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

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 A’s 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 choice but to accept it. Lastly, if we can’t do much about the situation at all, we must adapt to it and learn how to cope with our stressor and reduce its damaging potential to a minimum. Another popular technique is journaling. When we overthink, we have tons of different thoughts swirling in our mind, which can feel overwhelming. However, when we write these down systematically, we can analyze them and evaluate whether these thoughts are merited at all. To build the habit, you can carry a pocket journal with you and write whenever you feel it’s necessary. 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...