Stop Overthinking: 23 Techniques to Relieve Stress, Stop Negative Spirals, Declutter Your Mind, and Focus on the Present (The Path to Calm Book 1)

by Nick Trenton

Overthinking is excessively harmful mental activity, whether that activity is

analyzing, judging, monitoring, evaluating, controlling, or worrying—or all of them,

You’ll know that overthinking is a problem for you if: You are often conscious of your own thoughts moment to moment You engage in meta-thought, i.e. you think about your thoughts You try hard to control or steer your thoughts You are distressed by or dislike spontaneous thoughts and often feel that some thoughts are unwelcome Thinking for you often feels like a struggle between competing impulses You frequently question, doubt, analyze or judge your thoughts In crises, you often turn to yourself and your thoughts as a source of the problem

You are focused on understanding your thoughts and digging into the inner workings of your mind You have trouble making decisions and often doubt the choices you do make There are many things you’re worried and concerned about You recognize yourself engaging in negative thoughts patterns, over and over Sometimes, you feel like you can’t help returning to a thought numerous times, even when it’s in the past and nothing can be done anymore about it

the causes of overthinking are seldom the focus of overthinking.

So then, where does anxiety come from? Is it you? Research into the causes of anxiety is ongoing. Competing theories suggest that it’s a matter of

personality, or a question of a biological predisposition—something you inherited from your equally anxious parents.

A 2010 paper published by Killingsworth and Gilbert titled “A wandering mind is an unhappy mind” found that the brain is ultimately spending as much time stewing over what is not happening as it is over what is happening. What’s more, doing so generally leads to unhappiness.

People are anxious about money, about work, about families and relationships, about growing older, or about stressful life events. But again, are these things causes of anxiety and overthinking, or are they the result? After all, many people experience enormous financial or family pressure and don’t feel anxious or overthink, and others feel anxious when, from the outside, there doesn’t appear to be anything causing the emotion.

Many of us have become habitual overthinkers because it gives us the illusion that we’re doing something about the problem we’re overthinking about.

overthinker gets trapped in the cycle of analyzing, rejecting, and reconsidering different possibilities.

Stress and anxiety are not the same thing. Psychologist Dr. Sarah Edelman explains that stress is something in the environment, an external pressure on us, whereas anxiety is our internal experience of this pressure.

If you heap chronic stress onto someone who already has a biological or psychological predisposition to overthinking, it’s a recipe for burnout and overwhelm.

Clutter, be it at home or work, is generally a significant cause of anxiety because it subconsciously acts as a reflection of yourself.

Things like the quality of lighting, the smells and noises you’re exposed to, the colors of the walls, and the people occupying these spaces with you can all cause or reduce anxiety and stress levels depending on how they’re managed. You might be surprised at how much of an impact good lighting, pleasant aromas, and walls with calming colors have on your anxiety levels.

Another cause of anxiety is our environment. There are two aspects to this. First, we need to consider our immediate environments where we spend the most time, like our home and office. The way these spaces have been designed can have a huge

impact on our anxiety levels. If they’re cluttered, dimly lit and noisy, it’s going to make us more anxious. The second aspect is the broader experience we have in our socio-cultural setting through our interactions with the world. Something like experiencing racism or sexism might make us stressed and result in heightened anxiety. There are many negative consequences to overthinking. These include physical, mental, and even social harms that can become long-term issues. Some examples are racing heart, dizziness, feelings of fatigue, irritability, nervousness, headaches, muscle tension, etc.

All you need to remember is four techniques: avoid, alter, accept and adapt.

The first thing you can do is avoid. Sounds suspiciously simple, but there’s a lot of aggravation in life you can simply walk away from. We can’t control everything in life, but we can arrange our circumstances so that we don’t have to be in stressful surroundings, or with stressful people. If we’re honest, we might see that a lot of the stress in our lives is voluntary—and we don’t have to agree to it! Think about what is stressing you in your environment and how you can take control to moderate or remove it entirely. Consider someone who hates how busy the grocery stores are on Saturday morning. Knowing that this stresses them out, they can rearrange their schedule so they do their weekly shopping at the quietest time, say, on a Tuesday evening. There’s no need to manage the stress of a busy supermarket if you just avoid it entirely.

