Overthinking Isn’t About Overthinking AudioChapter from Stop Overthinking AudioBook by Nick Trenton

Speaker: 00:00:00

Stop overthinking. Twenty-three techniques to relieve stress, stop negative spirals, declutter your mind, and focus on the present. Written by Nick Trenton, narrated by Russell Newton. 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.

Speaker: 00:00:50

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.

Speaker: 00:01:36

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.

Speaker: 00:02:57

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 - •You are often conscious of your own thoughts moment to moment. •You engage in meta-thought, i.e. you think about your thoughts. •You try hard to control or steer your thoughts. •You are distressed by or dislike spontaneous thoughts and often feel that some thoughts are unwelcome. •Thinking for you often feels like a struggle between competing impulses. •You frequently question, doubt, analyze or judge your thoughts .

Speaker: 00:04:07

•In crises, you often turn to yourself and your thoughts as a source of the problem . •You are focused on understanding your thoughts and digging into the inner workings of your mind. •You have trouble making decisions and often doubt the choices you do make. •There are many things you’re worried and concerned about. •You recognize yourself engaging in negative thoughts patterns, over and over. •Sometimes, you feel like you can’t help returning to a thought numerous times, even when it’s in the past and nothing can be done anymore about it. You’ll notice that some of the above are arguably good qualities—don’t we all want to cultivate greater awareness and mindfulness? Isn’t it good to question your knee-jerk reactions and ask yourself big questions so you can make better decisions? The gist of overthinking is in the name—it’s when we think over, above and beyond what is beneficial for us.

Speaker: 00:05:10

Thinking is a marvelous gift. The ability to reflect, to analyze, and interrogate even our own thought processes is arguably the single most defining characteristic of humankind, and the cause for many of our successes. Thought is not an enemy. Our brain is an extraordinarily helpful tool, but when we overthink, we only undermine its power. Causes for Mental Clutter and Agony. If the brain is such a wonderful thing and if thinking is so useful, then why is it so common and indeed so easy for people to get lost in overthinking? People over the ages (probably overthinkers) have proposed their theories - perhaps overthinking is a bad habit, or a personality trait, or a mental illness that can be medicated away. In fact, the reasons why a person overthinks can often become a favorite topic of obsession for those that overthink. “Why why why am I like this?"

Speaker: 00:06:17

If you’ve picked up this book, it’s likely that you have been distressed by how your own brain seems to run away with you. But there are solutions, and there are ways out of stress and ruination and into clearer, calmer waters. The first thing to note, however, is a big one - the causes of overthinking are seldom the focus of overthinking. What does this mean? In James’s example, his overthinking has nothing to do with the scary-looking mole on his back. It has nothing to do with choosing the right psychologist or what that person said to him twenty-three years ago or whether he should feel guilty for being a bad person. All of these thoughts are the result of overthinking. When we are trapped in rumination, it can seem like the thoughts are the problems. We tell ourselves “if I could just sort out this thing that’s bugging me, I could relax and everything would be fine.".

Speaker: 00:07:15

But of course, even if that thing were resolved, another would quickly take its place. That’s because it was never the cause of the overthinking, but the result. If we hope to successfully tackle overthinking, we need to take a step back rather than trying to work through the problem from inside our own rumination. And for the rest of this book, we’re going to work on the assumption that when we are talking about overthinking, we are talking about anxiety. People can overthink without having a formally diagnosed anxiety disorder. But in the chapters that follow, we’ll see anxiety as the root cause (the why) and overthinking as the effect (or the how). So then, where does anxiety come from? Is it you? Research into the causes of anxiety is ongoing.

Speaker: 00:08:13

Competing theories suggest that it’s a matter of personality, or a question of a biological predisposition—something you inherited from your equally anxious parents. Anxiety is often found with other disorders, both mental (like depression) and physical (like irritable bowel syndrome). But it’s also been observed that certain groups—such as women—experience it more, and that elements like diet, stressful lifestyles, past trauma and even culture have a part to play. People are anxious about money, about work, about families and relationships, about growing older, or stressful life events. But again, are these things causes of anxiety and overthinking, or are they the result? After all, many people experience enormous financial or family pressure and don’t feel anxious or overthink, and others feel anxious when, from the outside, there doesn’t appear to be anything causing the emotion. To try and make sense of the abundant research out there, we’ll take the approach that all of these theories have their place, and that anxiety is multifactorial—i.e. it results from a mix of different causes, which themselves have interesting ways of interacting. The first main reason why you’re anxious could be the nature part of the “nature vs. nurture” question. In other words, though it might not feel like it in the moment, a big cause of anxiety can come down to intrinsic factors within you as an individual.

Speaker: 00:09:52

t. Purves et. al. argued in a: 2019

Speaker: 00:10:56

This kind of research can be difficult, because when you think about it, there are two ways to “inherit” anxiety from parents—one is genetically, but another is in the parenting we receive, our early formative experiences, and so on. In this way, it’s difficult to pull apart genetic influencers from behavioral ones. If you have a parent with an anxiety disorder, your chance of having one is greater—but this is still just a question of probability. There are no “anxiety genes” that destine you to a fixed fate you can never escape. There is even now evidence to suggest that as we get older and our environments change, the effects of our genes have even less influence over us. You can always learn to manage anxiety, work around it, and live well, if you’re aware of any particular risk factors and predispositions. Is overthinking genetic? Yes. But it’s not only genetic.

