10 Reasons Why You Overthink

 

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Overthinking can be taken as a by-product of anxiety or depression. It mostly materializes when you are the most vulnerable. However, it can become a part of your lifestyle if you are not careful enough.

People habitual of overthinking tend to obsess about how they could have done certain things differently. They keep second-guessing every decision that they have taken. To make it worse, they keep imagining all the worst-case scenarios in life. This could be exhausting, both physically and mentally.

Reasons Why You Overthink

There could be several reasons why you might be overthinking. It is healthy to dwell on something but only for a short period and only when it is done to find the solution.

The reasons for your overthinking could be:

1. You are dealing with your insecurities. When you have self-doubt and low self-esteem, you are bound to think the worse of everything. You tend to compare yourself to others and think that you are in some way lesser than them. This leads to a downward spiral. 
2. You have a tough life decision to make. Life-altering decisions can make anybody anxious. Comparing the pros and cons and the different outcomes of the decision you take can be exhausting. When you find yourself in that situation, you start overthinking and overanalyzing. This makes it difficult to make a decision. Sometimes, this delay can make it even more difficult to make a decision and, ultimately, you might not decide at all.
3. You are anxious or depressed. When you have something important such as a stage performance, a presentation, an important meeting, many scenarios might start running in your head. “What if they don’t like my presentation?” “What if I completely mess up the performance?” “Will they like my proposal? What if they don’t like it?” The situation gets worse if you have depression. Then everything appears ten times worse than it actually is. This makes it even harder for you to take action at all.
4. Insomnia — When you are not able to sleep at night, you start overthinking. Sometimes it is something random, like something you did five years ago. But mostly, it is something that is already affecting your life. When you are awake, your brain brings up things that you didn't even know existed in your head. So you end up overthinking. This, in turn, keeps you up, and the vicious cycle goes on.
5. You are a perfectionist. The life of a perfectionist is a tough one. You generally want control over everything. You want everything to happen how you want it to, and you almost always want it to be perfect in every sense. But most often than not, it doesn’t happen that way. So, you beat yourself up for making mistakes, sometimes even for other people’s mistakes. You also tend to worry about other people’s judgments about you and your work.
6. Fear of conflict — Since we don’t enjoy conflict, we often try to avoid it. This persistent avoidance makes us out of practice. So, when the time comes when we cannot avoid it, we don’t trust ourselves and lose confidence. This lack of confidence makes us avoid it even more. This is a phobia that can be very dangerous. The more we try to avoid conflict, the more we get scared of it. The more scared we are, the more we try to create excuses to avoid it. This leads to a lot of thinking and overthinking, which, again, is not at all healthy. Of course, we should avoid conflicts as much as we can. But some absolutely need to be addressed. In those cases, avoiding external conflict will lead to internal conflict that is way more unhealthy and difficult.
7. Selfishness — Some people get into the habit of overthinking for self-centered reasons. When they see that people pity them or sympathize with them when they overthink, they start doing it for the attention that they are getting. It makes them feel good. Overthinking is also used for procrastinating and, sometimes, not deciding at all. If you delay a decision on the pretext of not being able to decide because you haven’t thought about it enough, then maybe no one will ever blame you for making a bad decision, right?
8. Trying to be always in control — We, human beings, hate to feel helpless. We want to be able to control everything about us and our environment. This could include our friends, family, and colleagues, etc. We care about these people and want to help them. But sometimes, it is just not possible, and instead of accepting that, we live in denial. This helps us in believing that we are still in control. This creates a situation of chronic anxiety and ruminating. The sooner you accept that you cannot control everything, the easier it will be to stop overthinking.
9. Childhood Learning — Sometimes, you learn the habit of overthinking early on in life when that was your only way to deal with difficult situations. For example, as a child, if you had a temperamental parent, you would keep worrying that you might do or say something that might make your parent angry. So, you would keep thinking about how to avoid that situation. You continued the habit even when you grew up and now it has become a habit. 
10. Trauma — Trauma can be due to childhood abuse, parental neglect, bullying, dysfunctional family, death of a loved one, poverty, serious medical condition, violence, war or terrorism, etc. These people develop hyper-vigilance that could lead to obsessive thoughts. If you are one of those people, you seem to be always on high alert. This leads to you being alert to any possible danger, even if it is not real. As a result of this, you could become paranoid sometimes.

Conclusion

Whatever your reason might have been that led you to become an overthinker, it doesn’t have to be a part of your lifestyle anymore. Understand the reason why you started. Maybe you are not at the same stage in your life now and can easily let it go. Maybe the fears you had in the past are not there anymore. 

You must understand the cause or the reason behind your overthinking. See the pattern and check when you get into this habit. Once you are aware, you can start working on cutting it down to a healthy level. After all, sometimes overthinking is good as it helps you to find solutions. Just don’t overdo it to the extent of bringing harm to yourself and your loved ones. Remember, when you are happy, you make others happy.