We are encouraged our whole lives to be thoughtful, to train our minds to be creative problem-solvers, inventive imagineers and compassionate friends and partners. Our minds are wonderful things. They can work to send rockets to space, see an atom, or imagine the suffering and joy of others.
(Courtesy of ChatGPT)
However, sometimes our sophisticated human thinking turns tyrant, assaulting us with barrages and spirals of thoughts; unceasing, anxiety-inducing and relentless. Overthinking is an oft-used phrase for these obsessional vortices. However, unlike classic OCD, they don’t result in a behavioural compulsion, simply in more thinking the further down the rabbit hole we go.
What makes this symptom so hard is that the thinking feels compelling. We believe that by thinking more, scouring the landscape of our minds, we may find resolution. Unfortunately, thinking more perpetuates the cycle and further increases anxiety. Usually, the spates of relentless thought are triggered by something uncertain that we cannot control or a situation where there are limitations (most situations) and we have to make difficult choices or bear some element of discomfort.
Health anxiety is a good example. We experience an uncomfortable and ambiguous bodily symptom. We can’t control it (bodies generally do as they like) and we may not understand it. What is required is for us to tolerate this uncertainty and lack of control and to take meaningful action: choosing to wait to see how it goes, going to the doctor, resting etc. However, for some of us this is incredibly difficult. We can articulate that this scares us. Instead, our thinking takes over, trapping us in no-win dilemmas of should I do this or that, what does this mean, but ifs that gain pace and now become the site of suffering. Note that in all of this, we have been unable to take actual action to deal with the bodily symptoms. We are instead paralysed by a never-ending set of thought scenarios, each failing to deliver a perfect solution.
In extreme cases, this is called Pure O (OCD without the behavioural compulsions). It is understandably characterised by anxiety, overwhelm, insomnia and low mood that accompanies the compulsive thinking. Neuroscience understands this process as limbic system hijack of the prefrontal cortex. The limbic system is broadly speaking the brain centre that controls survival and consciousness. Fight/flight/freeze live here and it is essentially primitive and thoughtless. Our pre-frontal cortex lives behind our brows. It is most developed in primates and human beings and allows for thinking about thinking, reflection, planning, inhibition, delayed gratification and imagining. When our limbic systems get activated beyond a certain point, the fear response can hijack our prefrontal cortex. We think we are thinking – it looks like and sounds like thinking but it’s junk fear-based thinking.
Unfortunately, because we are thought to interrogate our minds for solutions, we buy into this thinking by thinking more. Instead, what is required is to shift focus to using sensory and body-based techniques to calm the limbic system and regulate back from fight/flight/freeze to the window of tolerance. By doing this, we also detach from thoughts and come back to the here and now, the five senses and the body. When the prefrontal cortex is back online with its usual functionality and we have come out of a heightened nervous system state, we can then shift very gently to effective problem solving that takes action in the real world and not only in the theatre of the mind.
Inevitably, this takes practice and skill. It also requires us to accept what is actually happening, however hard and not try and paper over cracks with the obsessive search for a perfect solution. As such, we need to work on accepting imperfection, uncertainty and limitation and the discomfort these bring. Overthinking believes that if it tries hard enough, it can avoid pain, regret, uncertainty and the inevitable limitations of being a human being in the world who sometimes needs help from others. As such, the ultimate ‘solution’ is more to take a meaningful position on being alive.
That means accepting our humanity: our bodies, our minds, our needs and the impact of experience. It also means accepting the humanity of others and the myriad capacities we all have to hurt, heal and help one another.