Communicate your needs and feelings directly, rather than suffering in silence. If you never clearly tell your friend that his stupid jokes really hurt you, you may sit quietly and bear the brunt of it forever, when it would have been easy to tell him how you feel and ask him to stop.

If your answer is “not much,” then you might need to go one step further and accept it. How do you accept a situation you dislike? Firstly, if you dislike it, then you dislike it. Acceptance doesn’t mean pretending you don’t feel how you feel; it’s an acknowledgment that it’s OK to feel that way. Validate your own emotions and own them. For example, your boyfriend has just broken up with you via text, and there’s not much you can do about his decision. But you can work on accepting the situation by calling up a friend to share your feelings. If the situation is one in which you’ve been wronged, acceptance may take the form of trying to find a way to forgive.

Remember that forgiveness is something you do for yourself, and not the other person. When you forgive, you are releasing yourself from the stress and energy of resenting and blaming the other person.

Acceptance doesn’t mean we agree with what happened or that we like it and shouldn’t try to change it. It only means we gracefully come to terms with what we can’t realistically change, so we can focus on what we can.

Adapting to stress means we change ourselves to better cope with life.

When we adapt to stress, we find ways to make ourselves stronger. We build a worldview for ourselves that empowers us. For example, someone might get into the habit of making a “gratitude list” every day of all the wonderful things they are actually blessed with in life.

So, those are the four As of stress management. When you find yourself feeling anxious, pause and run through each of them in sequence. No matter how stressful the situation, there is a way for you to engage with it mindfully and proactively. You are not helpless in the face of stress—you have tools at your disposal! To use these tools, all it takes is a little awareness.

was positively correlated with better emotional self-regulation, improved wellbeing and fewer depression and anxiety symptoms one month after starting an online journaling program. To do this kind of journaling, simply write about a traumatic experience for no more than 15 to 20 minutes, for around 3 to 5 days. As you write, gradually shift your focus onto positive affect, i.e. good emotions. You can use prompts like: What has someone done to help you? What are you grateful for? What are your ultimate values and principles? So, you could use PAJ to unpack a horrible argument you’ve recently had with someone. You can sit down and first “vent” a little to put words to what you’re feeling, for example, “I can’t believe she’d say that, and I’m so hurt that she didn’t consider how her words would affect me…” As you write, however, you could gradually start o reframe the stressful encounter in more positive terms. “I’m glad I was able to step away and cool off before I said something I regret. That’s something to be proud of. And I suppose one good thing that has come from this is that we are finally having this difficult conversation we should have had years ago.”

A stress diary is simply a written record of your level of stress and the accompanying information, which you can analyze later and use to take steps to manage stress. We all need some stress in life, so this diary can help us identify our optimal range. The idea is simple: for each entry, record the time and date, and how you’re feeling right now. A common way to do this is on a rating scale (for example, 1 for not stressed at all and 10 for super stressed), but you can also use feeling words, or note physical symptoms (like sweaty palms). Also note how effective and productive you’re feeling, using a scale as well. Then, note any stressful events that have recently happened as well as any ideas for what you feel could be the causes of your current state.

Make an entry every time you feel your mood shifting, or when you’re noticeably stressed. Keep a stress diary for a few days or a week, then sit down to analyze it and find any patterns: What are the most frequent causes of stress, i.e. what usually comes before a sudden rise in stress or drop in mood? How do these events typically affect your productivity? How do you normally respond to these events, emotionally and behaviorally, and is your approach working? Can you identify a level of stress that was comfortable and beneficial for your productivity? When you analyze your stress diary like this, you are working with real data that can help you make insightful changes. You may even be surprised at some findings—only in writing things down in the moment do you see clear patterns emerge. As you’re analyzing, avoid overanalyzing! Remember that the goal of the stress journal is not to catch yourself out or feel bad about what you discover. In other words, there should be no judgment. Instead take a compassionate, curious approach and stay open-minded. Overthinkers are typically intelligent,

The format described above isn’t the only way that writing things down can help. You can keep a more traditional journal and explore your feelings more generally, whether occasionally or every day. Writing things down can relieve stress on its own, but it can also help you gather your thoughts, hash out problems,

If you’re battling low mood and find your anxiety is general and seems to affect everything, you might find a gratitude journal helpful. Simply list five things daily that you are thankful for, even if it’s nothing more exciting than your morning cup of coffee or the fact that you have a nice new pair of socks. This can subtly shift your focus onto your resources and possibilities, and reframe your experience.

