I was intrigued by his observation. I didn’t fully grasp what it meant or how to put it into practice, but I understood that my thoughts were intimately connected to my health and well-being—something I’d not previously thought much about—and that exploring this connection was paramount. I set out on an exploratory journey the way avid readers do: I visited the library and bookstore, stockpiling resources on health, meditation, and mindfulness. And I started paying a lot more attention to what I thought about.
As I read, I was surprised to discover how much control I could have over my thought life. The capability had been there all along, but I hadn’t realized it. I began to not only understand what it might mean to make my thoughts my ally but also, for the first time, see how I could do so.
You Can Learn Strategies to Stop Overthinking
I’ve had many conversations with women who tell me, “I wish I could stop overthinking,” but they don’t try to do anything differently. They don’t believe it’s possible, so they don’t attempt to do anything about it. I know what this feels like, because I was one of them. My doctor’s offhand comment made me realize that I had the power to change. Once I knew I could, I began to explore how.
And knowing how changes everything. We won’t look for a solution if we don’t believe one exists.
Quite recently, my own false assumptions have shut me off from solutions. We have a family minivan, which isn’t everyone’s dream car, but I like a few things about mine. Topping my list is the camera feature that helps me back up and change lanes safely. I love it, but it used to be fickle. The camera is supposed to display only when I’m in reverse or have my right blinker on, but sometimes it wouldn’t turn off when it was supposed to and the display would light up even though I didn’t want or need it to. It was incredibly frustrating, but there was nothing to be done about it.
Or so I assumed.
But then last winter, my sixteen-year-old got his learner’s permit. At this point, we’d owned the minivan for over a year. One day when our son was behind the wheel, he flipped on the turn signal and felt a button he hadn’t noticed before. He asked us, “What does this button do?”
Will and I didn’t know about that button; we didn’t know what it did. We told him to hit it and see what happened.
Can you guess what the button did? Of course you can. That button turned off the camera.
For over a year, my inability to turn off the camera had been frustrating me to no end, but I didn’t know the means to turn it off had been right there the whole time. Because I never dreamed there was a solution, I didn’t look for one. The answer had been literally at my fingertips, but I didn’t know it.
When it comes to overthinking, the same thing is true for many of us. We’re bothered by it, but we don’t do anything about it because we don’t know change is within reach.
Of course, reducing overthinking is not as simple as hitting a button on the turn signal. If only! But we do have strategies at our disposal, and we’re going to learn how to use them.
I like to think about wrangling my thought life the same way I think about learning to drive. (It’s funny that I keep using car analogies, because I’m not a car person. But the analogy works: the car is a complicated piece of equipment and so is the human brain.) To drive safely, a driver needs to learn basic practices to operate her vehicle: She needs to know how to start the ignition, check her mirrors, use her turn signals, and engage the parking brake. She needs to know how to clean her windshield, put gas in the tank, and change the oil. But that’s not all. She also needs to know how to respond to what’s happening in front of her—to swerve around a stalled vehicle, brake for a pedestrian, deal with a tailgater, or handle an emergency like a flat tire. These skills keep the car and driver functioning smoothly and enable the driver to respond to trouble when it arises.
The same goes with overthinking. Sometimes we need to defend against an active instance of overthinking in the moment. When we notice we’re caught in a negative thought pattern, it’s like seeing a stalled vehicle in our lane. We need to change course, and quickly, to avoid unpleasant consequences. In subsequent chapters, we’ll learn strategies to overcome active instances of overthinking.
But to stop overthinking on a persistent basis, we want to develop the skills and habits that characterize a helpful thought life, the ones that will keep that vehicle running well for a long time. Getting your thought life under control may feel hard—perhaps so hard it doesn’t seem possible. But I invite you to consider that, here at the beginning, it’s hard right now.
This Won’t Stay Hard Forever
A few years ago, when one of my kids was in tutoring, I was invited to sit in on a session where the tutor ran my child through a challenging numbers exercise. (As in, I had a hard time keeping up.) After my child stumbled through the first column of numbers, the tutor asked if they could try the next harder column together.
My child said, “I think that’s too hard.” No whining, no complaining—just a simple statement of fact. He thought he couldn’t do the work. I wasn’t bothered by it.
But the tutor reflexively fired back with, “It’s too hard right now.”
He explained that as my child continued to build his skills, that column wouldn’t be hard anymore. They would learn how to do it, together. It’s hard today, but it won’t stay that way.
Before we left that day, the tutor pulled me aside for a second. He explained how important it is for kids to believe in their core that they can get better and that if they practice, exercises that are nearly impossible today will be possible tomorrow.
“I make my students do hard things,” he said, “but those hard things don’t stay hard.” With practice, those hard things become doable. Soon enough, they’ll become second nature.
Learning to think well is a process. Some strategies are simple to implement, while others are harder. Some really will feel like hitting a button, while others will require perseverance. Adopting new mental practices and patterns of thought may feel daunting at first, and it’s no wonder. In The Chemistry of Calm, Dr. Henry Emmons, an integrative psychiatrist who advocates a holistic approach to mental health problems like depression and anxiety, writes that it’s no surprise we feel our current “wild mind” state is our natural way of being. He writes, “Since childhood we have spent many of our waking hours reinforcing our habits of thought. We empower them through attention and repetition. Anything that we practice this consistently we will eventually get good at.” We’ve become good at overthinking, thanks (or no thanks) to all the practice we’ve put in.
That’s why we need to start practicing new strategies—and as we practice new ways of thinking and reinforce new habits of thought, we will become much better at not overthinking.
One Small Step at a Time
Getting caught up in overthinking is a vicious cycle. As Emmons explains, “Many of us strengthen unhealthy nerve circuits through repetitive practice. Every time we repeat a fearful or defeatist thought, we strengthen the connections that make it easier to have that thought again.” In other words, the more we overthink, the easier it is to keep overthinking.