Does your mind often go into overdrive? Do you replay conversations or situations? Do you worry and anticipate case scenarios? If this feels familiar, you are not alone.
Overthinking and rumination are a common experience people bring to therapy. When your mind and thoughts are on overdrive, understanding why this happens can be helpful.
Overthinking vs. Rumination: What Are You Experiencing?
Many of us experience and are familiar with ‘overthinking’, which can show up in two ways:
- Future Focused Worry We experience anxiety for things that may might happen in the future. This is our mind trying to anticipate scenarios or problems before they happen.
- Past Focused Loops When we continue to overthink or analyse a past event, often asking ourselves rhetorical questions, for example"Why did I do that?", “What will they think of me” or "What did they mean when they said that?"
Past and future worry can leave us drained, feeling out of control and often disconnected from the present moment, as we are focused on either the past or future.
Why Your Brain Keeps You Stuck in Thought Loops
When this happens, our mind is trying to protect us.
- Internal Alarm System: The amygdala, which is in the limbic part of our brain, acts as a threat detector and helps us respond to fear and danger. However, it can’t tell the difference between an actual physical danger and an emotional threat, like fear of rejection, failure, or conflict. When it senses discomfort, it sends our mind and body into a state of alert.
- Illusion of Control: Analysing a problem repeatedly can sometimes feel like we’re taking action. However, our mind can play tricks, believing that if we analyse it enough and consider all possible options, it can help us eliminate risk or avoid future pain.
- A Habitual Safe Space: When we continue to carry underlying stress or anxiety, the time we experience ‘quieter’ moments, it can began to feel unfamiliar. Overthinking often distracts from feeling our deeper emotions.
Common Root Triggers for Overthinking
Overthinking often comes from patterns we have developed over time:
- Perfectionism: Believing we have to achieve perfection or always going above and beyond. Anything short of this, can then make us feel unsafe, inadequate, or open to criticism.
- People Pleasing: Continually looking after other people’s needs, ensuring everyone is ok before yourself, and that you haven't disappointed anyone.
- Nervous System Overload: When you are living with prolonged stress or burnout, your resilience and ability to manage in times of difficulty become more challenging.
- Past Experiences & Trauma: If you have experienced times in your life where things went wrong unexpectedly, your brain learns to stay on high alert, to avoid it happening in the future.
Gentle Ways to Ground Yourself
When you experience overthinking, here are a few practical ways you might find helpful:
- Name What’s Happening: Acknowledge the pattern without judgment by saying to yourself: "My mind is trying to protect me by ruminating right now." This can create some space between you and your thoughts.
- Your Physical Body: Overthinking takes you into your head. Bring yourself back into your physical body and the present moment, for example, place your feet firmly on the floor, feel the sensation of the chair beneath you. Use your senses to see, hear, smell and touch five things around you.
- Set Aside "Worry Time": Give yourself a dedicated 10-minute space during the day to write down everything worrying you. Containing worry to a fixed time can help train the brain to postpone unhelpful loops throughout the rest of the day.
- Leaves in a stream: Visualise and acknowledge that your thoughts are like leaves in a stream. They come into focus and then continue to pass by, give yourself permission not to hold onto them.
How Counselling Can Help You Stop Overthinking
While practical tools can help in the moment, therapy offers a space to understand your thoughts and patterns. In counselling, we work together to:
- Root Causes: We explore why your mind learned to use overthinking as a survival tool, helping you understand the past without getting stuck in it.
- Nervous System: Ruminating and overthinking can keep your body in a constant state of high alert. Therapy can help you be in the present and feel safe rather than unsettled.
- Shift Limiting Beliefs: We gently examine the underlying negative beliefs and patterns you might be carrying and replace them with greater self-compassion
Whether you are seeking in-person therapy in West Sussex (Haywards Heath) or flexible online counselling across the UK, we can work together at a pace that feels comfortable and right for you.
If you are considering therapy, I offer a free 20 minute online introductory meeting to see how therapy might be helpful for you. Feel free to get in touch.