Healthytalk8 Overthinking
Contents
Overthinking or rumination, occurs when you keep thinking about the same thought or problem, especially when it is negative.
Excessive thinking which I know very well because my mind can’t stop thinking about anything that happens around me.
I not good for me and my health, because in the long term, it becomes severe, and may lead to anxiety, and other mental issues.
What does overthinking bring to your mind, here are some other keys that overthinking bring
Lead to Negative: Overthinking mostly occurs due to negative thoughts, which to a great extent, have a great impact on our daily lives.
Difficulty letting go: Individuals get caught in a loop, where new thoughts keep adding to thoughts and make it very hard to focus on work.
Emotional pain: It can lead to anxiety, tension, depression, stress, and sleep-related disorders and may raise other health issues.
There are different types of overthinking like career, relationships, and social, and it also comes from without any reason.
In addition, just like overthinking, oversleeping is also allied with depression.
Many studies have revealed that high rate of depressed patients among long sleepers compared to normal sleepers (1) (2) (3) (4).
Why Does Overthinking Occur?
Several reasons contribute to overthinking including:
Without any reason: It is not necessary that it can occur only for reason, it sometimes may occur due to without any specific reason.
For exam – Becoming like a superhero, where all day, night, even weeks or months thinking about becoming like a superhero.
Tension: It is the most common reason where tension or pressure forces our brain to think about that thing again and again.
Low self-esteem: If individuals have low self-esteem negative thoughts and common stress cannot handle.
There are several ways to increase your self-esteem:
Research indicates that regular exercise can also increase your self-esteem, also improve your stamina, and overall body posture.
Some kind of learning, saying at the correct time, or doing it the right way, can raise your self-confidence and self-esteem.
Lack of Sleep: Sleep deprivation disturbs our ability to think, process, and focus, which makes every step harder to do, which increases overthinking.
Isolation: Isolation from the outer environment easily triggers the brain to think about a particular thing, especially negatively thinking again and again (5)
Social Media: In modern times, it is most of the most common reasons for teenagers, where scroll reels constantly for several hours.
Playing games, scroll reels, watching drama, etc can negatively affect our brain, and in the long term, it affects our health.
Overall, it is the natural human response to tension, anxiety, etc, so if it interferes with your daily life then you have to overcome it.
What will happen when we Overthink for a Long Time?
Overthinking for a certain period is normal but scratch to it the next level like thinking about a particular thing for a long period.
It can affect mental, physical, social and emotional well-being.
Mental Affect
It increases the anxiety and stress feeling, which become hard to control and reduced, leading to chronic stress and other issues.
Study reveals that chronic thinking can affect brain other parts negatively like emotional, and social well-being.
Low mood: Somewhere it affects your mood and thinking about low feelings triggers your depressed mind state.
It leads to fatigue, low energy, low motivation, easily disturbed, and not able to focus on work, which negatively affects health.
Analysis paralysis: It is a condition where a person can’t describe what he or she feels due to excessive overthinking issues.
Reduce creativity: Overthinking blocks mental several parts like thinking about problem-solving, creativity, and others.
So make sure to overcome your overthinking, there are several ways to do it, or you can take the doctor’s suggestion.
Mental chatter: It is like non-stop thoughts, where constant thinking and processing the thoughts, at that point where you feel worries.
Obsessive thoughts: It occurs due to overthinking, where unwanted ideas, images, and repetitive thoughts distract you from work.
Physical Affect
Lack of sleep: In long-term thinking, any abnormal things at night just consume your sleeping time, which does not allow you to get enough sleep.
Fear of Failure: The specific part of the brain that is responsible for overthinking go to more deep, which raises anxiety about failure, and facing challenges.
Unwanted changes: Like anger, anxiety, irritability, and not being able to control thoughts, which may lead to headaches.
Decision Paralysis: Overthinking causes this also, where a person is unable to make a decision, and exactly the person is stuck in the decision-making process.
Other Affect
- Low-confidence and esteem
- decreased enjoyment
- reducing living with others or isolating with social
- doing activities like talking to yourself by imagine
- receiving more negative thoughts
- miscommunication in a relationship, which can affect your happy life
- decrease your immunity
Several research shown on paper that high levels of cortisol (a stress hormone) can weaken your immune system.
Overthinking creates difficulty in building relationships, focusing on new things, work, meditation, and yoga, due to people’s perspective.
If you noticed that your rumination is interfering with your daily life or others, then you should talk to your doctor.
How to Overcome Overthinking?
There are several ways to overcome overthinking, we are here not to talk about stopping overthinking completely.
Because thinking about creativity, and new things eventually creates your brain power, you have to just control your thinking boundaries.
Here are effective ways to overcome your overthinking:
Find the Reason
Identify your thinking reason, is it your stress, anxiety, or just it occurs without any reason if it occurs due to stress and other environmental issues?
Then you have to first treat your primary reason like stress, and manage or control your stress, it will automatically reduce your overthink.
If it occurs without any reason, like in mine, I mostly do work from home, so I do not go outside, which triggers my thinking (3)
CBT (Cognitive Bais Training)
Now new technology or AI has been used to identify what kind of issue are you facing that causes your overthinking.
A study showed that a brain sense major device can’t provide a therapist with a real-time report of your mental state through brain waves.
Meditation and Yoga
It is most of the recommended and considered way to overcome your overthinking by calming your brain’s frequent jumping waves.
A study from 2013 revealed that mindfulness-based meditation can reduce rumination.
Meditation can reduce stress and other mental-related issues which overcome rumination and other issues like sleep (5).
Regularly doing yoga on depression patients can significantly improve their signs of depression, which overall improves mood.
Overcoming overthinking is an expedition, to make sure work on today, and see the result tomorrow. So be calm and patient.
Combining yoga and meditation will show you faster results and other several health benefits like calm in difficult situations.
Get Outside
In my case, I work from home so I do not spend much time outside, which triggered my empty mind and overthinking about anything.
So getting outside is very effective in diverting your mind, which does not allow your brain to create unimagine (7)
Get outside to refresh your mind, and trigger brain other parts like creativity, focusing, learning, etc.
Deep Breathing
In most cases, if your overthinking occurs due to your stress, or anxiety then deep breathing is another best method to overcome it.
Deep breathing brings more oxygen to the brain which suppresses cortisol levels and increases feel-good hormones (2)
It is a relaxation technique that also includes progressive muscle relaxation, yoga, and meditation which reduce stress levels (3)
Make sure to focus on breathing which promotes other benefits like:
- Promote relaxation
- reduce stress level
- bring calmness
- decrease other mental woes
Shift your thoughts
It is easy to say but not an easy task, shifting thoughts, focusing on work, and patience need a lot of practice.
But you can easily shift your thoughts in positive ways like:
- Get outside
- spend time in nature
- do mental exercises like reading, meditation, writing articles, etc
Overall, overcoming overthinking is not a one-time work, it needs patience, and focus on mental exercises.
Down Line
Overthinking is a natural, that occurs when individuals are anxious about work, relationships and anything.
There are several ways to overwhelm rumination like deep breathing (good for stress), getting outside (no specific reason for overthinking)
If you are still unable to manage your rumination, then it’s time to talk to your doctor, who may tell you about medicine or therapy.