Speaker: 00:12:01

Life still weighs in on that 74 percent, which means that environment may play a bigger role. We can’t do much about our genetics, but we can do a lot about everything else. There are also other sources of anxiety within us besides genetics. Many of us have become habitual overthinkers because it gives us the illusion that we’re doing something about the problem we’re overthinking about. So, if James is worried about his health, it’s natural that him overthinking endlessly about the various causes and solutions makes it seem like he’s trying to get to the bottom of the issue. But the truth is that overthinking often doesn’t lead anywhere, because the overthinker gets trapped in the cycle of analyzing, rejecting, and reconsidering different possibilities. It’s like scratching an itch that just won’t go away. You can scratch it to feel some momentary relief, but it won’t make the itching stop despite how good scratching might feel. Another reason why it can be so hard to escape this vicious cycle is that the anxiety causing our overthinking works in clever and mischievous ways.

Speaker: 00:13:14

It feeds on our worst fears. You might have noticed that your overthinking is exacerbated by some very specific triggers. This can be your insecurities about your personal capabilities, your relationships with certain people, your physical or mental health, etc. Simply trying to suppress your thoughts when they’re running wild often results in the opposite outcome. You start thinking even more about the thing you were worried about. This might sound like a helpless situation, but later in this book we’ll discuss some techniques you can utilize to get out of this cycle. Lastly, our daily habits can feed our anxieties and result in overthinking in subtle but significant ways. Seemingly innocuous habits like checking your social media often, not eating well or getting enough nutrition, not drinking enough water, having awkward sleep cycles, etc., can exacerbate our tendency to overthink things. Of all the factors we’ve mentioned so far, this one is by far the easiest to control.

Speaker: 00:14:22

However, the next source of anxiety does not bend to our will as easily. Is it your environment? Your genetics might give you extremely fair skin that burns in the sun more than other people’s, but whether you actually burn or not is not up to your genes to decide—it’s up to the sun! In the same way, genes predispose us one way or another, but life itself plays the biggest role in developing and sustaining anxiety. In other words, genetic predisposition + stressful precipitating events = overthinking. The classic view used to be that mental disorders lay purely within the person who had them—“chemical imbalances” in the brain, for example. But we now understand that anxiety and related mental health conditions can definitely arise from, well, living in an extremely stressful world. Stress is not a bad thing. “Eustress” or good stress is the kind of normal everyday pressure that inspires us, keeps us on our toes and challenges us to be better.

Speaker: 00:15:33

When stress is too great, however, it has the opposite effect, and only works to deplete our psychological resources and leave us feeling unable to cope. On the other end of the spectrum, we can also be stressed by the complete lack of stimulation. Known as hypostress, this form of stress occurs when we aren’t being challenged enough by our environment. This just goes to show that to flourish, we don’t need a stress-free environment, we need one that’s optimally suited to our needs. Stress and anxiety are not the same thing. Psychologist Dr. Sarah Edelman explains that stress is something in the environment, an external pressure on us, whereas anxiety is our internal experience of this pressure. We all respond differently to the same stressful event, because we all have different inner resources and thresholds, and our response can include other emotions (like anger or depression) and physical symptoms (like insomnia, digestive trouble or lack of concentration). Being alive is stressful. It’s a normal part of our daily world to experience pressure, challenge or discomfort.

Speaker: 00:16:49

arly as Browne and Finkelhor,: 1986

Speaker: 00:18:54

This is the immediate environments we spend substantial chunks of time in—our homes and offices/workspaces. How these spaces are composed and oriented can have a huge impact on how anxious we feel. If you’ve ever heard “clean your room!" as advice for coping with stress, it’s because of this very reason. Clutter, be it at home or work, is generally a significant cause of anxiety because it subconsciously acts as a reflection of yourself. Things like the quality of lighting, the smells and noises you’re exposed to, the colors of the walls, and the people occupying these spaces with you can all cause or reduce anxiety and stress levels depending on how they’re managed. You might be surprised at how much of an impact good lighting, pleasant aromas, and walls with calming colors have on your anxiety levels. So, it is not just the genetic component that is responsible—life events and environmental stressors can make us more vulnerable to experiencing anxiety. To return to our earlier example, even if somebody had genes for dark, sun-resilient skin, if they’re repeatedly exposed to harsh sun, they will nevertheless get sunburnt eventually.

Speaker: 00:20:20

To carry our metaphor just a little bit further, imagine again the person with pale and burn-prone skin. They may have been cursed with “sunburn genes,” but they can also make conscious choices about their behavior (i.e. slather in SPF 50). In this way, they can deliberately choose to moderate the effects of the environment, and take charge of their lives. This brings us to another, third aspect of the development of stress - our own behavior and attitudes. The secret ingredient - our mental models. The nature vs. nurture debate has actually been resolved - it isn’t either, but both. Whether we experience anxiety comes down to the relationship between - •Our unique genetic and biological characteristics and susceptibilities, and. •The events, pressures and conditions we find in the external environment. But we can all differ in how willing we are to examine this relationship, to understand it, and to take conscious control of it.

Speaker: 00:21:31

One final and powerful determiner of whether we experience anxiety or not is our unique cognitive style, our mental frames, and the behavior that these inspire in us. In picking up this book, for example, you’ve engaged with an influence on your life that is not strictly nature or nurture. At the interface between nature and nurture is the story we tell about our lives, the way we make sense of things, our inner dialogue, and our sense of our own identity. The old saying goes, “It’s not the load, but how you carry it.". Whether you feel an event as stressful and overwhelming comes down to how you interpret and understand that event, as well as how you actively engage with it, i.e. what choices you make. Two people can have vastly different appraisals of the same scenario—it is the appraisal that causes their experience, and not the scenario. Some appraisals of life simply lead to more stressful outcomes. If you’re the kind of person who, for example, has an external locus of control (i.e. you don’t see your life as really under your control, but influenced by luck, randomness or other people), then you may see a certain new situation as a threat rather than an exciting challenge. And once you’ve told yourself it’s a threat, you will behave as if it is—and get anxious.

Speaker: 00:23:01

Your perceptions, perspectives, sense of self, worldview and cognitive models all go toward your interpretation of neutral events. We respond not to stress, but to our perception of stress. In the chapters that follow, you won’t find advice on how to change your genetics (impossible) or how to get rid of stress in the environment (slightly more possible, but only slightly). Rather, we’ll be focusing on all the things you are empowered to do right now to change your outlook to better manage anxiety and overthinking. People who overthink often have genetic and environmental “reasons” for their overthinking, but in the end it’s their unique evaluation that brings everything together in a particularly stressful way. What are your beliefs about your innate strengths and skills when it comes to resisting stress? How do you view the world and the challenges in it, and how much say do you have in how it all unfolds? What are your daily habits like? Is your self-esteem in good order?

Speaker: 00:24:14

What about your boundaries? These are all the things that we can change. In the remainder of this book, we’re going to be looking at practical, concrete examples of how to incorporate things like cognitive behavioral therapy into your own life. With the right techniques, we can reframe our perspective and change our behavior, stopping us from overthinking and putting our brains to good use instead. We’ll look at ways of strengthening your sense of control and empowerment, of generating hope and excitement rather than fear, of taking control of stress and steering your life, rather than feeling like it’s steering you. Before we dive in with techniques, let’s consider what’s at stake if we don’t act in this way, and take our well-being into our own hands. Consequences of overthinking. Do you remember James from earlier in the chapter? We took a peek into his brain for just an hour or two, but imagine being James 24/7, with a brain that seemingly never switched off.

Speaker: 00:25:23

Perhaps you already know what this feels like. Yet most people don’t think of worry and overthinking as innately harmful—it’s just thoughts, right? Wrong—anxiety is a physiological, mental, psychological, social and even spiritual phenomenon. There is no aspect of life that anxious overthinking doesn’t impact. When you perceive a threat, your HPA axis (hypothalamus, pituitary, adrenals) is stimulated. Your brain triggers a cascade of neurotransmitters and hormones in the body, which then have physical effects—this is the classic fight or flight response to prepare the body to survive the perceived threat. Physical effects, both long and short term, include - Racing heart, headache, nausea, muscle tension, fatigue, dry mouth, dizzy feelings, increase in breathing rate, aching muscles, trembling and twitching, sweating, disturbed digestion, immune system suppression and memory issues. Your body was designed to endure brief moments of acute stress, but chronic stress (stress that is ongoing) can start to cause chronic health conditions, like cardiovascular disease, insomnia, hormonal dysregulation and so on. If the ordinary physical experience of stress is prolonged, the physical effects can have consequences in the rest of your life….

Speaker: 00:26:57

Mental and psychological effects include - Exhaustion and fatigue, feeling on edge, nervousness, irritability, inability to concentrate, lack of motivation, changes to libido and appetite, nightmares, depression, feeling out of control, apathy and so on. Stress can reinforce negative thinking patterns and harmful self-talk, lower our confidence, and kill our motivation. Broader social and environmental effects include - Damage to close relationships, poor performance at work, impatience and irritability with others, retreating socially, and engaging in addictive or harmful behaviors. A person who is constantly stressed and anxious starts to lose all meaning and joy in life, stops making plans, cannot act with charity or compassion to others, and loses their passion for life. As you can imagine, the physical, mental and environmental aspects all interact to create one, unified experience of overthinking and anxiety. For example, if you overthink consistently, your body will be flooded with cortisol and other stress hormones. This can leave you on edge, and in fact cause you to overthink even more, adding to the stress, changing the way you feel about yourself and your life. You might then make bad choices for yourself (staying up late, eating bad food, shutting people out) which reinforce the stress cycle you’re in. You may perform worse at work, procrastinating and inevitably giving yourself more to worry about, and so on… .

Speaker: 00:28:45

Environmental stress and pressure are neutral—they are not a problem until we pass them through our mental models and decide they are. When we ruminate and overthink, we can turn ordinary life stress into something overwhelming and negative. When we overthink, we get stuck in anxiety spirals, reinforcing a bad habit that has devastating effects on every area of our life, mind, body and soul. We all have different predispositions and degrees of resilience. We all have different exposure to stress in the environment. But the area we have the most control over is how we evaluate our experiences and move forward. Overthinking is not a natural state, and is not necessary. It is a destructive behavior we can actively choose to stop, if we want to. Stress is a fact of life, but overthinking is optional!

Speaker: 00:29:44

With practice, anyone can retrain their brain to work on their side, to see things differently, and to resist the corrosion of constant anxiety and stress. Takeaways. •What exactly is overthinking? Overthinking is when you excessively analyze, evaluate, ruminate, and worry about certain things to a point where it starts affecting your mental health because you simply can’t stop. •There are two main sources of anxiety which lead to overthinking. The first one is ourselves. Unfortunately, some of us are just genetically predisposed to being more anxious than others. However, genetics may not be the only factor. We might become habitual overthinkers because it makes us feel like we’re somehow tackling the problem we’re overthinking about.

Speaker: 00:30:38

Because the overthinking never ends, this doesn’t happen, but we still feel like we’re making some progress. This turns into a vicious cycle that can be hard to escape. •Another cause of anxiety is our environment. There are two aspects to this. First, we need to consider our immediate environments where we spend the most time, like our home and office. The way these spaces have been designed can have a huge impact on our anxiety levels. If they’re cluttered, dimly lit and noisy, it’s going to make us more anxious. The second aspect is the broader experience we have in our socio-cultural setting through our interactions with the world. Something like experiencing racism or sexism might make us stressed and result in heightened anxiety.

Speaker: 00:31:30

•There are many negative consequences to overthinking. These include physical, mental, and even social harms that can become long-term issues. Some examples are racing heart, dizziness, feelings of fatigue, irritability, nervousness, headaches, muscle tension, etc. Chapter 2. The De-Stress Formula and Then Some . Our main goal in de-stressing is to pinpoint exactly what is going on in our heads when we overthink. It’s about identifying the triggers that set us off as well as the effects of that overthinking once it begins. When we can see the process clearly, we can then begin to take informed action. But the necessary starting point? Awareness.

Speaker: 00:32:17

In this chapter we’ll begin with the basics of overcoming overthinking and managing your stress levels, but in each case, what is most important is that we maintain an awareness of ourselves. Awareness is not rumination, though - when we are aware, we simply turn our attention onto both our inner and outer experience, without judgment, and without clinging or resisting. We can cultivate this awareness in ourselves by regularly “checking in” with our bodily sensations, thoughts and feelings, by making sure that our lifestyle is supporting us in the ways we need it to, and by including some form of mindfulness in everyday life. It’s the end of a long day and you’re exhausted. You were late for the morning meeting, and had an argument with a colleague. You were given too much work again. The builders outside have been making noise all day long and driving you crazy. Your to-do list is as long as you are and you feel close to the breaking point, when your boyfriend sends you cryptic message saying you “need to talk." When stress piles on in this way, it can feel utterly overwhelming.

Speaker: 00:33:34

It’s like playing an ultra-fast game of Tetris, where you can’t think straight because there’s always another challenge, another crisis demanding your attention. Even though it can often feel like there’s nothing you can do about stress (that thought alone is stressful!), there are always ways to stop, take a breath, and notice what’s happening. The 4 A’s of Stress Management . This technique can be like a lifeboat in the storm of stress and overthinking. All you need to remember is four techniques - avoid, alter, accept and adapt. It can be a comfort in itself to know that really, there are only these four possible ways to respond to any life stress. The first thing you can do is avoid. Sounds suspiciously simple, but there’s a lot of aggravation in life you can simply walk away from. We can’t control everything in life, but we can arrange our circumstances so that we don’t have to be in stressful surroundings, or with stressful people.

Speaker: 00:34:42

If we’re honest, we might see that a lot of the stress in our lives is voluntary—and we don’t have to agree to it! Think about what is stressing you in your environment and how you can take control to moderate or remove it entirely. Consider someone who hates how busy the grocery stores are on Saturday morning. Knowing that this stresses them out, they can rearrange their schedule so they do their weekly shopping at the quietest time, say, on a Tuesday evening. There’s no need to manage the stress of a busy supermarket if you just avoid it entirely. You can avoid stressful people in exactly the same way. Do you find that your stress goes through the roof when your parents come to stay for the holidays? Find a way to have them stay in a nearby B&B, or avoid planning any activities where you are all alone together in a room for hours with nothing to do but stress each other out. When you avoid stress, you are not running away from obligations or denying genuine problems.

Speaker: 00:35:45

You are simply learning to say “no” to stress that is unnecessary and harmful. We can always say no to situations and people that demand too much of us and our resources. Those resources can be mental energy and attention, but they can also be time. If something in your life is gobbling up all your time, you can say no. Look at your to-do list and get rid of the two or three items that are not urgent, and not your priority. Delegate tasks, or let someone else take on a responsibility. You don’t have to do it all! So, the next time you face a stressful prospect, ask yourself, “Can I just avoid this whole thing?". If you can, do it.

Speaker: 00:36:32

If you can’t, you might need to find ways to change the situation, i.e. alter it. You always have the option of asking others to change their behavior. For example, if the builders are making a racket outside, politely ask them to pause for ten minutes while you finish an important phone call. Communicate your needs and feelings directly, rather than suffering in silence. If you never clearly tell your friend that his stupid jokes really hurt you, you may sit quietly and bear the brunt of it forever, when it would have been easy to tell him how you feel and ask him to stop. We can’t avoid every stress in life, but we often have a say in how these events unfold. Talk to people, negotiate, and use “I” statements to share your needs and ask for what you want. If you can’t help but go to the store on Saturday morning, play your audiobook on your phone and listen to it while you shop, if it relaxes you. If you can’t avoid that extra PTA meeting, try to lump it in with other errands you’re already doing, so you save time, effort and potentially gas for your car.

Speaker: 00:37:43

You can also do a lot to alter unavoidable situations by cutting them down to a more manageable size. If you can’t get out of going to that boring party, go but be upfront in the beginning and say, “unfortunately I have to go in an hour—early start tomorrow!" If you can’t avoid a stressor, ask what you can do to change it. If your answer is “not much,” then you might need to go one step further and accept it. How do you accept a situation you dislike? Firstly, if you dislike it, then you dislike it. Acceptance doesn’t mean pretending you don’t feel how you feel; it’s an acknowledgment that it’s OK to feel that way. Validate your own emotions and own them. For example, your boyfriend has just broken up with you via text, and there’s not much you can do about his decision.

Speaker: 00:38:38

But you can work on accepting the situation by calling up a friend to share your feelings. If the situation is one in which you’ve been wronged, acceptance may take the form of trying to find a way to forgive. Remember that forgiveness is something you do for yourself, and not the other person. When you forgive, you are releasing yourself from the stress and energy of resenting and blaming the other person. Acceptance may also be about the subtle shifts in the way we frame events. We can’t change the events themselves, but we can watch how we talk about them inwardly, and the language we use. For example, instead of saying, “I completely failed my course and I wasted my money. I’m such an idiot for not working harder,” you could say, “I made a mistake and I’m not happy about it. But this one event doesn’t define me.

Speaker: 00:39:35

I can learn from mistakes and move on. I can do better next time." Acceptance doesn’t mean we agree with what happened or that we like it and shouldn’t try to change it. It only means we gracefully come to terms with what we can’t realistically change, so we can focus on what we can. In the longer term, we do our best in the face of stress if we can adapt. Adapting means making more lasting changes to our worldview, our goals, our perception and expectations. Picture someone who is a perfectionist, and is always stressed out because they never seem to meet their high standards. The best approach isn’t that they find a way to be Superman, but instead lower their expectations so they’re more reasonable and in line with reality. Adapting to stress means we change ourselves to better cope with life.

Speaker: 00:40:34

You might simply refuse to engage in depressing thoughts, and deliberately practice being a person who is more optimistic. When we alter our perspective, we can see things differently. Is this a “crisis” or a “challenge”? How does this obstacle look when we tell ourselves, “I’m a resilient person” compared to when we tell ourselves, “Life isn’t fair, this will end badly like everything does”? When we adapt to stress, we find ways to make ourselves stronger. We build a worldview for ourselves that empowers us. For example, someone might get into the habit of making a “gratitude list” every day of all the wonderful things they are actually blessed with in life. Another person might meditate on their own personal “code” or say a mantra daily to remind them that they are strong, and they can get through adversity. If we have an arsenal of powerful attitudes, ideas, philosophies and inspiration, we can go into the world knowing that we can handle stress—and maybe even be better people for it!

Speaker: 00:41:43

So, those are the four As of stress management. When you find yourself feeling anxious, pause and run through each of them in sequence. No matter how stressful the situation, there is a way for you to engage with it mindfully and proactively. You are not helpless in the face of stress—you have tools at your disposal! To use these tools, all it takes is a little awareness. For example, there may be a colleague at work who stresses you out daily. Instead of getting overwhelmed by telling yourself there’s nothing you can do about it, pause and ask if you can simply avoid this colleague. Maybe you can have lunch at a different time to avoid meeting them in the cafeteria, or maybe you can physically move to work farther away from them. But let’s say you can’t avoid encountering them in weekly meetings, and this is where they frequently interrupt you or steal your ideas.

Speaker: 00:42:40

You think of ways to alter the situation. Can you get out of these meetings? Can you speak to your colleague privately and share your concerns (“I’m uncomfortable in meetings lately, and I feel dismissed when you interrupt me”)? Can you speak up in meetings and assert a stronger boundary when you talk? If none of these are really possible, you can still accept the situation to some degree. You might confide in a close friend about your frustrations, or come to realize that this colleague actually interrupts everyone, so you won’t continue to take it personally or let it stress you. Finally, you can adapt by working on becoming an overall more confident and assertive person. When you genuinely feel that you have as much right to speak as anyone else, then you may feel more confident saying, “Sorry, I was still speaking” and carrying on calmly. Stress Diaries and Journals.

Speaker: 00:43:41

Another concrete way to bring more awareness to your daily experience of stress is to write it all down. With overthinking, it can sometimes seem like there are a million things on your plate at once, and it’s hard to decide what single cause is really behind your anxiety. A stress diary can help you pinpoint your triggers, and your reaction to them. From there, you can start taking active steps to managing your stress levels. A stress diary is simply a written record of your level of stress and the accompanying information, which you can analyze later and use to take steps to manage stress. We all need some stress in life, so this diary can help us identify our optimal range. The idea is simple - for each entry, record the time and date, and how you’re feeling right now. A common way to do this is on a rating scale (for example, 1 for not stressed at all and 10 for super stressed), but you can also use feeling words, or note physical symptoms (like sweaty palms) Also note how effective and productive you’re feeling, using a scale as well. Then, note any stressful events that have recently happened as well as any ideas for what you feel could be the causes of your current state.

Speaker: 00:45:03

Finally, note how you responded to the event and what the overall outcome was. For example - 4 February, 9 -15. Received a worrying message about Dad needing surgery on his shoulder. Feeling around 4/10, kind of apprehensive and a little tired. Weird knot feeling in my stomach. Trouble staying focused on work - only working at about 1/10 effectiveness. I think I feel this way because I’m worried about something bad happening to him. I’m avoiding replying to the message, but I think this is making anxiety worse. Make an entry every time you feel your mood shifting, or when you’re noticeably stressed.

Speaker: 00:45:49

Keep a stress diary for a few days or a week, then sit down to analyze it and find any patterns - 1. What are the most frequent causes of stress, i.e. what usually comes before a sudden rise in stress or drop in mood? 2. How do these events typically affect your productivity? 3. How do you normally respond to these events, emotionally and behaviorally, and is your approach working? 4. Can you identify a level of stress that was comfortable and beneficial for your productivity? When you analyze your stress diary like this, you are working with real data that can help you make insightful changes. You may even be surprised at some findings—only in writing things down in the moment do you see clear patterns emerge. You don’t need to keep a stress diary forever. In fact, after using it a few weeks, the process might become automatic and you may develop more spontaneous awareness in the moment, as stress is occurring. Once you have a handle on the real causes of stress in your life, you can use something like the 4 As technique to take action, or else rearrange your lifestyle or schedule to moderate stress.

Speaker: 00:47:08

If you notice that all of your stress is coming from one person, you can draw some boundaries around your relationship. If you notice that your normal response of getting angry tends to make things harder to handle, you can begin to work on your anger. If your job is a continued source of worry, you can gauge how bad it is and take action both short term (taking a holiday) or longer term (considering getting a different job). The format described above isn’t the only way that writing things down can help. You can keep a more traditional journal and explore your feelings more generally, whether occasionally or every day. Writing things down can relieve stress on its own, but it can also help you gather your thoughts, hash out problems, find insights and process any issues you’re going through. It’s like your journal is an informal therapist! Use journaling or diaries according to what you like and what works in your situation. If you’re battling low mood and find your anxiety is general and seems to affect everything, you might find a gratitude journal helpful.

Speaker: 00:48:20

Simply list five things daily that you are thankful for, even if it’s nothing more exciting than your morning cup of coffee or the fact that you have a nice new pair of socks. This can subtly shift your focus onto your resources and possibilities, and reframe your experience. If you are processing some traumatic life event or are going through a very difficult time, you might like to journal simply as an emotional release. “Dump” all your feelings onto paper, and work through them. Once down on paper, you might start naturally gaining some self-knowledge, or see some hints for ways forward. If the stress in your life is more ongoing, you might like to try bullet journaling, where you use brief notes to keep track of daily goals, priorities and memories. Keeping things brief can help you stay organized and add structure to your life. Some people like to bring an artistic element to bullet journaling and use color and pictures to express themselves and gather inspiration, encouraging positive feelings. Others use pre-made journals with prompts printed inside them.

Speaker: 00:49:35

Journals and diaries are not for everyone, though. Skip them if they only seem to make your perfectionism worse, or if you find yourself agonizing over the right technique. The journal is just a tool to get closer to your emotions—if you find yourself focusing more on the journal than your emotions, you might need to try a different technique. Try to finish every journaling session with something positive and grounding—recite a mantra, visualize something positive, or consider some possibilities and solutions going forward. If you don’t make sure to return to a positive headspace, journaling may start to feel like it only encourages more unhappiness and overthinking. The 5-4-3-2-1 Grounding Technique. Stress journals and the 4 As technique can be used to great effect when paired together, especially if done regularly. But sometimes, you need a technique that will bring immediate relief to a stressful situation. The following technique is often used by those who experience panic attacks; it’s a way to halt the “anxiety spiral” before it runs away with you.

Speaker: 00:50:48

You don’t have to have a panic disorder to benefit, though. The idea is simple - when we overthink and ruminate and stress, we are out of the moment. We chew on thoughts of the past or entertain possibilities in the future. We think about “what if” and run our minds ragged on memories, ideas, probabilities, wishes, and fears. If we can pull our conscious awareness back into the present, we can halt some of this overthinking. And we can do this by checking in with the five senses. To put it another way, the brain can carry you all over the place, but the body—and its senses—is only ever one place - the present. In moments of panic, we can get really caught up in ideas and thoughts, even though in reality, we are perfectly safe and sound, and there is nothing in our immediate situation to threaten us. With panic, however, we can be sitting in perfect peace in a sunny garden somewhere and nevertheless feel like we’re going to die.

