Overthinking can accompany most people that have problems with negative thoughts and excessive worrying. While worrying and negative thoughts have significant impacts, did you know that overthinking can become a disorder? Most people with overthinking disorder also grapple with associated anxiety or other mood disorders, however, overthinking disorder and anxiety disorders are not the same. To sum it up in one sentence, a good explanation for overthinking disorder is when people think about something for too long and/or too much while being unable to redirect their minds to something else.
Overthinking can be about one thing, or many things at once; however, it is defined as thinking about whatever the issue is with an
inability to redirect the mind. This can cause other things to happen like obsessing over the past or worrying about the future. Additionally,
when someone overthinks too much, and over a long period of time, they can develop negative thinking patterns as well. Overthinking,
excessive worry and negative thinking patterns become intertwined and all wrapped up together can cause extreme feelings of anxiety and may result in social disasters or becoming socially afraid. As weird as this
may sound, it is normal to worry about your life and everything that is happening in it. So, you may be the type of person reading this and thinking ‘I have overthinking disorder,’ however, this may not be the case.
First ask yourself, when I overthink, does it result in overwhelming
feelings of anxiety or panic? When I overthink, do I get headaches? Do I overthink so much that it stops me from living my life? Do simple tasks seem daunting or worrisome? If your answers are yes, then you may be at risk for having or developing an overthinking disorder. If you experience one or more of these symptoms while you overthink, then
you may have or are developing a disorder from overthinking:
- Difficulty holding effective communication with someone due to readdressing the same concern or thought repeatedly until theconversation ends.
- Comparing yourself to others and feeling as though you have to measure up to them, or give in to their expectations, or think that they look down on you.
- Always thinking about the worst-case scenarios – catastrophizing everything, all the time.
- Reliving, and obsessing over past failures, or what you could have, should have, would have done, to the point where you cannot seem to get past it.
- Excessively worrying about the future, until every goal or task feels close to impossible to accomplish.
- Being unable to cope with past trauma due to constant overthinking about the event.
Inability to slow down, or stop thinking or worrying, and experiencing overwhelming emotions associated with your thoughts.
If you feel as though you have developed some of these symptoms, or
know someone who has, remember that no two people are the same
when it comes to this disorder. Everyone thinks differently, so everyone obsesses differently as well. As these symptoms develop, you may feel as though you are socially awkward or are harshly judged in social settings due to the inability to control your emotions and negative thoughts.
This can result in the avoidance of going out, which then creates an
even more vicious cycle in the overthinking process because negative
thoughts pop in your head about whether you are good enough. Due to having an overthinking disorder, you may find it difficult to enjoy hobbies, be productive at work, and socialize, due to the energy you
spend on obsessing or trying to perfect everything in your life. This
vicious cycle can be extremely damaging to your health and your brain. Further, due to the fear of what to say, how you say something and how someone else will take what you have to say, you may find it hard to make friends or maintain relationships.
In short, overthinking is the same definition as a “worry wart.” If
this all sounds very familiar to you, then you may now understand why you have difficulties in every aspect of your life. Overthinking can impact your social life, your career, and your personal life. Eventually,
this type of thinking can have significant wear and tear on your brain (which we will learn about in the next chapter). So, what do you do about it? The truth is, you need to start accepting that you cannot perfect everything, you are not a mind-reader, and as hard as you try, you cannot stop bad things from happening nor can you stop yourself from walking into bad situations. What you can, and should do, is get much-needed help.
What is Anxiety?
Anxiety is a natural response our body implements to react to stress. It surrounds feelings of fear or panic about future events – like the first day of school, or a job, giving a speech, or going on a trip. Although
anxiety is a normal response to future events, some people may call it being nervous. However, anxiety becomes a problem when it controls your waking life. While it is normal to feel nervous or anxious about moving to a new place, starting a new job, or taking a test, it is not
normal to have feelings of overwhelming fear and panic surrounding these types of changes.
In extreme cases, anxiety will stop you from socializing, going out, trying new things, flying, entering an elevator, and you may even avoid leaving your home. It can affect anyone at any age and is one of the most common mood disorders. Anxiety disorders take many forms, and there are different types:
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Panic disorder – Overwhelming or intense fear and impending doom at any given time for no apparent reason, known as panic attacks.
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Phobia – Overwhelming fear of a certain or particular object, situation, place, or activity.
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Social anxiety disorder (SAD) – Excessive fear of being judged
by others in social events.
