Imagine a young man, James. James is kind, intelligent and self- aware-perhaps a little too self-aware. James is always worried about something, and today he's worried about a little health niggle that's caught his attention. He researches online, and gets steadily more alarmed at the possibilities. Then he stops and checks himself: "I'm probably overthinking things," he thinks.
So he stops stressing about his health...and starts stressing about his thoughts about his health. Maybe what he really needs is some therapy. But what kind? His thoughts run away with him and soon he is inwardly debating his options for counseling, arguing with himself, putting himself on trial, defending himself, questioning himself, ruminating on endless memories, guesses, fears. He stops and checks himself. He wonders, "Is this what it's like to have anxiety? Is this a panic attack? Or maybe I have schizophrenia and don't even know it yet." He thinks that nobody else agonizes over nothing like he does, right? In fact, the moment he has that thought, his head is filled with seemingly millions of examples of all the times people have criticized him.
He then puts a magnifying lens on all his flaws, and starts turning each of them over in his mind, wondering why he is the way he is, tortured by the fact that he can't seem to just "let it go." After an hour of this, he realizes with despair that he is no closer to making a decision about his health issue, and instantly feels depressed, sinking into a storm of negative self-talk where he tells himself over and over again that this always happens, that he never sorts himself out, that he's too neurotic...
Phew! It's hard to see how all of this torment and mental anguish started with nothing more than James noticing he had a weird- looking mole on his shoulder!
We all live in a highly strung, overstimulated, highly cerebral world. Overthinking puts our ordinary cognitive instincts in overdrive. Excessive thinking occurs when our thought processes are out of control, causing us distress. Endless analysis of life and of self is usually unwanted, unstoppable, and self-defeating. Ordinarily, our brains help us solve problems and understand things more clearly-but overthinking does the opposite.
Whether you call it worry, anxiety, stress, rumination or even obsession, the quality that characterizes overthinking is that it feels awful, and it doesn't help us in any way. Classic overthinking often amplifies itself or goes round in circles forever, and thoughts seem intrusive.
Overthinking is excessively harmful mental activity, whether that activity is analyzing, judging, monitoring, evaluating, controlling, or worrying-or all of them, as in James's case! You'll know that overthinking is a problem for you if:
