Are you a worrier or an over thinker? Worry and overthinking (these are just forms of rumination which is a safety seeking behavior) are common problems for many in our community.
If you identify as a worrier or overthinker, odds are that you really don’t want to be this way, but no matter how hard you try, you are not able to find a way to stop. You’re looking for a switch that will turn it all off, but you can’t seem to find it no matter how hard you look, can you?
You’re not alone in this. Many anxious people are trying to do this, and also failing. Let’s look at this for a few minutes, shall we?
Sometimes this is a matter of changing the “angle of attack”.
There is no switch in your brain that turns off worry or overthinking.
You don’t get to just decide to stop having thoughts. We can choose to HAVE a thought, but we do not get to choose to NOT have one. So as much as you want to stop thinking about that time you may have offended your boss, or stop worrying about how your daughter is going to manage away at college alone, you can’t. Those thoughts keep coming because we have no mechanism for turning them off. Even when you try to think other things in an effort to drown out or replace worry or overthinking, you wind up right back at the starting line again, over and over. It’s incredibly frustrating and can make you feel like you have no power or control over anything.
The problem is not that you can’t flip a thinking switch. The problem is that when you allow your thoughts but disengage from them or try to focus on other thoughts and activities, you likely feel uncomfortable and in some ways exposed and vulnerable. Walking away from worries and swirling thoughts feels wrong, irresponsible, or even reckless.
"What if I don't worry and I don't fix things, then something bad happens????"
This creates a state of agitation, distress, or discomfort. We also call that anxiety or even fear sometimes. So you can’t stop those thoughts, but if you try to turn away from them or disengage with them, you get really uncomfortable really quickly. It’s a no-win, isn’t it?
Actually, that’s not the case.
When you say that you can’t stop worrying or overthinking what you’re really saying is that that you see yourself as incapable of allowing and working through that discomfort and distress. You don’t want to be controlled by those thoughts, but you must entangle with them because the alternative is to experience uncertainty, fear, or powerful anxiety, and you see that as absolutely out of the question.
But really, is it? Are you really incapable of handling these things? Have you never managed to tolerate uncertainty or discomfort in your life? Given that we live in a structurally uncertain and mostly un-knowable universe, how would that even be possible? You are handling uncertainty and accepting un-solvable problems all the time. You have the capacity to do that.
So … when you want to throw up your hands and declare that you are doomed to a lifetime of worry and overthinking because you can’t stop your brain, take a minute and consider this. Do you really need to stop your brain, or do you need to work on re-discovering and re-building your distress and discomfort navigation skills?
What would happen if you saw the problem in this light? What would you do next?
You know me, I’m always happy to get you thinking on a Wednesday morning.
118. I Can't Stop Worrying And Overthinking!