minutes of stretching your shoulders and neck

• Shake out your legs and arms

• Five minutes of mountain climbers

• Get up and dance to one song

Create A Baby Next Step

If you're looking at every responsibility, every unanswered email, every undone chore, and every possible outcome, what happens? Decision-making shuts down. You become overwhelmed. One very powerful reset is to reduce your focus to one extremely manageable action.

• Open one email

• Drink a glass of water

• Reply to one message

• Get dishes in the sink

• Write one sentence

• Do one chore

Small actions relieve cognitive overload and help you rebuild momentum. Your progress creates a calming effect.

Try these if you’re struggling with feeling overwhelmed or overthinking. And if you have tips, share them with us in the comments. We’d love to hear different thoughts on the subject.