Overthinking minds are not ill minds neither overthinking mindset is a mental illness. However, this condition might be associated with conditions such as anxiety, depression, substance use disorders, eating disorders. Overthinking minds usually foster rumination and negative imaginations that can be common in people who have troubled past, chronic pain and chronic illness as well, hence take the form of negative thoughts about that pain and healing from it. Overthinking is caused due to several reasons such as trauma, fear, intolerance to uncertainty, or perfectionism and it can also be a symptom of already existing mental health conditions such as generalized anxiety disorder, underlying mental conditions such as ADHD, bipolar disorder, OCD, social anxiety, or depression. Overthinking mindset is not that worse, unable to be treated or changed. Overthinking minds just need right drive to the right direction with proper perspective and positive energy. There are ways an overthinker can stop himself/herself to change the mindset to focus more on positive thoughts and brighter perspective. The first thing that really settles down the overwhelming urge to overthink and the emotional overload post overthinking is deep breathing. And there are certainly other ways to change your overthinking mindset. Read on:
1. Find yourself a goal
Usually, people who overthink are either highly depressed or already have a mental health condition which makes them focus hard on negative things along with their emotional overload. And that happens because they are so obsessed with pain and negative thoughts that they don’t get enough positive energy to drive themselves towards something good and adventurous or worthy fighting for. Hence, finding a goal can help you shift your focus towards something more interesting, that is worth your time that can help you stay busy and achieve something better for yourself away from all your gloomy thoughts.
2. Meditate regularly
Overthinking minds are clearly unstable and highly imaginative which makes them think every single word they get as a trigger. Unstable thoughts and emotions lead to overthinking thus, meditation can help significantly to make you stay focused, positive, and oriented. The more you meditate, the more positive you feel about yourself and your life.
3. Look how you’re responding
It is very important for you to know that how triggers work on you and how exactly you respond or say react. If you being hopelessly impulsive, emotionally unstable and things go under your skin in the speed of light, things are not well. You need to work on your patience, thoughts, and emotional health. You need to confront the triggers and let them run their course and you need to understand how to make yourself trigger proof to stay calm even when you’re not which is one of the best ways to change your overthinking mindset.
4. Distract yourself in a good way
Things that give you positive vibes, positive boost, and adventurous feelings that boosts your happy hormones, you need to repeat them more often. You must find healthy distractions rather than culturing negative thoughts that leads to harmful overthinking bouts. Positive distractions such as music, writing, new job, learning new languages, getting sociable in real, change of a place, changing your country or something that helps you to stay happy yet distracted from the negative thoughts and emotions.
5. Take deep breaths
Deep breathing can actually help you a lot when you’re dealing with depression, anxiety, or stress. And all these together along with negative overwhelming emotions give rise to overthinking. And taking deep breaths actually helps you to calm down and feel emotionally stable.
6. Always look at the bigger picture
Overthinking usually involves negative imagination which involves scenarios that never ever have happened, but people when overthink create situations like this in their mind and suffer with it emotionally. Instead of punishing yourself by overthinking that has no certainty or positivity, you can try looking at the bigger and brighter picture, that means you need to focus on good things around you amongst the bad ones. No matter how much things are going wrong, find a single positive aspect of everything to hold on to it and culture that energy to make yourself mentally strong, another way to change your overthinking mindset.
7. Recognize your automatic negative thoughts
Automatic negative thoughts or say ANTs means knee-jerk negative thoughts that usually involve fear or anger, that you sometimes get in reaction to a situation. And you can absolutely identify and work through your ANTs by keeping a track record of your thoughts, triggers and actively working to change them by using a notebook to track the situation that gives you anxiety making you dig into the details, evaluate why the situation ever caused and all such negative thoughts.
8. Live the present
Reminiscing is the most crucial factor that supports your overthinking mind and pattern. And clearly, reminiscing involves both good and bad memories of your past and the majority wins. The worse memories one has got the more dark and negative thoughts to ruminate. And this drags one to the past and start the vicious cycle of overthinking. Hence, instead of living in the past and fostering all the negative emotions, it’s better to live in the present and focus on good things that one has got in their present.
9. Try not to control everything
An overthinking mind can go way deep when it thinks negative. And that significantly happens when you respond to each of your triggers and try to control every aspect of your life and the things or people surrounding you. The best thing to help your mind relax and go easy is trying not to control everything. If few things happen the way different than yours, let them happen and accept the way they are.
10. Help people more often
To shift your overthinking mind’s dark shadow towards the light of positivity, you need to create a healthy environment to feel happy and good. And that you can strongly shift when you actually do something noble that boosts your self-esteem and self-confidence such as helping others or being grateful to others, which is another best way to change your overthinking mindset.