Speaker: 00:51:54

Such is the power of the mind! The next time you feel anxiety and panic spiraling out of control, try this - stop, take a breath and look around you. •First, find five things in your environment that you can see. You might rest your eyes on the lamp in the corner, your own hands, a painting on the wall. Take a moment to really look at all these things; their textures, colors, shapes. Take your time to run your eyes over every inch and take it all in. •Next, try to find four things in your environment that you can feel or touch. Feel the weight of your body against the chair, or the texture of the jacket you’re wearing, or reach out to feel how cool and smooth the glass of the car window feels against your fingers. •Next, find three things that you can hear.

Speaker: 00:52:54

Your own breath. The distant sound of traffic or birds. •Next, find two things you can smell. This might be tricky at first, but notice that everything has a smell, if you pay attention. Can you smell the soap on your skin, or the faint earthy smell of the paper on your desk? •Finally, find one thing that you can taste. Maybe the lingering flavor of coffee on your tongue. Even if you can’t find anything, just dwell for a moment on what your taste buds are sensing. Are they really “off” or does your mouth almost have a taste of its own, when you stop to become aware of it?

Speaker: 00:53:38

Stay there for a moment and explore that sensation. The point of this exercise is, on the surface, distraction. While your senses are active, your brain is engaged in something other than endless rumination, and your overthinking is halted. You put a spanner in the works and stop runaway thoughts. Practice this technique often enough and you may notice that it instantly calms you and slows you down. In the moment, you might not remember which sense comes next, but this isn’t important. What matters is that you are giving your full and focused attention to something outside of yourself, and letting anxious energy dissipate. It’s difficult to stop a thought by saying “I think I should stop thinking” because, obviously, this itself is a thought. But if you can put your brain on pause and re-engage your senses for a moment, you unhook yourself from the worry track and give yourself a moment to become present and calm.

Speaker: 00:54:43

Narrative Therapy and Externalization. A final technique we’ll consider comes from the world of narrative therapy, which explores the way that our lives are often construed as stories, or narratives. People are meaning-making machines, and we make meaning by telling stories about who we are, and what the events of our lives signify. With narrative therapy, we can essentially rewrite these stories, to find healing and, well, a happy ever after! We’ve already discussed that a big part of overcoming anxiety is to look at our mental models, and consciously make decisions about how we want to run our lives. When we are the narrator of our own stories, we take charge, reframe, and are empowered to make new meanings. The big tenet behind narrative therapy is that people are separate from their problems, and indeed this idea underpins a popular technique called “externalization." When we externalize, we put the problem out there. We are not wrong or bad to have problems, and we don’t judge or blame ourselves for having them.

Speaker: 00:55:59

Nevertheless, we do have the power to change how we talk about ourselves and our lives, and we can make meaningful changes. So, when it comes to overthinking, a big step is saying, “Overthinking is a problem, and I’m going to find alternatives” versus saying, “I am an overthinker and that’s bad, I have to find a way to fix myself.". Another big step is to realize that you really are in control, and are the author of your own experience—other people are not to blame for our perception, and equally they cannot save or teach us; we are the experts of our own experience. Our mental models are a little like patterns, or filters, or repeating motifs. If your life was a movie, what genre would it be? What role would you always play, and how would the story play out? When we can see that our interpretations and frames influence our experience, we are empowered to change them for ourselves. For example, overthinkers tend to feel powerless, but what if they changed the story, and saw themselves as being responsible and capable? Let’s return to externalization.

Speaker: 00:57:19

You are not your problems. You are not your failures. If you can put distance between yourself and your life challenges, you gain perspective, and untangle your sense of identity and self-worth from the temporary moment you’re experiencing. Just like a cloud is not the sky, our problems are not who we are—they will pass, and we do have control over how we respond to them. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, it may help to repeat the mantra to yourself - “I am not my problems.". Change your language, too. Instead of, “I’m an anxious person” say, “I’m experiencing anxiety right now” or even “I’m noticing some anxiety.". We can put distance between ourselves and our problems in many ways - •Use the journaling or stress diary techniques above. Take the anxiety out of your head and put it down on a piece of paper.

Speaker: 00:58:19

Burn the paper, or scrunch it up and throw it away. Physically see that the problem is separate from you, and from a distance, you can take action to change it. •Use visualization and imagery. Visualize all the overthinking as air inside you that you blow into a giant balloon, and then imagine the balloon floating up and away from you, getting smaller and smaller. Really enjoy the sensation that you don’t have to fully identify with your worries; you can put them down sometimes, and you can walk away to get perspective. Imagine the balloon disappearing out of sight, along with your worries. Another technique is to imagine yourself putting your worries away in a locked safe before going to bed. Tell yourself, “I can always open the safe and come and get these later, if I want to, but for now, I’m sleeping.". •If you’re inclined to, use creativity to externalize - write, draw, paint, or even sing and dance your problems, and make them real outside of your body.

