How to Stop Worrying and Overthinking
Have you ever gotten caught in a thought spiral that felt almost impossible to get out of?
You go over the details again and again, playing out different scenarios, beating yourself up, or getting yourself riled up. You may even get into imaginary arguments and wonder why you can’t stop yourself.
We all hope thinking this way will solve our problems, but it often just makes things worse. When you’re stuck in these kinds of thought spirals, it can be hard to get out of them.
While you don’t have control over your thoughts, the good news is that you do have control over how you respond to whatever shows up. You just need to train yourself to respond differently! If you’re struggling with constant worry and rumination, here are some tips to help you break out of the overthinking cycle for good.
Understanding Worrying and Overthinking
Rumination (overthinking) is a very old brain mechanism, an evolutionary leftover that isn’t always as helpful anymore. Your ancestors needed to be on red alert at all times because it was a matter of life or death.
Let’s say you narrowly missed getting eaten by a tiger: your brain is going to replay that scenario again and again to ensure you can avoid it next time and live another day. It gives you a sense of working hard to solve a problem.
Today, your brain thinks that presentation you bombed is still a tiger: it’s using that same “life or death” problem-solving template to keep you safe. Your brain’s threat system can’t distinguish between a physical threat and an emotional threat, it’s all scary and life-threatening. It’s a really helpful and important mechanism in a physically dangerous situation, but you can see how easily it can get overused in situations that don’t call for it.
Rumination and worrying are basically problem-solving gone haywire. Your mind is running around in circles in an attempt to solve painful problems from the past or scary potential problems in the future. They both carry a functional promise in that worry promises to prepare you for the future while rumination promises you that past mistakes will not be repeated. Unfortunately, it turns out the very opposite is true.
What’s the Difference Between Thinking About Something and Ruminating?
You need to think through something in order to process what happened, problem solve, and decide next steps.
Research shows you temporarily feel less anxious when you worry, so ruminating and worrying can help you avoid unpleasant feelings in your body and make you feel like you’re doing something.
Most people use worry as a coping strategy to try to prevent bad events from happening, giving you the illusion of control. It seems helpful when you feel powerless, but it actually heightens your sense of danger because you’ll focus on all the ways something could go wrong (the vast majority of which never happen).
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How to Tell If You’re Ruminating
There’s a fine line between thinking and ruminating. How do you know the difference? If you’re concerned that you’re ruminating, you’re probably going around in circles, not finding any answers, or learning anything new.
The next time you aren’t sure if you’re thinking/processing something or ruminating, try asking yourself these 2 simple questions:
“Does this feel helpful?“
“Am I learning anything new?”
If the answer to either of these questions is no, then you’re probably ruminating.
Worst-case scenario ruminating
You’ll also find that rumination leads to catastrophizing: focusing on the worst-case scenario outcome. Catastrophizing is another example of a helpful mechanism gone haywire.
Thinking about worst-case scenario is helpful to some degree because it allows you to prepare for the worst and offset any potential disaster. You don’t need to prepare for or worry about best-case scenario, which is why your brain usually ignores it.
It makes sense because worst-case is the most scary or stressful, will likely need the most planning, and have the most negative consequences. Your brain would be irresponsible if it didn’t consider this! Unfortunately, it’s easy to get tunnel vision and see worst-case scenario as the only possibility, no matter how rare it occurs or outlandish it may seem.
Think back to all the times you assumed the worst would happen: how many times were you right? Probably not that often. In fact, you were probably surprised that things turned out better than expected.
Why Challenging Thoughts Doesn't Stop You Worrying
You may be telling yourself some realistic and outlandish scenarios are going to happen, or you’re blaming yourself for something that happened, or maybe your mind is only focused on worst-case scenario. Just notice whatever comes up and try not to judge it because you have no control over what shows up automatically.
Here’s a really important thing to remember: Your thoughts are information, not necessarily truth.
You have thousands of thoughts per day and many of them are just plain wrong. Like I mentioned above: think about all the times you’ve had a thought or worry that turned out wrong. If worst-case scenario happened every time you worried it would, you’d be long dead by now.
When you see your thoughts as a stream of information rather than truth, this allows you to take what’s helpful and useful and discard the rest. Getting curious lets you investigate rather than get wrapped up in or follow an unhelpful spiral.
The reason this can be more effective than simply challenging and dismissing a thought is because you don’t know yet if a future-oriented thought is truthful and often your worst thoughts about the past or present hold some truth. Trying to argue with yourself means you’re missing potential valuable information in your thoughts.
