The more you overthink the less you will understand

There was a girl, sitting in her room, gazing at the stars, feeling each wave of the cold breeze in her skin in the midnight, living her life to fullest. But then, all of a sudden she realizes the assignments that she has been avoiding, upcoming exams, all the comments that she has faced that day, basically she remembers all the failures in her life till that day. She can’t fall asleep now.

The horrors of her thought have grasped her sleep and haunted her mind. She is now compelled to think about all the time where she had gone wrong, the time where she failed her exam, the time when she let her parents feel ashamed of her. This peculiar art is recognized as “overthinking”.

The behaviour of an individual which leads to think anything from a different perspective and to pay deep concern even over the simplest mundane tasks is overthinking. Thinking about something in endless circles is exhausting. The art of thinking too much, instead of acting and doing things is overthinking.When you analyze, realize but fail to work on it, this is the most basic symptom of overthinking.

It consumes your energy, your positive vibes, disables your ability to make any kind of hard-core decisions and puts you on a loop of thinking over and again. It’s like tying a rope into a poll and circling it over and over just to untangle it. It is the destructive process of your mind and it is  mentally draining and leads you to unfavorable outcomes.. It can make you feel like you are stuck in one place, and if you don’t act upon it can also have a greater impact on your day-to-day activities.

Overthinking is like a well of your thoughts in which you just go on drowning and killing yourself with it. Overthinking leads you to sleepless nights, mental stress, depression and anxiety attacks. A recent U.K. study shows that more than 30,000 people showed that focusing on negative events (particularly through rumination and self-blame) can be the biggest predictor of some of today’s most common mental health problems.

So why do we harbor this internal enemy that feeds us such negative commentary and terrible advice? The truth is we all are divided. All of us are split into our universe of positive shocks and negative shocks. So as we, ourselves are the creator of this destructive process, we can also overcome it.

We firstly need to identify these thoughts and recognize the timings when they are triggered, we can then act upon by challenging our inner voice and change the way of our thinking. The most self-advice that we can render upon is, we can scrap the negative thoughts and double down the positive thoughts. But well, it is easy to advise rather than to act.

As Marcus Aurelius said, “Our life is what our thoughts make it”. We can at least try making our thoughts progressive and positive. We can shape our mind by meditating. We can try different kinds of therapies. We can identify our core problems, and penumbras along with it, and we can work upon it. We can share our problems with anyone, we feel comfortable too.  So we gotta try to stop overthinking and live in the present. We determine our life, not our thoughts.

 She is not born an overthinker, in fact no one is . It is the outcome of either one’s choice or lack of effort to stop it. Sometimes I wonder, have all your thoughts been around you into reality ? Have the outcomes of overthinking satisfied you ? When was the last time you caught yourself overthinking? With these questions in your head, try to answer them logically and satisfy your mind. Focus on yourself and that will direct your thoughts.

~Swikriti Thakur