Over Thinking

The last few Neuroscience in A Nutshell’s have focused on failure.

I have recently shared my personal experience of what we can learn about ourselves when we learn something new where we try—and fail—at something completely new.

I decided to do my own version of Strictly year – Finally accepted an Executive Coach on the radio now and again is not going to get me a free pass to getting fit and learning a new skill in time for Christmas on the TV version! So, with zero dance experience, there I was, performing in front of 100 people at my mum’s retirement home as a surprise Christmas gift for her.

I wasn’t Ann Widdecombe bad, but I wasn’t setting the dance-floor alight either!

Back to failure – and still being a personal work in progress…the whole experience was a sobering reminder for me about how easily I fall into catastrophising and overthinking.

Honestly, in my head, everything that could go wrong already had.

Here’s the problem with those thought patterns – our body can’t tell the difference between real stress and imagined stress.

This means your brain is busy creating scenarios that haven’t even happened, but your body reacts like they are real – releasing stress hormones, burning mental energy, and leaving you feeling knackered. Imagining these is like having an unchecked, leaky tap in your brain, dripping away all your mental energy.

I have a mantra I tried to repeat when I notice this happening. It can often be found on a post-it on my desk when I’m feeling stretched by work (or in this case dancing!):

Thoughts aren’t facts.

Those catastrophic consequences that your brain invents (for me at about 3.30am…) are just your brain trying to protect you – to think ahead and plan. In itself, our brains creating these worse case scenarios is not a bad thing – it’s just that too many of them – without a best case for balance – can be. Our brain fuel is limited. So too much fuel invested in worst case, can mean that we literally don’t have the energy to hope for the best.

You don’t have to let it your over-thought rumination’s run the show. A wise psychologist once told me this:

“If you’re going to spend time imagining absolutely everything that could go wrong Dulcie, at least give your brain the courtesy of at imagining, just for a moment, what could go brilliantly.”

At the time that brutal honesty really stopped me in my tracks. And over time I realised it works!

Now when I notice I am over-thinking, I will deliberately think the best. On purpose.

Thinking about our thinking leads to these sorts of breakthroughs and in doing so on over-thinking, I have learnt something else curious and interesting about my thought patterns – when I think the best, I don’t believe myself! I had become reasonably well practised at the deliberate positive daydream – for that psychological ‘balance, but then my brain would try to undo all it’s good work with a “Well that’s ridiculous, that could never happen…”

I noticed I only caught myself naming things ‘ridiculous’ with the good stuff. Not the catastrophes – they were allowed to be imagined unchecked!

This meant some days when I caught myself at it, my brain honestly had led me down a rabbit hole where the bad stuff was a ‘genuine serious’ possibility at least somewhere down the line, but the good stuff was a ‘silly’ daydream?!

We were talking about negativity bias in one of my coach training sessions recently – here’s one in action!

Hopefully you can see in this story that it’s really limiting when we come to see our negative over-thinking as a ‘voice of reason’ and our positive imaginings as ‘daft’ or unrealistic. Laughing at how unbalanced those labels are and calling out my ‘Lies’ really does help me push through.

So here are five quick ways to stop overthinking – that I know work, because I have road tested them myself!

1.   Label your thoughts. Don’t say, “I’m anxious.” Say, “I’m having an anxious thought.” It shifts you from emotional to logical thinking. You are an observer with a more objective perspective.

2.   Breathe—properly. Try Box Breathing: In for four. Hold for four. Out for four. Hold for four. It calms your nervous system and reduces stress hormones in minutes.

3.   Don’t judge—be curious. Instead of fighting your thoughts let them come and notice them. We aren’t good at telling ourselves not to think about things – try not to think about a double decker blue bus?! When you notice, ask yourself: What’s my brain trying to protect me from? That curiosity can take you out of fight-or-flight (or procrastinate) mode.

4.   Flip it. Balance out “What if this goes wrong?” with “What if it all goes brilliantly?” Your brain deserves balance – and a bit of optimism can be a self-fulfilling prophecy too.

5.   Reframe your mindset. Replace catastrophic thoughts with a calming mantra or phrase like, “I’ve got this” or “I’m calm and in control.” It can feel odd at first, but trust me, there’s good science behind it.  And hey, it might well look weird if you are doing it on a train, but it works regardless!

Overthinking is just your brain doing its best to keep you safe. But when you notice it, name it, breathe, and reframe, you stop leaking brain fuel. And start moving forward.