You can see how arguing whether a thought is true or false is useless when you don’t know for sure. It’s far more useful to consider whether a thought is helpful or unhelpful. The key is to discern whether a thought that pops up is a helpful guide for your actions.
Two Simple Questions to Interrupt a Worry Cycle
Instead of arguing with yourself by challenging whatever thought pops up or ignoring it, ask yourself two simple questions:
Is this thought helpful?
If I’m guided by this thought, will it help me get the result I want?
If a thought is helpful and seems like a helpful guide, then listen to it. If a thought pops up and doesn’t feel helpful, investigate whether there’s any useful information without necessarily being guided by it.
The reason you’ll still want to investigate your thoughts is because a thought can be both true and unhelpful at the same time. If you ignore all negative thoughts, you’re missing some potentially important information.
How to reframe unhelpful thoughts to stop worrying
If you’re unsure whether your thoughts are being unhelpful, here are some examples of unhelpful thoughts reframed into more helpful guides. The next time you have a thought that seems unhelpful, try writing it out next to “unhelpful” and then think of a more helpful reframe underneath.
Example 1:
Unhelpful: “I can’t believe I failed that test, I’ll never pass this class.”
Helpful: “I failed my test and now I’m now worried I’m going to fail the class. I’ll need to do better to make sure I pass.”
When you’ve gotten into these unhelpful worry spirals in the past, what did you end up doing? Did you start studying diligently and do better next time or did you start avoiding your work? Or maybe you started studying so much that your brain went into overload and you could no longer effectively study.
If something works, keep doing it, and if something doesn’t work, try something different.
There’s useful information in that worry because you clearly don’t want to fail. What would happen if you’re guided by the thought, “I’ll need to do better to make sure I pass”? What would change? What would you do differently? You might organize a study group, hire a tutor, ask the teacher for help, or maybe watch some YouTube videos on the subject. Any of these could be helpful and would make it more likely you’ll pass than if you’re guided by the thought “I’ll never pass this class.
Example 2:
Unhelpful: “This is too much work. I’ll never get it all done in time!”
Helpful: “This seems like more work than I can get done in the time allotted. I don’t think I can get everything done.”
Here’s a great example of a thought that is both true and unhelpful. Let’s say it’s true you were assigned too much work and won’t be able to finish everything before the deadline. What happens if you’re guided by that unhelpful thought? You might sit and worry about it and start to panic, making it almost a guarantee you won’t get much done. You’ll probably feel hopeless and frustrated, and more likely to give up.
The more helpful version of this thought acknowledges the truth that you probably won’t get everything done and allows more space for problem-solving. What can you get done? You’d be way more likely to follow that thought up with, “I suppose I should focus on the highest priority stuff to see how much I can get done.”
Example 3:
Unhelpful: “I shouldn’t have made that joke. (Person) hates me now.”
Helpful: “I’m noticing I’m worried my joke didn’t land and now (person) hates me. I don’t want them to be upset with me.”
It’s hard to feel like you said something bad and now you’re being negatively judged for it. Notice and validate the thought without agreeing with it so you can get to the real worry. You’re not a mind reader, so you have no idea whether your friend hates you or even remembers what you said, but it’s totally understandable that you’d be concerned.
When you’re caught up in these worries, does it allow you to take helpful action? Or does it drive you further and further into a negative spiral?
There’s some useful information in there: maybe that person is upset with you because of your joke. The part that’s not helpful is assuming they now hate you. If you’re guided by the thought they hate you, you might start avoiding them or even hate them back. If you’re instead guided by the thought, “I don’t want (person) to be upset with me”, you’re more likely to take effective action to fix things rather than sit and worry about it.
what to do when you can’t stop worrying
If you can’t come up with solutions or get off a negative thought train, then you’re probably too panicked to think in a helpful way. You’re not learning anything new from negative, repetitive thoughts, so it’s better to find a healthy distraction to soothe yourself so you can come back to it later.
One important piece is the difference between avoidance and distraction.
Avoidance means you’re not acknowledging that something’s wrong, you’re ignoring it to go do something else.
Distraction means you’re acknowledging something’s wrong and needs attention, and you aren’t in the right head space to handle it in that moment.
This is the difference between watching Netflix and feeling guilty about it or taking a breather and coming back to your problem later with a fresh perspective. The same action can be a workable distraction or unworkable avoidance depending on your intention.
If you recognize that you’re stuck in a repetitive thought cycle, take a deep breath, ground yourself, and pick an immersive activity. If you pick something and it’s not helping, switch to something that gets your body moving:
Take a mindful walk
Do a quick workout or jumping jacks
Play with a pet
Try anything that’s worked in the past to see if it works again
Related: How to Stop Wasting Free Time
What if I keep thinking about something I can’t solve?
