How do I stop overthinking? - Video transcript

Hey guys, I'm Kristen, the anxiety therapist and today I'm going to be talking about overthinking. So overthinking is one of the hallmarks of anxiety we"ll often find our minds are racing, we just can't seem to quiet our minds where maybe ruminating about something that happened in the past.

Did I say something stupid? What did that person think of me or did we try to sort of brace for impact or prepare ourselves for something that we think might happen in the future? Neither of which is productive. So today I'm just going to be sharing some information with you and giving you some tips on how to manage that overthinking so that it doesn't kind of take hold of your life.

For starters the problem is rarely a problem, right, of the harm is caused in your head and about 1% of problems are actually or 1% of the harm rather is actually caused by the outcome of the problem. So when you are constantly overthinking about a problem, you are actually making it larger than it is in reality because what we give our attention to gross.

So the problem is going to be perceived as being much bigger than it actually is if or when it occurs in real life. So just keep that in mind with the overthinking secondly, if you're the type of person who tends to worry about everything, you need to get done, that is actually more exhausting than doing it.

So if you have this never-ending to-do list or you are laying awake at night thinking about everything you have to do at work the next day, what I want you to do is actually take action. So if you want to feed the problem you keep thinking about it. If you want to starve the problem, you take action, and a lot of times people will procrastinate or avoid doing certain things because they don't want to feel the distress that they think it will bring on.

But in reality, they are just creating more distress and more of a build-up than actually just doing the thing. So if you find that you are you know waking up in the middle of the night um and thinking about everything you need to do the next day, I'd recommend keeping a pad of paper next to your bed and writing it down.

So if you wake up and you're like oh I have to remember to schedule that doctor's appointment, write it on the pad of paper, get it out of your head, and then you have something concrete to refer to so that you're sure you won't forget to do it the next day. Um 3rd is if you can't solve it, stop trying.

So problems are often solved with less thinking, not more and silence is actually what yields answers. So you might want to journal or meditate or just spend some time reflecting and that is what's going to lead you to the solution. If there are one or two answers in regard to how you might deal with the problem.

If it's something that's out of your control. So when you are worrying about a potential problem that hasn't necessarily happened yet, that may or may not happen, you are causing yourself to experience that distress twice, right? So if the problem actually happens, that's going to be distressing in its own right?

And now the anticipation of it happening is that you're actually doubling down on that distress, right? You're experiencing it in anticipation as well as if it actually occurs. So this just uses way more energy than you need to and it gives you the perception that you are actually doing something about it. Because worrying uses energy which makes us feel like we're being proactive when in reality it's just this very self-defeating cycle.

Um fourth, I want you to fact-check your thoughts thoughts are really good at telling stories that aren't true and we often take our thoughts and feelings as being factual and true when in reality a lot of times they are not. They are distorted. So if you are worrying about something, look for evidence behind that worry, you know, is there something concrete?

Or is there evidence that something is going to happen? Or is a lot of this just concocted by what we call cognitive distortions or thinking there's and then lastly try to make peace with yesterday because it's done right, it happened, you can't go back and change it, you have no control over it.

So literally the only option you have is to let it go and you can't predict the future. So there's no point in wasting energy trying to anticipate what's going to happen or avoid it or you know, however, you kind of approach that um so really try to grab hold of the now, that is the only thing you have control over.

That is the only thing you are able to experience at this moment. And you can do that by practicing some mindfulness techniques which I don't have time to get into in this video, but I will do another video that identifies what mindfulness is and how it can be helpful with anxiety. So be sure to subscribe to my channel so that you get the videos as they come out. I do release new content every Friday.

I hope for all of you overthinkers out there that this was a helpful video and um have a great weekend until next week. Take care.