How to Stop Overthinking

Do you spend too much time pondering, reflecting, contemplating, deliberating, ruminating, or just plain old overthinking. Here are my 5 favorite ways on how to stop overthinking.

This is for all my overthinker readers, who struggle with thinking about things too much without being able to move forward on certain things.

In my experience, we find ourselves overthinking when we don’t readily know what to do. We think that if we think enough, we’ll solve something that kind of seems unsolvable.

Over and over in our minds, we try to come up with a way to solve, manage, control, or fix something. Sometimes this is even something that has already happened!

This affects your emotions, your mood, and your perspective and creates a lot of tension in your body.

Instead of helping your well-being, this distraction keeps you in a loop of agitation. Not helpful my friend!

We are an overthinking and over talking species! Typically we overthink about things we are worried about in the future and things we are remembering from the past.

When you are in the future or the past, you aren’t actually in a position to do what makes the most sense NOW.

One of the downsides of modern life is that we have the time to think too much and too much to think about.

When we are stuck in our heads with worry or regrets, we don’t have access to our best thinking. When we focus on imaginary scenarios, the worst possible outcome, or even past mistakes, we suffer. 

Now, I am not against thinking but so much of what we do in our minds is just going around in circles about the same old thing. It’s a vicious cycle. 

The Problem with Overthinking

There is a subtle belief if we just think, worry, or ruminate enough, we’ll figure something out or make a change. Instead of helping us with self-awareness or problem-solving, we stay stuck. 

Going around and around in our heads will keep us stuck and not making progress. Usually when I get a new client, she may have been thinking about a problem for years.

While I am a fan of talking and thinking, when it comes to moving on or quieting our busy minds, we have to do something different.

We can’t solve over-thinking with more thinking!

The primary problem with overthinking is that instead of getting us to a solution or motivating us to act, it actually keeps us stuck in an unhelpful cycle.

The cycle is something like this.

• Notice your problem (again) and think about it
• Tell yourself you need to, have to, should do something about it
• Feel frustrated because you don’t do anything about it
• Think some more, this time adding some mean talk to yourself
• Another day goes by and you haven’t done the thing

Yet, because we worry over the problem so much, we believe we are kind of doing something. You are doing something though. You are creating more frustration and disappointment with yourself.

In this post, I’m going to give you five ways to get your brain to ease up and allow you to find solutions, peace, and understanding of yourself.

These are my favorite ways to quiet my own over thinking brain. While you might see things like meditation or other mindfulness practices, I find those difficult to initiate when I am caught up with overthinking about something.

My Favorite Ways to Stop Overthinking

The way to stop overthinking is to get out of your head and into your body. This might sound weird at first.

How in the world can getting into your body help?

We believe that if we just think hard enough, we’ll find a solution, motivation, or a way out of this hell we’ve got going on.

The way out of this is to give your mind some breathing room. Let it off the hook for a bit. This is where you’ll not just feel better but you’ll be able to make some progress.

This is not a list of steps you have to follow in order. You can do one of these or a few. You might come up with your own. But these are my top ways to get me out of my head and into a space where I can evaluate my situation more clearly.

So, take a deep breath and let’s get started replacing those negative thoughts with a more compassionate approach. 

• Write it down
• Get out of your head
• The right kind of exercise
• Declutter or organize something
• Cook or bake something

Write it Down

I use daily journaling to get everything out of my head. Sometimes it feels deep and profound, but often I just write down the most mundane things.

This helps because it’s like having a best friend who will listen to everything I have to say. It feels safe to just get it all out without having to solve anything.

I don’t use my journaling to solve for things but often times, I will get an AHA moment or clarity that I needed.

For me, it’s like good hygiene like taking a shower or brushing my teeth.

Sometimes I use my journal at time if I find myself overthinking about something. By writing it down, I acknowledge that I have the worry and just get all those negative thoughts out of my head so I can sleep or rest.

Get Out of Your Head

This is really what we are going for. Here’s an interesting fact. When we stay in our head we don’t have access to most of our wisdom, only about 5% to 10% according to different sources.

