Stop Overthinking: Unshackle Your Mind from Analysis Paralysis and Seize Your True Potential

By Patricia Calten

Do you find yourself overthinking every decision you make? Are you paralyzed by your mind's infinite possibilities? Do your thoughts go in circles, leaving you exhausted and unable to make a decision?

 

Having been through it mysel

• Language: English
• Publisher: Top Notch International
• Release date: Jul 18, 2023
• ISBN: 9781915331519

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

If you have purchased this book, this means that right now, you have been plagued with all the possibilities that you may encounter with various situations. You wish to find a solution to your current predicament of chronically overthinking a particular situation. Why? This is because your brain has chosen to fixate itself on the various potential outcomes it could have had if it had caused you to act differently in a particular outcome. This book is specifically written to help you overcome your fixation on the what ifs that you face on a daily basis and help you ground yourself into the present period with exercises and practices designed to help you center your train of thought.

To use several pop-culture references, our brains in a particular situation tend to think in terms of multiversal what ifs to the point that your thought processes are summarily everything, everywhere all at once. However, it is physically impossible to stop your brain from what it perceives. As you go through this book, it must be impressed upon you as the reader to know that this book serves to guide you through various processes and techniques that enable you to stop overthinking. This book cannot stop you from the process of thought, which in itself is a natural function of the brain. What this book is designed to do is to help you center and marshal your thoughts into a semblance of order that reduces the amount of stimulation that your brain receives and enables it to think clearly and orderly. Once your brain thinks clearly and orderly, you are able to come up with logical reasons that help you stay grounded and focused in the present and forget about the what ifs in every situation that you may encounter.

The book is not meant to be a process as each person has a different method that appeals to them to enable them to stop the process of overthinking. What connects these methods is that they have been proven their ability to help center a person and create a proper thought process that allows logic to determine their thoughts and not all the myriad possibilities that cause a person to think on other topics.

As you read this book, it is important to determine why you want to stop overthinking. Despite the apparent benignity of the word, overthinking does contribute a significant amount of lost productivity on your person. You may have been told by a family member to stop overthinking it. Your superior at work may have told you to stop overthinking it, and this is just the start. You may find yourself in an endless tunnel of thought, and as you go deeper and deeper into your thought processes, you unconsciously find that your work productivity suffers, and your home life also takes a nose dive. This in turn triggers another series of unhealthy cycles that can cost you a lot more than a simple therapy session, humor aside. Hence, it is imperative that as you read this book, you are able to have a thorough comprehension of who you are as a person.

It is only when you realize who you are as a person that you are able to identify what makes you choose to think too much, and identify the potential triggers that cause you to think so. This way you are able to choose the best method that works for you and enable you to break the cycle of what ifs and allow you to focus on the here and now. Once you have done so, then you can truly begin to turn the pages of this book, and begin your journey to wrest your thoughts into order. You can truly begin to stop the endless thought processes that plague your mind.

1 

WHEN THINKING BECOMES OVERTHINKING

There is a fine balance between what constitutes thinking, and when does it become overthinking. Truthfully, because the idea of thought itself is an abstract concept, there is no identifiable threshold by which the usual process of thinking eventually becomes overthinking. There is a limit however, and that is heavily dependent upon how aware you are as a person of your personal perceptions. Each person has a certain level at which their usual thought processes become pathological in their amount, and hence, the approach that is utilized in this book needs to be tailored to your unique psychological makeup.

For instance, a student would have a different set of worries compared to say, a rocket scientist who frets about every single detail prior to the launch of a rocket. A child obviously has a different threshold as to what constitutes overthinking compared to an adult due to differences in their ability to perceive and comprehend and their overall exposure to various stimuli. Too much homework and negative feedback for instance may cause the child to overthink as this is their usual stimulus in school, whereas in an adult, it could be due to an awkward encounter, or the occurrence of a situation that could have been preventable.

The approach, in this chapter, then, as stated in the introduction to this book, requires a high degree of self-awareness as the best person to define what constitutes overthinking is yourself. When does a healthy level of thought become pathological in its amount? When does a critique become a trigger to an unhealthy response that causes you to lurk in the depths of your mind? You may wonder, why is the word pathological and unhealthy used in this instance? Because overthinking can negatively impact your life, as mentioned in the introduction of this book.

As a refresher, it could affect your job, your family and your life, and lead to an unhealthy cycle of what ifs. Hence, it is imperative that you are able to be aware of your own mind. When do you consider thoughts normal? It is only when you have become aware of your limitations that you would be able to adequately define overthinking on a personal level.

If you are unsure as to your limits, then we first identify what your triggers are, and to know when these triggers may occur, we must first define what overthinking really is.

Overthinking, if you went with the standard dictionary definition is simply defined as a period where you think too much. Simple, yet it does not encompass the entire gamut of emotions and thoughts that one actually feels when this occurs. If you opt for the more precise psychological definition which is: an excessive fixation on a particular topic or situation for an extended period of time.

We hit the nail on the head with the first three words: An Excessive Fixation. Here is where you need the importance of self-awareness as you are the best person to identify if you are fixated on a particular topic or situation. Now here is the difference, at some point, overthinking is healthy as it helps come up with various solutions. Once the solution has been arrived upon, your thought processes immediately revert to their pre-stress state. Unhealthy overthinking on the other hand, occurs if you continue to fixate on the topic or situation despite its conclusion and you continue to dwell upon all the possibilities that may or may not occur. While there is no specific time period, you can determine if it is excessive if you find yourself thinking what if? more frequently than is usual.

At this point, if this thought process begins to overwhelm you and creates a negative impact on your life, then you know that this is excessive. If you feel that this process is unhealthy, it is excessive. It all depends now on your perception and your perceived limits. Simply, if you begin to feel overwhelmed with all the details and thoughts on what could have been, it is unhealthy.

1.1 How does it start?

The most common trigger to all this is a word, and in essence, it all boils down into how it is said, and how we interpret it. We have heard of miscommunications and it happens all the time. The most crucial point at this chapter is reliant on how our brain interprets the communications it receives from other people. Terseness in speech and brevity may indicate that the person has no time to talk, and while this may be common in high-intensity events, there is the potential for the brain to interpret it as irritation, and hence you may feel that you are a nuisance when you really are not. This is not to say however, that it is all merely in your head no. There are a variety of factors to consider, however, the weightiest one relies on our ability to interpret communications and read between the lines, which becomes one of the central topics that is to be discussed as we go along in this book.

The triggers are dependent from person to person, hence, if you have no idea what triggers you, it would be ideal to cozy up to a trusted friend or family member to help you walk through this, to help identify potential triggers.

1.2 How will you know if overthinking begins to exert a negative influence in your life?

This is a crucial question as you read this chapter as you would have to know the difference between the way your body reacts to common stressors, and the way your body reacts to when your mental processes begin to get overwhelmed by the sheer number of thoughts that your mind begins to ponder upon.

Negative impacts wrought by overthinking can include the following:

Insomnia – simply, this is your inability to sleep. There are distinctions however, as the general role of sleep is to promote your body to rest. While it is advisable that one obtain at least 7-8 hours of sleep per day, it is possible to be well rested even if you obtain less hours of sleep than what is originally recommended. The main focus in this one is quality of sleep over quantity of sleep, and as long as your body feels rested, your sleep schedule would be alright. The crucial factor in the determination of the amount of sleep is the fact that your body was able to obtain the rest that it needed.

That might not be the case with insomnia. In proper sleep, your brain is able to enter what is called a REM Cycle, wherein your brain enters a state of rest, which allows you to enter a dream state. In insomnia, your brain is unable