Are you a binge thinker? Here's how to stop overthinking
As Laura Andrews types her PIN into the card reader, she feels an overwhelming sense of relief. Her body relaxes, her mind clears and she breathes an audible sigh. For the first time in months, she's able to see things clearly, calmly. The camper van salesman laughs; most customers aren’t so eager to hand over their cash, he says. But Laura, a creative strategist and business owner, isn’t just buying the camper van in which she and her family intend to explore the UK and make lifelong memories. She’s putting an end to six months of her own incessant, exhausting deliberation.
From Angela Chase’s interior monologues in My So-Called Life to countless Taylor Swift songs, overthinking has become a classic trope in pop culture. That the term has made its way from niche self-development vocab to meme fodder makes sense; we have a lot to think about. But experts argue that the term is masking a smorgasbord of psychological symptoms, from irrational worry to catastrophising. Have we tipped the balance, from occasional overthinking to regularly binge thinking?
The term overthinking is something of an anomaly; a close cousin of the well-studied psychological concept of ‘cognitive overload’ – defined as experiencing too many stimuli for your brain to process at once – but it’s not the same thing, and there is no clinical definition. What the experts do agree on, is that it involves thinking about situations to an unhelpful degree.
‘To put too much time into thinking about or analysing [something] in a way that is more harmful than helpful’ is how the Merriam-Webster dictionary puts it, while Anne Bogel, author of Don’t Overthink It, broadly defines it as ‘times when we lavish mental energy on things that don’t deserve it; thinking in a way that’s repetitive, unhealthy and unhelpful’.
This rings true for Andrews. ‘I knew deep down that buying the camper van was what I wanted to do. We’d saved the money; it would be an amazing experience for our family and my husband went all in on it,’ she says. ‘But, despite that, my default was to wait, to seek external approval, to have the same thoughts and questions going round in my head. “Would I live to regret it? Was this a responsible way to spend the money? Would it be safer to have the cash in the bank? What would other people think?”’
Exacerbating these questions was a sense that she didn’t deserve it; that the dream of freedom and family experiences should have been out of her reach. And yet, ‘Since those van keys were put in my hand, I haven’t second-guessed it once,’ she says.
If you have whiplash from nodding in recognition of your own unproductive thought patterns, it isn’t that surprising. And it doesn’t feel like a stretch to suggest overthinking affects more women than men – your WhatsApp groups (ever the scientific strategy) would probably confirm such suspicions.
But the science isn’t so clear-cut. ‘We don’t know enough to confirm a genetic difference when it comes to the brain’s capacity and probability to overthink,’ says Professor Catherine M Pittman, clinical psychologist and co-author of Rewire Your Anxious Brain. Psychologist and behavioural researcher Antonius Wiehler agrees. ‘In my analysis into cognitive fatigue, both genders have shown similar outcomes, so there’s no data to show genetic predisposition.’
The thinking gap
What research has shown is a more general gender difference in blood flow and activity in specific brain regions. A 2017 brain imaging study that compared more than 45,000 scans from nine clinics found significantly increased blood flow in the prefrontal cortex (involved with focus and impulse control) and the limbic areas (involved with mood and anxiety) of the female brain.
Indeed, the renowned psychologist Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, author of Women Who Think Too Much, spent 20 years researching mental health, finding that women are both more likely than men to fall into overthinking and remain stuck there.
For Professor Pittman, the idea that women are more at the mercy of overthinking is due to social factors rather than neuroscience. ‘The less control we feel over a situation or life in general, the more stress we experience and the more likely we are to overthink,’ she says. ‘Unfortunately, women tend to have (and feel) less control over their own lives – be it because we’re less likely to be decision-makers in the workplace, we’re more impacted by financial insecurity via lower-paid industries or because we make up a higher percentage of primary caregivers, which involves prioritising the needs of others above our own.’ It makes for dismal, if not all that surprising, reading.
‘I’ve positioned myself in our family as “the organiser, the researcher” – I do it all and carry that pressure,’ says Andrew. ‘I need support, but there’s also a desperate need to feel and appear independent.’ Stats from the past few years highlight it’s the same for many. A 2022 review in The Lancet concluded that women across the globe are still deemed primarily responsible for their households’ unpaid labour, spending an average of three to six hours per day on chores or care work, while men contribute between 30 minutes and two hours. That’s not including paid employment, so if women are clearly bearing this brunt, is it any wonder their minds are buzzing?
