For two years, I thought my overthinking was just how my brain worked. I told myself I was being thorough, careful, responsible, but in reality I would spend three hours replaying a five minute conversation, two days deciding which email to send, or an entire night trying to predict every possible misstep at a work meeting. I was exhausted, and nothing came of it.
Knowing I was overthinking was never the issue—I knew that. The trouble came when I tried to stop: I would start thinking about stopping, and that loop had no way out. What eventually helped was not some grand realization but three specific actions I took at different moments. Here is what I did, what happened, and what you could try.
First: I stopped trying to solve whatever I was thinking about.
Previously, when I caught myself overthinking, I would push harder to “figure it out,” believing that finding the right answer would end the loop. It never did, because there was no right answer: the email could never be perfectly worded, and the future could never be perfectly predicted.
One night I lay in bed replaying something clumsy I had said at dinner, I had been replaying it for an hour. I sat up and said aloud, “I am not going to solve this, because there is nothing to solve.” Then I got up and drank a glass of water. The thought returned five minutes later, but I said again: “nothing to solve.” The third time it returned, I said “I already answered that.” That night I fell asleep faster than I had in weeks.
What I did not expect came the next night. The same thing happened, but saying “nothing to solve” did nothing; the thought kept returning, and I was frustrated. The night after that, though, it worked again. That was when I saw it is not a switch but a muscle: some days it works, some days not, but over time the working days become more frequent.
You might try this. Next time you catch yourself replaying the same question for more than a few minutes, say aloud, “there is nothing to solve here,” then do one small physical thing—stand up, drink water. When the thought returns, say “I already answered that.” Do not argue with the thought; just repeat that sentence. And do not be surprised if it fails the first time, that is fine.
Second: I started writing down my worries in a specific format, not just dumping them.
I had tried journaling before, filling pages with sentences like “I feel anxious about the meeting, what if they ask something I don’t know, what if I look stupid, I should have prepared more.” That did not help; it merely transferred the loop to paper.
What helped was a different structure. I wrote only two things: first, one sentence stating the worry; second, one sentence naming an action I could take, no matter how small. For example. Worry: “I am worried about that email I sent. Maybe it sounded rude.” Action: “I will not check my email again until tomorrow morning.” That was it—no analysis, no reassurance seeking, no rewriting.
I did this every time I felt the loop begin. The rule was that once I wrote the action sentence, I closed the notebook and did not open it again for at least an hour. The first few times, my hand wanted to keep writing; I wanted to explain more. I even reopened the notebook after ten minutes and added three more sentences. That did not help, so I learned to physically put the notebook in another room. After about a week, my brain began to understand that the worry had a container and no longer needed to spin endlessly.
You do not need a special notebook, I used a cheap spiral one from a drugstore. A sticky note works too.
You might try this. Take a piece of paper or a phone note, write one sentence about what you are worried about, then write one sentence about one small action you can take(even if it is just “wait until tomorrow” or “do nothing for ten minutes”). Then close the note or put the paper away. Do not add more. If you want to open it again, wait at least an hour. That is the whole practice.
Third: I stopped asking “why” and started asking “what.”
The “why” question was my favorite: Why did I say that? Why am I so anxious? Why does this always happen to me? Each “why” opened a new door to more thinking, and the answer never satisfied, it only led to another “why.”
I learned to replace it with “what.” What do I feel right now? Can I find one small thing to do in the next five minutes? What is actually happening in this moment, not in my head?
One afternoon I was spiraling over a conversation with my boss. I had been asking “why did she say it like that?” for an hour. I stopped and asked, “What do I feel?” The answer was that my chest was tight and my face was warm. Then I asked, “what is one small thing I can do?” The answer: walk to the window and look outside for thirty seconds. I did that. The spiral did not disappear, but it softened. That small shift from “why” to “what” redirected my thinking.
I still fall back into “why” sometimes, especially when tired, but I notice it faster now.
You might try this. When you notice yourself asking “why did this happen” or “why am I like this,” change the question to “what.”What am I feeling in my body right now? Can I take one tiny action? What is actually true in this moment? Answer each in one short sentence—no essays.
What came after these three things
I still overthink sometimes; that has not gone away. Only last week I spent forty minutes worrying about a text I sent to a friend, I thought I had sounded cold. The old loop returned. I tried the “nothing to solve” move; it helped a little but not fully, and I remained anxious for another twenty minutes. Then I wrote down the worry and an action (“I will not check my phone for an hour”). That worked better, so I used two of the three methods.
The difference now is that the loop does not last as long. Previously, a worry could consume an entire evening; now it might last ten or fifteen minutes. Sometimes I catch it in two minutes. The biggest change was not in my thinking but in my relationship to it. I stopped believing that every thought needed resolution; some thoughts are merely noise. I learned to tell the difference, even if imperfectly.
What to try starting today
You do not need to do all three. Pick the one most relevant: if you tend to treat every worry as a problem requiring a perfect answer, try the “nothing to solve” move; if you dump worries onto paper without structure, try the two sentence journaling; if you keep asking “why,” try switching to “what.”
Do it once today, just once. See if the loop becomes any shorter. If it does not work the first time, try again tomorrow, it is not a switch, but a muscle.
One last sentence
You are not broken because you overthink; you simply learned a way of thinking that once served you elsewhere. Now you can learn a different way, one small move at a time.