If you are processing some traumatic life event or are going through a very difficult time, you might like to journal simply as an emotional release. “Dump” all your feelings onto paper, and work through them. Once down on paper, you might start naturally gaining some self-knowledge, or see some hints for ways forward.

Journals and diaries are not for everyone, though. Skip them if they only seem to make your perfectionism worse, or if you find yourself agonizing over the right technique. The journal is

just a tool to get closer to your emotions—if you find yourself focusing more on the journal than your emotions, you might need to try a different technique. Try to finish every journaling session with something positive and grounding—recite a mantra, visualize something positive, or consider some possibilities and solutions going forward. If you don’t make sure to return to a positive headspace, journaling may start to feel like it only encourages more unhappiness and overthinking.

Stress journals and the 4 As technique can be used to great effect when paired together, especially if done regularly. But sometimes, you need a technique that will bring immediate relief to a stressful situation. While the previous 2 techniques are a great way of cultivating and using awareness, they are not so useful if your problem is gaining awareness in the first place. If you’ve ever been trapped in an “anxiety spiral”, you’ll know that pulling yourself out of it can be nearly impossible. The following technique is often used by those who experience panic attacks; it’s a way to halt the anxiety spiral before it runs away with you. You don’t have to have a panic disorder to benefit, though. Overthinking runs on all the same machinery as more complex fears and phobias do, and it can be reigned in in the same way.

If we can pull our conscious awareness back into the present, we can halt some of this overthinking. And we can do this by checking in with the five senses. To put it another way, the brain can carry you all over the place, but the body—and its senses—is only ever one place: the present.

The next time you feel anxiety and panic spiraling out of control, try this: stop, take a breath and look around you. First, find five things in your environment that you can see. You might rest your eyes on the lamp in the corner, your own hands, a painting on the wall. Take a moment to really look at all these things; their textures, colors, shapes. Take your time to run your eyes over every inch and take it all in. Next, try to find four things in your environment that you can feel or touch. Feel the weight of your body against the chair, or the texture of the jacket you’re wearing, or reach out to feel how cool and smooth the glass of the car window feels against your fingers.

Next, find three things that you can hear. Your own breath. The distant sound of traffic or birds. Next, find two things you can smell. This might be tricky at first, but notice that everything has a smell, if you pay attention. Can you smell the soap on your skin, or the faint earthy smell of the paper on your desk? Finally, find one thing that you can taste. Maybe the lingering flavor of coffee on your tongue. Even if you can’t find anything, just dwell for a moment on what your taste buds are sensing. Are they really “off” or does your mouth almost have a taste of its own, when you stop to become aware of it? Stay there for a moment and explore that sensation. The point of this exercise is, on the surface, distraction. While your senses are active, your brain is engaged in something other than endless rumination, and your overthinking is halted. You put a spanner in the works and stop runaway thoughts. Practice this technique often enough and you may notice that it instantly calms you and slows you down.

remember in the moment, try this: literal grounding. Researcher Gaétan Chevalier found that “earthing” or grounding the human body on the actual earth had fascinating effects on mood. Chevalier asked participants of the study to put their feet or bodies in contact with the earth for one hour. He then tested them and found a statistically significant boost in the self-reported moods and levels of wellbeing in those who were in contact with the earth versus those who spent the hour without this contact. Though grounding in this way is unlikely to be enough to combat a more serious anxiety disorder, it’s certainly an encouraging finding. If you can, try the 5-4-3-2-1 technique outdoors, where your bare feet are in contact with the soil.

You are not your problems. You are not your failures. If you can put distance between yourself and your life challenges, you gain perspective, and untangle your sense of identity and self-worth from the temporary moment you’re experiencing. Just like a cloud is not the sky, our problems are not who we are—they will pass, and we do have control over how we respond to them.