Examine your thoughts to see if you’re worrying about a solvable or unsolvable problem.
If your worry is solvable, follow the steps I’ve outlined above so you can soothe your nerves and brainstorm. Focus on where you have influence and decide what actions you need to take.
Your brain’s job is to problem solve and it won’t stop even in the face of an unsolvable problem. That’s not your fault, that’s just your brain trying to do its job.
If your worry is unsolvable or you have no influence over the outcome, trying getting in touch with what’s under the worry. You’ll likely find feelings of helplessness or powerlessness, disappointment, insecurity, or regret.
Allow space by noticing and accepting whatever comes up. Your brain will try to problem solve its way out of an emotion and unfortunately emotions can’t be rationalized away. When you accept and allow them to be there, they tend to flow and move on without lingering.
Remember that accepting something doesn’t mean you have to like it. Try saying, “I accept that this is happening (or did happen, or might happen) and I don’t like it.”
How to turn unhelpful thoughts into helpful actions
Always keep an eye on whether what you’re doing in the present moment is helping or harming and shift into something that feels more helpful. If you have no idea what might be helpful, first try the exact opposite of what’s been harmful in the past.
Examples:
If you typically pace around the room lost in thought (or lose yourself in thoughts at any point), stop and look around your environment. Start naming the things you see, feel your feet on the floor, stay still. Notice the thoughts, urges, body sensations while you continue to notice your environment.
If you lay in bed circling the drain, try imagining the most creative and outlandish place in the universe or the weirdest creature from another planet, or the silliest thing you can think of.
If you start frantically calling or texting people, put your phone down and take a walk. Notice you want to talk to someone and try talking to yourself first like you would a friend.
This skill, called Opposite Action, works because it gives you direction when you’re not sure what to do. If something isn’t working, then it’s likely the opposite will work better.
How Self-Compassion Interrupts Overthinking
If you’re having trouble coming up with more helpful thoughts or distracting yourself, try starting with just being kinder to yourself. For many of people, the automatic default is to beat yourself and research shows that harsh criticism is demotivating and makes out-of-control thought spirals worse.
If you’re struggling with this, ask yourself: If beating myself up worked, wouldn’t I be perfect by now?
Listen for that nasty inner critic and try softening it a bit by thinking about how you’d respond to a friend. This helps interrupt rumination and spiraling thoughts since you don’t typically let our friends do this.
Automatic critic: “I’m such an idiot, I can’t believe I did that. What’s wrong with me?”
Helpful response: “I am really getting mad at myself for messing up. Would I call my friend an idiot for messing up?”
Automatic critic: “I’ll never understand this, it’s useless.”
Helpful response: “It’s hard for me to struggle like this and feel like I’ll never understand it. What would I say to a friend struggling to learn this?”
Automatic critic: “What if something bad happens? I’ll let everyone down.”
Helpful response: “It’s hard to worry about something I can’t control, I don’t like letting people down. What would I say to my friend?”
Being kind to yourself instead of beating yourself up allows you to take accountability any time you mess up, and also learn from it. And if you haven’t done anything wrong, it allows you to speak kindly to yourself to interrupt a worry cycle. Ultimately, there’s no learning in harsh criticism.
Related: How To Be Nice To Yourself
Why Trying to Stop Your Thoughts Increases Worry
If you take away nothing else from this post, I want you to remember that you don’t have control over thoughts popping up. You’ll have unhelpful and true as well as unhelpful and untrue thoughts popping up regularly (along with helpful, irrational, loving, hateful, funny, silly ones…).
Trying to stop or challenge every thought will only increase your anxiety.
It’s more fruitful to reframe thoughts as information, pull out any value or helpful guidance (if there is any), and then bring a wider perspective to the situation.
An unhelpful or negative thought is like tunnel vision. When you’re only focused on that tunnel, you’re missing the peripheral. When you widen your perspective to include that peripheral (alternative options, silver linings, etc.), you give yourself more options.
Imagine what kind of wider perspective you’d say to a friend. You wouldn’t necessarily lie to them or sugar coat the situation, but you’d offer them a fresh perspective and support.
You stop being at the mercy of your thoughts when you view them as information, not commands.
Getting caught in a rumination cycle can feel like there’s no escape. Remind yourself that it’s important to think things through, but you don’t have to feel trapped by your thoughts. With some practice and a little patience, you can re-direct your focus and get yourself out of this nasty cycle.
Get yourself back to the present by noticing what’s around you, and focus on taking meaningful action. If it’s an unsolvable problem, practice treating yourself like a friend.