Speaker: 00:59:31

Some people give their judgmental or overly paranoid inner voice a name, so they can say, “Oh yes, this isn’t me, that’s just boring old Fred again, overthinking as usual. Hi Fred!" Another technique used in narrative therapy is deconstruction. When you overthink, the sensation is often one of overwhelm - there are a million things going on in your head, all at a thousand miles an hour, and you don’t even know where to start with any of it.

Speaker: 01:00:04

The great thing about a story, however, is that it’s sequential.

Speaker: 01:00:08

It’s one step after another.

Speaker: 01:00:10

If we’re feeling lost in rumination, we can use story to help us break down (or deconstruct) a big, scary problem into smaller, easier ones.

Speaker: 01:00:22

A story is a way to organize, to slow things down, and to remind you that you are in control when it comes to where and how you place your attention.

Speaker: 01:00:33

You cannot look at everything all at once.

Speaker: 01:00:36

Trying to do so often makes you feel powerless and small in the face of overwhelming thoughts.

Speaker: 01:00:42

But, as in any good story, you don’t have to figure everything out immediately, or solve every problem all at one time.

Speaker: 01:00:51

Some ways to bring deconstruction into your own life - •If things are feeling disastrous, stop and force yourself to focus on the single thing that is most important right now.

Speaker: 01:01:04

If you’re catastrophizing about things that may happen tomorrow or next year or whenever, set those aside and look at what matters today only, or perhaps only what matters in this very moment.

Speaker: 01:01:19

Ask yourself, what single next step can you take?

Speaker: 01:01:23

Don’t worry about the next twenty steps, just take the next step you need to, and then you can go from there.

Speaker: 01:01:30

•If you find yourself returning to distressing memories from the past, take a moment to deliberately lay out your history, perhaps even writing it down or laying it out on a chart.

Speaker: 01:01:44

Break down events into episodes, and look for themes, patterns and a thread that links them all together.

Speaker: 01:01:51

See how the present moment ties into the past, then ask yourself what you can do to take charge of your own narrative.

Speaker: 01:02:00

For example, if you’re cringing over mistakes you made in the past, you might construct a story where you weren’t just an idiot who did something wrong, but you were young and learning, and in your development, you’re continually getting better.

Speaker: 01:02:14

You can see that your embarrassment now is proof of you being a more mature person.

Speaker: 01:02:19

You can see the whole picture—one of growth and progress.

Speaker: 01:02:23

Doesn’t that feel better than simply churning over a humiliating comment you made once in fifth grade?

Speaker: 01:02:31

•Anxiety and overthinking have a way of “fracturing” our attention and creating chaos and confusion.

Speaker: 01:02:38

When we deconstruct all of these thoughts, however, we see that many of them are just noise, and we don’t necessarily have to entertain them.

Speaker: 01:02:48

Maybe you’re primarily concerned about your health, and off that single worry branches a million other thoughts of losing your job, of dying, expensive medical bills, etc.

Speaker: 01:03:00

Deconstructing these means asking, “What is this thought really about?” and distinguishing thoughts that derail and distract from those where you can actually make meaningful changes.

Speaker: 01:03:12

Takeaways.

Speaker: 01:03:13

•Now that we’ve identified what overthinking is, we need to know how to combat it.

Speaker: 01:03:22

There are many things you can do to de-stress and calm an anxious, overthinking mind that are simple, yet effective.

Speaker: 01:03:30

•The first thing you need to remember is a mantra called the 4 As of stress management.

Speaker: 01:03:37

These are avoid, alter, accept, and adapt.

Speaker: 01:03:43

Avoiding things entails simply walking away from things you can’t control.

Speaker: 01:03:48

Some things are simply not worth the effort and are best removed from our environments altogether.

Speaker: 01:03:53

However, if we can’t avoid it, we must learn how to alter our environment to remove the stressor.

Speaker: 01:04:00

If we can’t alter our environment, we have no choice but to accept it.

Speaker: 01:04:05

Lastly, if we can’t do much about the situation at all, we must adapt to it and learn how to cope with our stressor and reduce its damaging potential to a minimum.

Speaker: 01:04:17

•Another popular technique is journaling.

Speaker: 01:04:21

When we overthink, we have tons of different thoughts swirling in our mind, which can feel overwhelming.

Speaker: 01:04:27

However, when we write these down systematically, we can analyze them and evaluate whether these thoughts are merited at all.

Speaker: 01:04:36

To build the habit, you can carry a pocket journal with you around and write whenever you feel it’s necessary.

Speaker: 01:04:43

•A third technique we have is called the 5-4-3-2-1 technique.

Speaker: 01:04:49

This is highly effective at stemming panic attacks, and it does so by involving all five of our senses.

Speaker: 01:04:56

So, whenever you feel panic overcoming you, look for five things around you that you can see, four things you can touch, three that you can smell, two that you can hear, and one that you can taste.

Speaker: 01:05:12

Engaging your senses distracts your brain from the overthinking.

Speaker: 01:05:18

This has been Stop Overthinking. 23 techniques to relieve stress, stop negative spirals, declutter your mind, and focus on the present.

Speaker: 01:05:29

Written by Nick Trenton, narrated by Russell Newton.

Speaker: 01:05:33

Copyright: 2021

Speaker: 01:05:35

Production copyright by Nick Trenton.