And How Do I Cope With It?
Everyone has times in their lives when they overthink certain situations. Trying to think through and solve a problem is a good skill to have. However, a problem occurs when we find ourselves thinking about the same situation repeatedly. Rumination (when it relates to psychology) is the act of perseverating on one or many topics. If you have ever found yourself sitting for hours, days, or weeks thinking (without solving the problem) you are probably engaging in rumination. Engaging in rumination can be debilitating. The reason we ruminate is to try and work through something that is often out of our control. Here are some ways to try and cope with rumination:
Set a timer: sometimes it is helpful to set a time limit on how much we are going to try and think through a situation. If we have tried to solve a problem for more than 30 minutes, I often encourage people to take a break. Step away from the situation and come back to it later or talk about it with a trusted person.
Do something to get out of our heads: if we are caught up in thoughts, we often need to engage in an activity that will bring us back into our body. This could include dancing, art, cold shower, swimming, exercise, or something else.
Journal: research on writing has shown that getting our thoughts out of our head, can help us organize and better manage our racing thoughts.
Notice our thoughts and trying to let them pass – this can be a very hard skill and usually requires consistent practice. The idea is that we can notice our thoughts without getting caught up in them. I like to use the metaphor of clouds. Imagine each thought as a passing cloud. Some clouds are big, dark, and scary, while others are fluffy and small. If we can learn to treat our dark clouds like our fluffy clouds, this can help prevent us from having a storm develop. This doesn’t mean that we should always ignore dark thoughts, it’s about noticing when we are ruminating and moving towards a more effective way of working through these thoughts/problems.
These are just some ways of managing patterns of overthinking. Please let me know if you have any other ideas on managing overthinking in the comments below.