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Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) – Repeated irrational thoughts that lead to performing repetitive actions and behaviors, such as counting, washing hands, or overly organizing.
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Separation anxiety disorder – Feeling extremely homesick
when being away from home or feeling detached from reality when being away from loved ones.
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Illness anxiety disorder – Intense fear about your health; also
known as hypochondria, stemming from feelings of paranoia over almost everything.
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) – Flashbacks or
recurring memories of past traumatic events resulting in overwhelming fear and anxiety.
For everyone, symptoms of anxiety are different, and cannot be felt
the same in two individuals that suffer from the disorder. Feelings range from knots in your stomach to feeling unable to breathe. Sometimes,
you may feel like your mind is ‘foggy’ or like you are disconnected from reality – known as dissociation. You may experience nightmares or insomnia, panic and anxiety attacks (which are not the same), intrusive thoughts, or painful memories that you cannot control. Other symptoms are as follows:
- Difficulty falling and staying asleep
- Hyperventilating
- Feelings of impending doom
- Sweating
- Unable to focus or concentrate
- Dizziness
- Headaches
- Restlessness
- Increased heart rate
- Distress
- Always feeling tense or on edge
- Constant uncontrollable worry
- Chills and hot flashes
- Choking feelings
- Overwhelming fear
- Numbness or tingling in certain parts of your body
These symptoms can happen all at once, or one at a time, and are
often experienced during a panic attack. These symptoms can happen to you if you have an overthinking disorder as well.
The Difference Between Anxiety and Worry
Anxiety and worry are two separate mental states occurring in different regions of the brain. You can experience worry without anxiety, and vice versa; however, most of the time, one triggers the other and these tend to go hand-in-hand. In short, worrying is
overthinking about problems that may or may not have happened yet, and anxiety is what you feel inside your body when you worry.
So, now that we have talked about what anxiety is, the question is, what exactly is worry? Worrying is cognitive based and occurs in the mind. The prefrontal cortex region of your brain interacts with the
limbic system which is responsible for sending signals to the rest of your body and controls your emotions and intuition. The same neurons used
for planning and problem-solving skills are the same neurons used for when we worry. The main difference is the amount of emotional attachment we put into problem-solving as opposed to worrying. When these regions of the brain are taken over by excessive worry, or overthinking, you may struggle with accessing the planning and problem-solving neural structure that would normally allow you to
focus on a given task or building connections with others. Instead,
worry takes over, making it difficult to make wise decisions and maintain healthy change.
Now, most people might say that anxiety is ‘all in your head’.
However, it is not, and it is essential to get this right. While excessive worrying is often ‘all in your head’, anxiety develops from the excessive worry and sends high cortisol hormones throughout your body resulting in attacks. Like worrying, or overthinking, anxiety is associated with the limbic system which interacts with the amygdala, hippocampus, and
hypothalamus structures of your brain, all of which are responsible for you feeling fear. The limbic system is more responsible for trend- spotting, idea-connecting, and pattern-finding – the skills needed for problem-solving and planning.
So, what is the main difference between worrying (overthinking) and anxiety? You may be able to talk yourself down, or out of excessive worrying and intrusive thoughts, whereas with anxiety, it is just there.
It occurs when least expected, or you may feel anxious all the time, as if your brain is on overload, and you are a time bomb, waiting to go off.
Worrying is easier to calm down, and is not necessarily life-changing, whereas anxiety is a state of being that can change and rule your life.
What is Negative Thinking?
There are different types of negative thinking which come in two forms – worry and rumination. These negative or overthinking forms
come in two styles as well. First is worry – when you only think or worry about negative things happening. The second is rumination – when you always think about yourself while finding it challenging to control or stop it.
Worrying is when you think about something, or constantly stress
over something, that may or may not be a problem. However, you make it a problem and obsess over thoughts and images which then create negative feelings, which can result in result in something negative happening. This negative way of thinking is often uncontrollable, and overwhelming, for future events.
Rumination is when someone uncontrollably forms negative
thoughts centered on themselves. They obsess over past failures and
what could have happened if they did things differently. The common emotion stemming from rumination is often depression.
The main aspect of worrying, overthinking, and negative thought
patterns are that you constantly stress and worry over things you can’t control, like past and future events. The best thing to do to take care of this is to accept that what is done is done and the future is untold, so all that matters is what you can do right now. What you do in the present
can help you learn from past mistakes and alter your perception of what will happen in the future. Worrying only causes stress, and it takes practice to get out of this habit. By worrying so much, you are actually training your brain to become tense and over-driven, which is the main reason why fear, anxiety, and feelings of sadness and guilt can happen.