If things are feeling disastrous, stop and force yourself to focus on the single thing that is most important right now. If you’re catastrophizing about things that may happen tomorrow or next year or whenever, set those aside and look at what matters today only, or perhaps only what matters in this very moment. Ask yourself, what single next step can you take? Don’t worry about the next twenty steps, just take the next step you need to, and then you can go from there.

you find yourself returning to distressing memories from the past, take a moment to deliberately lay out your history, perhaps even writing it down or laying it out on a chart. Break down events into episodes, and look for themes, patterns and a thread that links them all together. See how the present moment ties into the past, then ask yourself what you can do to take charge of your own narrative. For example, if you’re cringing over mistakes you made in the past, you might construct a story where you weren’t just an idiot who did something wrong, but you were young and learning, and in your development, you’re continually getting better. You can

see that your embarrassment now is proof of you being a more mature person. You can see the whole picture—one of growth and progress. Doesn’t that feel better than simply churning over a humiliating comment you made once in fifth grade? Anxiety and overthinking have a way of “fracturing” our attention and creating chaos and confusion. When we deconstruct all of these thoughts, however, we see that many of them are just noise, and we don’t necessarily have to entertain them. Maybe you’re primarily concerned about your health, and off that single worry branches a million other thoughts of losing your job, of dying, expensive medical bills, etc. Deconstructing these means asking, “What is this thought really about?” and distinguishing thoughts that derail and distract from those where you can actually make meaningful changes. Takeaways Now that we’ve identified what overthinking is, we need to know how to combat it. There are many things you can do to de-stress and calm an anxious, overthinking mind that are simple, yet effective. The first thing you need to remember is a mantra called the 4 As of stress management. These are avoid, alter, accept, and adapt. Avoiding things entails simply walking away from things you can’t control. Some things are simply not worth the effort and are best removed from our environments altogether. However, if we can’t avoid it, we must learn how to alter our environment to remove the stressor. If we can’t alter our environment, we have no choic...

A third technique we have is called the 5-4-3-2-1 technique. This is highly effective at stemming panic attacks, and it does so by involving all five of our senses. So, whenever you feel panic overcoming you, look for five things around you that you can see, four things you can touch, three that you can smell, two that you can hear, and one that you can taste. Engaging your senses distracts your brain from the overthinking. Chapter 3.

Nevertheless, you can’t plan for everything in life, and there’s no way around the fact that unexpected events can and do happen. Sometimes you can get caught in the grip of anxious overthinking despite the best-laid plans.

Anxious and worried thoughts are kind of sticky. They have an intrusive quality. Once a threatening or negative thought pops into your head, it seems hard to shift or ignore. You can quickly get distracted since your brain thinks, “Oh, here’s what I really should be paying attention to!” and just like that, your attention and focus is pulled away from the present moment.

Worry postponement is exactly what it sounds like—a deliberate choice to put off worrying for another time. This is different from saying you won’t worry. Because you will. This is more about taking control and managing your worry, proactively deciding how much of an impact you want it to have on your life. In the moment, worry can seem so urgent and all-important. It can seem non-negotiable that you turn every fiber of your being toward those thoughts and feelings. But actually, you have a choice.

Some studies have found that it is in fact our negative perception of our own worry, and not the worry itself, that leads to anxiety.

One method is to limit the time period when you worry. For example, you get into bed at night and prepare to sleep, but your brain instantly switches into worry mode and brings up

thousand things it wants to stew over. You tell yourself, “That’s fine. I’m allowed to worry about that, and I will. But I won’t do it now. I’ll schedule a specific time to worry about this later. Let’s say, tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. Before that period, I won’t spend a single second thinking about any of this.” And then you do that. If your mind wanders over to those ultra-important, life-or-death thoughts, you can confidently tell yourself that it’s fine, you’ll think about it, just not now. Chances are, the worries are not all that time sensitive and can wait. In fact, you’ll be fresher in the morning and can bring your full brain to the task, if you even still want to. Tell yourself you have already done everything you need to do, the worrying is ticked off the list, and there is nothing outstanding for you to do right now. Just sleep.