How to Stop Overthinking

Most people who want to know how to stop overthinking are not looking for a breathing exercise or a five step plan. They have already tried those. They work for about eleven minutes and then the thoughts come flooding back in, usually louder than before, because the underlying reason for the overthinking was never addressed.

So, before we get into anything practical, it is worth asking a question that almost nobody asks.

Why are you overthinking in the first place?

Because overthinking is not a habit or a personality flaw. It is not something that happens to unlucky people with busy minds. It is a symptom of something much bigger going on behind it. And like most symptoms, treating the surface of it without understanding what is driving it is a bit like turning the volume down on a fire alarm rather than finding the fire.

Overthinking, in almost every case, comes from the same source. The need to get things right before you act. And the need to get things right before you act almost always comes from the same place — fear of what other people will think, feel or say about you if you do not.

Think about what you are actually doing when you overthink. You are running every possible scenario through your head before committing to anything. You are imagining how this person will react, how that person will judge you, what this choice will say about you to the people around you. You are essentially trying to pre-approve your own decisions through the imagined opinions of everyone in your life before you have even made them.

To help this you must understand the ego — that part of you that has spent years learning how to keep you safe and accepted — is the engine behind most overthinking. It has built its entire existence around knowing how to be received well by the people around you. It has studied the room, understood the rules and learned exactly what kind of person earns love, respect and belonging in the world you move through. So, every time you are about to make a decision, it pulls you back and runs a check to find every possible way it could go wrong and whether it is more likely to result in a socially positive or negative way. It wants no risk but just absolutely certainty you are not going to look stupid, be rejected or lose someone's approval before it proceeds, hence the voice in your head going a million miles an hour.

So why does it drain and exhaust you so much? Because it never ends. There is always another scenario to consider, another person's reaction to imagine, another version of events where something goes wrong. The mind keeps running because the ego keeps running it, and the ego does not stop until it feels safe. Which is almost never, because safety to the ego is approval. And approval, from other people, is never fully guaranteed and nor should it be if you are truly who you are meant to be. If you do not stand for anything then you will fall for everything and if you are a friend to everybody then you are an enemy to yourself because the only person whose approval you never seek is your own.

This is why the conventional advice to just stop overthinking does not work. You cannot will yourself out of a process that is running automatically beneath the surface of your conscious awareness. You cannot think your way out of overthinking just like you can't drink yourself out of an alcohol addiction. However, the answer is not just to think less. The answer is to understand what the thinking is protecting you from, and then to look honestly at whether that protection is actually serving you or just keeping you small.

There is a version of you that already knows what to do and knew before the overthinking ever started. It had an instinct and a sense of direction before the ego stepped in and began running its checks. That version of you is not wrong but just feels it because of how unfamiliar it is to just be you despite what others might think. It is just you, without the performance. Without the need to pre-approve every thought and decision through the lens of other people's opinions.

Learning how to stop overthinking is really learning how to trust that version of yourself again.

Not all at once or by pretending the fear is not there. But by starting to notice, in real time, when the overthinking begins. Who are you imagining judging you right now? Whose approval are you unconsciously seeking before you will allow yourself to move forward? What is the thought underneath the overthinking that you are trying to avoid facing?

Those questions will tell you more about your overthinking than any technique ever could.

If you recognise yourself in any of this, it is probably not a coincidence. The work I do is built around exactly this territory — understanding what is driving the patterns that keep people stuck, and changing the way you see those patterns so fundamentally they lose their grip. It starts with a free twenty minute conversation.