Hold that thought
Consider the overlap between overthinking and another trait that harms your mental health, which is all too common among women: perfectionism. ‘A person’s tendency towards perfectionism regularly manifests in overthinking because they search for the absolute, unquestionable best option in any given situation,’ says Anne Bogel, who connected the two after speaking to countless women while researching her book. This, in turn, breeds ‘analysis paralysis’ – a state in which you fixate on all the possible options or outcomes to such a degree that you become incapable of settling on one solution.
More worrying still, experts are now warning that overthinking could be doing more insidious damage. Dr Susan Nolen-Hoeksema’s research showed that overthinking not only makes life harder, it has a negative impact on relationships and may even contribute to serious mental disorders, including severe anxiety and substance abuse. Her study on gender differences in depression found that women were much more likely than men to say they overthink when they feel sad, anxious or depressed, but overthinking also contributed to women’s higher rates of depression.
Wellbeing wedge
Overthinking can put the kibosh on your healthy intentions, too. In a 2022 study by researchers at Pitié-Salpêtrière University Hospital in Paris, researchers asked one group of participants to do automatic tasks (on autopilot) throughout the day, and a second group to do tasks that required cognitive control (deliberate effort or focus). Both groups were then asked to choose between two options, thereby having to use cognitive control.
‘We saw that, on average, the group who’d deployed more cognitive control throughout the day were much more likely to choose an option that provided instant gratification over that which offered a greater but delayed benefit,’ says Dr Antonius Wiehler, who carried out the study. ‘It appeared that cognitive control would fatigue over time.’ It explains why spending a chunk of time thinking or acting in a way that requires focus and attention – hello, overthinking – can make you more likely to skip a workout in favour of the sofa, eat more than you need to instead of consciously pushing your plate away and sack off self-development even when you know it’ll serve future you.'
Laura realised the impact of her overthinking when she started working with a client who happened to be a clarity coach. ‘I was helping her with her brand strategy and the more she spoke about how feeling paralysed by decisions and ruminating on the past could keep a person stuck, it felt as if she was describing me,’ she admits.
Consciously aware of her thinking patterns, she began to pay attention to when her overthinking was at its worst and realised her physical space could be a trigger. ‘If the house was a mess or I hadn’t been for a run outdoors in a while, it made a big difference,’ she says. ‘Now, if I know something’s going to happen that might lead to overthinking or I have a decision to make, I’ll set myself up properly: go for a run, have a shower, tidy the room I’m in. It sounds trivial, but it’s a way for me to override my self-sabotaging mind.’
In short, it’s about creating the right conditions for your analytic brain to thrive – cognitive wellness, if you will. Now that really is something to think about.
How to stop overthinking
Limit your options
Streamlining regular decisions can help you establish habits that reduce overthinking. ‘Routine can serve as a fatigue-busting framework,’ says Bogel, who suggests having signature no-stress meals, a capsule wardrobe and setting specific device-free zones/times to lessen overwhelming feelings.
Change the channel
‘Your brain’s amygdala can’t distinguish between you imagining negative scenarios in the cortex of your brain and that negative situation actually playing out,’ explains Professor Pittman. Cue physical sensations of stress, which exacerbates your focus on the subject. ‘If the analogy is that the amygdala is watching cortex TV, you need to change the channel – distract yourself with something else entirely to reset,’ she adds.
Make a move
It doesn’t have to be a workout; it could be a walk to a local green space or dancing to a song you love – but exerting physical energy helps to break your brain circuitry and shift perspective. ‘There may be some biochemical effect of activity that has a positive [impact] on mood and thinking – the release of brain chemicals such as [noradrenaline] and serotonin,’ says Dr Nolen-Hoeksema. ‘It’s harder to lapse back into overthinking if you’re actively moving about.’
Spot the signs
Learning how overthinking shows up in your life will help you negate it. Be aware of things such as having the same tabs open on your computer for weeks on end, rereading messages more than necessary and discussing the same decision over and over. Note physical sensations, too, such as an elevated heart rate or butterflies when your mind jumps to a future scenario.
This feature originally appeared in Red magazine
You Might Also Like