To get out of your head, you simply place the focus on your body and look for the feeling. This helps you get into the present moment where there usually isn’t an actual problem happening. 

Let’s say you are worried about a meeting with your boss later this week. Instead of nonstop thinking about it, drop your focus to your body and find where that worry is.

Instead of thinking, you will be feeling. This is the most powerful tool I know.

When you focus on your body, you notice a place that feels tight, or has some pressure. It will feel uncomfortable.

That uncomfortable feeling is why your head is going around in circles! It doesn’t want to feel that.

But here’s the cool thing. If you just feel it for a couple of minutes, it will just go away…along with the overthinking.

When your body and mind are calmer, that’s when you have more access to better thinking around your situation.

How to Use Exercise to Not Overthink

Here’s how I use exercise when my brain is over-stimulated. I do something for 30 to 60 minutes, that is gentle, flowing, and a little challenging.

Sometimes that is a walk outside. Other times I use workouts that I stream.

For me, when I am doing a gentle flowing workout, it helps me put my focus on my body and get out of my head and be in the present moment. 

I think of my body as energy, and by moving it, I can get that energy moving so I feel more balanced. I like workouts that help me focus on movement, how my body feels, and doing moves intentionally. 

My favorite workouts are always a fusion of barre, yoga, cardio, and Pilates. Some of them I subscribe to and I’ve also found a lot of great ones for free on YouTube.

Declutter or Organize Something

This is one of my favorite tools for calming my mind from overthinking. 

I’ve been a therapist, counselor and/or life coach for 30 years and I’ve often said that a session of decluttering is as helpful as a counseling session. It doesn’t replace therapy or life coaching but it can help as an additional tool.

You can pick any area and it doesn’t have to be a big project. Something as easy as a drawer or counter will work great. If you have time, a closet or part of your closet is a fantastic project.

I like something that will take about 30 to 60 minutes to complete. Here’s how to do it.

Remove everything from the drawer or surface. Throw any trash away. Put things that don’t belong there, where they belong. Clean the surface.

Put everything back in a way that looks nice.

I think of the decluttering project as a literally representation of decluttering your mind. When you create order in your surroundings, you create order in your mind.

Give this a try! 

It’s really powerful.

A couple of months ago, I was going through a lot of grief. I had 10 boxes of photos from back in the days prior to cell phones.

I decided to go through them all and organize them in a way that my grown children could enjoy.

This project took about two weeks of nightly sessions of throwing away negatives and out of focus pictures and consolidating the pictures.

While I was decluttering and organizing my brain had a nice break from grieving and ruminating. After that I moved on to my closets and drawers.

You might not need a whole house declutter but most people have a few places they can dig into.

So, not only do you get a mental break, you also get a really clean organized place that is a pleasure to look at.

Cook or Bake Something

This is a new one for me since I don’t usually eat baked goods. But I have a vintage recipe website and I got on a baking kick recently.

Again, during my period of sadness, I started baking. It provided such relief from my overthinking and negative thoughts. 

The whole thing from measuring, mixing, baking, and cleaning up gave me something that required my mind and some focus but didn’t feel overly hard.

I gave my finished baked goods to my grown kids and grandkids to enjoy and I put some into my freezer to serve when I have people over.

The Benefits of Putting the Pause on Over Thinking

It might seem counterintuitive to get out of your brain when you are feeling like you need to fix something. That’s really all overthinking is, is trying to make sense of something, fix it, control it, or manage it.

However, your body, heart, and spirit hold so much of your intelligence and the only way to access this vast well of wisdom is to get out of your spinning thoughts.

Doing the above mindfulness practices gives your brain just enough to do to make it happy, calm, and peaceful.

Those feelings are KEY!

When you can get yourself feeling calm and peaceful, you are now back in the driver’s seat of your life.

When you are spinning or overthinking, you don’t feel calm or peaceful. It’s usually more like agitated, frustrated, disappointed, or angry.

Trust me on this. No one makes their best decisions when they are in the overthinking state!

When you do activities with the intention of creating peace and calm, then you are able to move through and get to a place where you can move forward.

You don’t need a total solution at that point, but you do need to move forward. And moving forward feels great!