Have you ever had those thoughts that make you spiral into an out of control overthinking machine? I have a horrible problem of overthinking everything. Every little aspect of my life I have pawned over in my mind. I overthink every action I make, will make, and the ones I don’t make. There have been plenty of times where I am physically doing something else but I am mentally not there. I can be attending lecture or look like I am watching a movie when I am actually busy thinking away. The normal routine is that once I have thought things over about myself a couple times, I will then move on to overthink made up scenarios in my head. I have put myself in other people’s shoes and overthought from their perspective. I have even gone so far as to get upset at people for situations made up entirely in my mind. Then I go back and chastise myself for overthinking and proceed to overthink about why I overthink. It is a vicious cycle of insanity.
The thing is I know I am not the only one that does this. Some of my closest friends and I have become friends out of this tendency we share. If you are guilty of doing it as well, you are not alone. Not everyone takes it to the wacko point that they can get upset over situations only in their mind, but I know we all can get stuck in our heads over something. There is one method that I have found to combat this tendency and that is writing.
I am not talking about creating poems or a novel here but just writing out the thoughts you already have. The weird thing is, once I have written my thought down it is gone. Without time to linger in my mind I can forget all about thoughts that once would have plagued me for a ridiculous amount of time.
What I am talking about does not have to be putting pen to paper, just anything that gets your thoughts put down somewhere outside of your mind. It does not have to be eloquent writing in a nice journal, chicken scratches on a napkin still serves the same purpose. Sometimes I prefer typing when my mind is on rapid fire and I need the quick pace of typing to keep up.
I believe everyone can benefit from this kind of writing, if you only free yourself up to it. When I initially had the idea to write my thoughts down the first thing I did was overthink the process of how to begin writing, who could have seen that coming. Once I started writing I never hit the same hesitation again. Now I can put my thoughts down with the natural flow they come to me and I can free myself from the torment of overthinking later. I hope that anyone else facing a similar problem will give it a try, I promise it is worth it.
