What To Do When Overthinking Becomes A Problem
As rational beings that we are, thinking is an activity that participates in our nature. Thoughts can be our allies but also our worst enemies. Thus, whether they become a problem or not will depend on how we use our reason and the conscience that we put into it.
If we understand thinking as the act of reasoning, understanding, imagining, in a way that helps us make decisions and carry out an action, we can conclude that it has great power, as much as we want to grant it. Remember that thought is not something stable, nor must it always be sensible or have some common sense.
Giving too much value to our thinking in certain situations and circumstances can harm us more than benefit us, for this we must be aware and open our mind to other possibilities that are influencing, such as our emotional state, our experience or certain particular conditions, such as consumption of alcohol.
When thinking causes us anxiety
There are situations in which we have the feeling that we cannot stop thinking, going over and over the same thing. In this process of rumination, we become obsessed with something that takes up most of our time and our thoughts. When we worry about something, anticipate a situation or remember moments from our past, we leave the doors wide open to anxiety.
The anxiety created by our thoughts ends up being a process of lack of control: we are dominated by what happened, by the uncertainty of what has not yet arrived and what is yet to come. All this happens when we do not attend to the present, we get lost, disoriented and distracted from what is happening to us today, from the world we live in here and now.
Trying to find and explain everything around us also turns our thoughts into anxiety. There are personalities with more tendency to worry and to try to obtain explanations of everything that they live. Therefore, people who have this internal dynamism have to make a great effort to remain calm and focus on what they are experiencing at that moment.
Focus on the present moment
Faced with the anguish that arises from our thoughts, it is best to do everything possible to focus all attention on the present moment. When we capture the moment we can have control of our thoughts, focusing on the experience, on the reality that happens to us more closely. Let what is around us enter us and infect us with a different meaning than the one we have cognitively started in our mind.
When we accumulate thoughts and we are overwhelmed with worries, a good exercise is to start writing and ordering those ideas, saving what is written to be able to provide solutions as they arise. In this way we will do something with what torments us, and we will give way to decisions and solutions.
Understanding and accepting our way of thinking helps us not to fall into despair and victimhood. Understanding that thoughts are part of us and that we can use them to our advantage prevents us from coming into conflict with them; a conflict that would actually be with ourselves.
I control what I think
By not being what I think, but rather being a part of me, I better understand the nature of thought. I know that it is part of me and my experiences, that it has to do with my attitude and my way of seeing and being in life. Therefore complaining about what I usually think is just a ploy to run away from myself.
We can control what we think, especially with the practice of concentration. We can guide our thoughts towards what is most important to us, and we can stay anchored with the same, or move forward and leave room for the world of possibilities that are yet to come and we cannot control.
Our attitude determines how we think and act. We can stay in our world of possible options without daring to make decisions, or we can propose a strategy by shaping a possibility through our decisions.
Thinking even if we see that it is something automatic and that it comes to us without further ado, does not mean that we cannot take an active attitude. If we remain spectators of our thoughts, we will assume that it is impossible to control them and that is how they will dominate us.