Often people will develop an unhealthy habit to cope with their over-stressed mind, as a way to turn off the negativity. People can
develop a drinking, drug, and/or smoking habit, which may settle the mind temporarily, but then causes other problems on its own. Maybe harming oneself, or lashing out, feels better than living inside your head. Also, work productivity, and loss of enjoyment in activities may happen. Suddenly you find yourself sitting alone thinking even more about all your mistakes, and so it becomes a vicious cycle. The problem here is that you are not fixing your core issue – overthinking – you are making it worse. However, it’s a good thing you decided to read this book, as the following chapters will explain step-by-step how to overcome this negativity and implement change while dealing with the fear and becoming accepting of new opportunities.
Cognitive Distortions
What’s a cognitive distortion you ask? Stemming from overthinking patterns, cognitive distortions are ways that our brain tricks us into believing something is certain when it is actually very false. They serve no purpose and are unhealthy ways that our brains keep us in a bad
frame of mind, repeating the negative thinking cycle that we have in the first place. Even though the thoughts may sound rational, they are not,
and are just excuses to continue feeling bad about ourselves and the world around us.
Eight of the most common cognitive distortions are as follows:
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Filtering – Filtering is about someone taking negative details and magnifying them, and filtering out all the positive possibilities to do with the situation. For example, you may think ‘I failed my test; now I am a failure; I can’t do anything right; I will never
pass anything ever.’
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Black and White thinking (all or nothing) – It’s either be perfect or completely fail. This type of thinking has nothing in between, you are either extremely happy or the exact opposite.
You are either very positive or very negative, there is no
compromise with this way of thinking. For example, say you
have an argument with a loved one, you may think ‘that’s it, we don’t know each other anymore, and I will never talk to them again.’
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Overgeneralization – This cognitive distortion may make you think that based on one single incident, that is the way it is, no turning back or moving forward. Meaning this same thing based on a single piece of evidence will happen again and again as a never-ending pattern of defeat. For example, you aren’t picked for a team, or promotion, you may think, ‘I’m not good at anything; I never get picked; I obviously can’t do anything right.’
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Jumping to Conclusions – This way of thinking says that you know exactly what someone feels or thinks about you without any evidence proving your conclusion. You fortune tell everything, and just seem to ‘know’ exactly what to expect with
nothing to back up your conclusion. For example, someone looks your way and you think ‘she must think I am a horrible person; I know she doesn’t like me.’ Another example is, you anticipate that things will end badly, ‘I just know I am going to fail; I’m not going to beat my deadline; I will get fired.’
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Catastrophizing – No matter what happens, there is gonna be a disaster. In this distortion you may hear about a problem, then question the what-ifs about the whole thing, and come up with
an absolute nightmare as a solution. For example, your car
breaks down, ‘my car broke down, which means I will be late to grab my children from school; they will hate me; the teachers will look down on me; I will be the laugh of the town.”
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Emotional reasoning – Emotional reasoning means that because you feel a certain way that it’s obviously true or going to come true. For example, you feel sad so you think ‘I am sad and miserable, it must mean that I am a depressing miserable person.’
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Minimization – You minimize even the good things that are happening to you and make every outcome a negative one. For example, someone compliments you so you think ‘he only complimented me because he knows I am weak, and so he feels sympathy for me. It doesn’t mean he likes me.’
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Disqualifying the Positive – This means that nothing positive ever happens to you because you don’t see things this way. For example, someone notices your initiative and encourages you to continue, you may think ‘I took the initiative because I had to.’
Knowing how to identify these cognitive distortions is the first step to overcoming them. Regardless of whether you identify yourself with one or multiple distortions, later on in this book, you will learn how to overcome every single one of them.
What is Stress?
Stress is any type of change that is put on the body that requires adjustment in your life. Stress is normal and is with you every day brought on by how you feel and perceive what happens to you. Life- changes, such as a promotion or birth of a baby, can bring on stress – as well as when you undergo some sort of environmental change like moving or routine adjustment. Stress does not have to be negative, as it can motivate you, keep you alert, and inspire you to handle whatever
comes your way. It only becomes dangerous or difficult to manage when
you continuously undergo stress without taking some downtime or relaxation from it.
