I was scrolling through Twitter the other day and I came across a tweet that said “My brain has too many tabs open”. I have never found something so relatable and I instantly retweeted it. All my life, I have been an over thinker. It is both a blessing and a curse. Being an over thinker has been a blessing, in the sense that it has stopped me from making many stupid decisions, but a curse, in the sense that sometimes I cannot shut my brain off no matter how badly I want to.
If you are an over thinker like myself, you know the feeling of making a risky decision and spending hours worrying whether or not you did the right thing. You know the feeling of getting a bad test grade and thinking of everything you could have done differently to prevent it. “If I started studying earlier I would have done better…If I was on my phone less I would have done better…If I worked less I would have done better…If I didn’t hang out with my friends I would have done better…” The list of excuses and reasons goes on and on until you finally accept the fact that you got a bad grade and you will have to do better next time.
Over thinking can also be the result of a busy schedule. When you are as busy as I am, your mind is always going a mile a minute. You are constantly thinking about what you have to do today, tomorrow, next week, and next month. You are just thinking and over thinking nonstop. Even when you do finally have some down time, meaning when it is finally time to go to sleep, sometimes your brain still won’t shut off. You begin planning out your day for tomorrow or start worrying about things you shouldn’t. You might start thinking about an argument you got into with a friend or boyfriend and wondering if you had just done this or that differently, maybe the result would have been different.
When you are an over thinker, the slightest things can cause you to freak out and make up random scenarios in your head that you know are highly unlikely. When your friend doesn’t answer your text message, you will sit there wondering if she is mad at you and then think back to every conversation you’ve had with her wondering what might have upset her. In all reality, her phone is probably dead or she is at work.
When you start getting sick, you are immediately googling your symptoms trying to figure out what’s wrong. By the end of it, you have convinced yourself you are dying or need surgery. As a child, when I would complain about a pain in my side, my mother would always tell me my appendix was on the other side because she knew I had convinced myself I had appendicitis. To this day, I do not know which side of my body the appendix is on.
Long story short, overthinking is something many people experience. In some ways it is helpful and other ways it is not. Over time, you learn to cope with it and learn that you cannot do everything just right all the time. People make mistakes. Nobody is perfect. Learn to close some of those tabs and enjoy life. It's a beautiful thing.
