How to fight overthinking?

 Nitin Agrawal

Over thinking is the mental state which can occur due to behavioral issues or some underlying mental health problems like depression, anxiety, trauma. If not worked upon, it can lead to a personality disorder which then starts interfering with our day-to-day life and affect our relationships with people. It’s a downward spiral which needs immediate attention.

But the next question you’d ask is “Is it too difficult to change this habit?”. At the basic level, you can stop overthinking just by writing down pointers going through your mind, be it a situation or a person and then reflecting upon it rationally. In this article, we will be discussing about this topic in detail, so here you go.

 Symptoms of over thinking

There are many traits by which you can identify whether any person and even you are over thinking or not. Here are some early signs of this behaviour:

 When you keep thinking (and revolving) about a problem in spite of focusing your energy on the solution of the problem.

·         When you find it extremely difficult to sleep at night because either you are worrying too much or simply a lot is going through your mind.

·         When you can’t take any decision or find it hard to come to a conclusion

·         When you are in a constant state of confusion and very frequently question your decision, thus leading to unplanned changes.

  How to fight over thinking?

There are various ways by which you can easily fight overthinking, some behavioral while some activity oriented. Let’s discuss them in detail:

1.       Awareness: First step for getting out of any health problem is awareness, understanding that you are suffering from a health issue which needs treatment as soon as possible. With awareness, nearly half of the problem gets resolved. Then the next half can be solved by treatment, consultation, and medicines.

2.       Distraction: Next and probably the easiest way to solve this is by distracting yourself from the topic by making yourself busy in some other work.

3.       Positive thinking: When you are in state of over thinking, you always focus on the negative sides and imagine the worst outcomes for any situation. Put a conscious effort to focus on the bright side. If you are inclined towards religion and spirituality, start listening to spiritual speakers and motivational speakers on Youtube or spiritual platforms like Paavan app.

4.       Leave perfection: A lot of times, we overthink because we have a perfect image of something in mind. As a result, we constantly try to move in that direction when that state might be completely unrealistic. You must leave the word perfection in your life because no one in this whole world is perfect so don’t allow it to put pressure onto your mind.

5.       Realization of uncertainty: One more thing you must accept or realize is that absolutely no one can predict the future. People generally go to the astrologers for future predictions but even after that, they focus more on the negatives than positives. All you can do is take a conscious call depending on the information that you possess now and hope that everything pans out well.

6.       Be your best: Accept the fact that you are giving your best in your personal life as well as at work. You can fulfill your own expectation not of anyone else’s. Don’t have regret of anything.

7.       Emotion control: Some person may be very emotional in nature thus they can get easily moved by any incident happening in his home, neighbor and even society. This leads to the vicious circle of thinking about the same thing for hours and hours.

8.       Let go off the past: A lot of times, we overthink because things that have happened to us in the past affect our judgement. We become over cautious in life and this leads to overthinking and indecisiveness. The right outlook should infact be - you can’t change the past but the one thing you can do is learn from it to lead a better life.

9.       Going to therapist: If you still find yourself in a situation that you can’t cure yourself by the above ways, you can go to your physician and he will advice for a therapist for your better mental health. A lot of people in the older age prefer going to a guru or a spiritual speaker who helps them untangle their thought with the help of learning from our ancient texts.

These are some solutions that people have found helpful in fighting over thinking as well as general mental health problems. Hope you get out of this habit soon.

 About the Author

Nitin Agrawal is the co-founder of Paavan app, a startup in the spiritual and devotional space. With majors in mechanical engineering from IIT Delhi, he has worked in multiple startups and helped them with business strategy, growth and marketing. With Paavan, they are on a mission to help people look inwards and lead a more meaningful life.