Continuous stress turns into distress which can lead to headaches, upset stomachs, muscle tension, increased blood pressure, weight gain or dramatic loss of weight, and difficulty getting enough rest. This type of stress can be brought on by overthinking or worrying too much.
Such overthinking/worrying can result in developing disorders such as anxiety, depression, heart disease, cancer, lung ailments, and in worst case scenarios suicide.
Here are some warning signs of stress:
- Dizziness or feeling spaced out
- Aches and pains throughout your body
- Teeth grinding, or clenched jaw
- Headaches
- Increase or decrease in appetite
- Muscle tension
- Heart rate increase
- Chills
- Extreme fatigue or exhaustion
- Sexual difficulties
- Trembling or shaking
Stress is a serious matter and must be taken care of right away. In order to decrease the amount of stress in your life, you may want to keep a healthy routine that balances self-care, self-kindness, exercise,
healthy diet, and positivity. Take breaks from the world and make time just for you. When you take these downtimes, read your favorite book, or do something that doesn’t require a whole lot of thinking like
meditation or mindfulness yoga. Manage your time effectively and don’t take on more than you can handle. Learn to say no, and do something
for yourself before you take care of others.
Ways Overthinking Can Cause Unnecessary Stress
Whether something huge just happened, or all the small things just ended up breaking the camel’s back, whatever stress you are undergoing, there can be associated unnecessary stressors that you may be experiencing without even noticing. These next few items are not
worth your energy, and you need to focus on other things instead. The following is a list of the causes of stress that you need to drop now.
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Rethinking past stressful situations – Replaying a stressful event is not going to do you any good because it has already happened, and the only way to change it is to live in the moment for right now. Take time to be mindful, and meditate while thinking positive things – such as inhaling and thinking ‘I am’ then exhaling and thinking ‘peaceful’.
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Procrastination – This is perhaps the most common stress increaser because the more you procrastinate about something, the more you put it off, and whether it’s important or not, it
needs your attention. If you feel you are stuck in this trap, you may feel frustrated. This is where time management comes in. Look at your ‘to-do’ list and learn how to prioritize. Then break the most needed things into smaller portions, so the list doesn’t seem so overwhelming. Tackle one task at a time.
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Showing up late – No one likes to be late and sometimes being late is completely out of your control – like traffic back-up, or kids, and last minute appointments. Other reasons for being late may include you saying yes to things you didn’t really want to do, or you may be overwhelmed or afraid to attend. Know when to say no due to the overload you already have. Practice on not feeling guilty but work on ‘making it up to them.’ You need to
take care of yourself first.
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Worrying about money that is already gone – This type of stress causing worry is a form of overthinking and is actually much like the first stressor on the list. It is unnecessary and doesn’t need to take up your attention because the past is the
past. The truth is that money comes and goes and shouldn’t hold as much importance to people as it does. You can and will make more, or get more, and you will always spend it. However, creating a savings plan is the most beneficial step for you to take
if obsessing over the fact that it’s gone has you completely fretting. Make an emergency fund, then pretend it’s not there.
Make a list of the reasons why you would need to pull from the fund. This way, you won’t stress that you don’t have any money, and the list will help you decide whether you need something badly enough to pull from your emergency fund or not.
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Clutter – Clutter, whether it’s in your mind or on your desk, is actually your subconscious mind telling you that you are overworked. It may not feel like it, but clutter can be a big stressor, especially if you are the type of person to stay on top of things and be organized. Don’t let the clutter bother you, set
aside some time to go through your clutter (mentally and literally) and do something about it.
Chapter Summary
Having to process this much information can lead you feeling a bit overwhelmed. Given the purpose of this book, this is the last thing we want. That’s why this summary will give you a quick overview of the most important aspects we just covered. Remember that knowing your opponent before a battle is essential to ensure that you emerge victoriously.
In this chapter, we learned:
- What anxiety is.
- What the difference between anxiety, worrying, and overthinking is.
- What overthinking disorder is, aside from what normal overthinking is.
- What negative thinking is and the cognitive distortions that form from negative thinking patterns.
- What stress is.
- What normal stress as opposed to bad stress is, and why overthinking doesn’t help.
In the next chapter you will learn what happens in the brain to
cause you to overthink, and the many dangers that come with it if you don’t learn how to manage your obsessive worries. We will also learn how to cope with – and understand why – overthinking can turn into a life-threatening situation, as well as how you can tone down
overwhelming thoughts to get a much-deserved break. The next chapter is about learning the dangers, and why it is so important to overcome them as soon as possible.
