Book Preface

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. 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.

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.

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
• 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.

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?”

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.” 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. 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.

Let’s begin with a common explanation for anxiety: genetics. The truth is that no experts have been able to identify with absolute certainty a single cause for anxiety. Researchers have, however, discovered a genetic component. Purves et. al. argued in a 2019 Molecular Psychiatry paper that chromosome 9 carries genes associated with the development of anxiety. But having these genes does not definitively mean you’ll develop anxiety.

The paper goes on to explain that anxiety disorders have a heritability rate of 26 percent—what this means is that 26 percent of the variability in whether people develop anxiety disorders or not is explained by genetics. I’m sure you’ll agree this is quite a small contribution—what about the other 74 percent? This comes down to your environment, and things like your family history, past experiences, and current lifestyle. 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. 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. 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. However, the next source of anxiety does not bend to our will as easily.

Table of Contents

Causes for Mental Clutter and Agony

Is it you?

Is it your environment?

The secret ingredient: our mental models

Consequences of overthinking

The 4 A’s of Stress Management

Stress Diaries and Journals

The 5-4-3-2-1 Grounding Technique

Narrative Therapy and Externalization

Stress Management 101

How to Manage Your Time, Energy, and Inputs

Allen’s Input Processing Technique

Eisenhower’s Method

Setting SMART Goals

Kanban Method

Time Blocking

Autogenic Training

Guided Imagery and Visualization

Progressive Muscle Relaxation

Unraveling Your Cognitive Distortions

Getting Rid of Cognitive Distortions

Using CBT to Clean Up Your Self-Talk

Self-Scripting: Fostering and Reinforcing Positive Self-Talk

Attitude 1: Focus on what you can control, not on what you can’t

Attitude 2: Focus on what you can do, not on what you can’t

Attitude 3: Focus on what you have, not on what you don’t have

Attitude 4: Focus on the present, not the past or the future

Attitude 5: Focus on what you need, not what you want

Emotion Regulation Via the Opposite Action

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