People rarely come to therapy saying “I overthink.” They say it other ways. “I can’t stop thinking about this.” “I keep going back over it.” “I know it’s ridiculous to still be worrying about this, but I am.” Underneath all of those is the same question, which is how to stop overthinking. And almost everyone who asks has already tried the obvious answer, which is telling themselves to stop.

That rarely works. Telling yourself not to think about something mostly guarantees that you’ll keep checking whether you’re thinking about it. There is an old saying in the therapy biz, “that what you resist persists” and it’s especially true when it comes to overthinking: the more you try to push a thought away the more it tends to stay close. So before getting to what does help, I want to spend a little time on what overthinking is actually doing, because once you understand that, it gets a lot easier to step out of.

What overthinking is trying to do

Overthinking usually starts with something that matters. A decision you’re not sure about. A comment from someone that landed wrong. A situation at work or at home that you can’t quite control. Your mind treats it as unfinished business and keeps going back to it, the way you’d keep returning to a problem you haven’t solved yet.

The catch is that a lot of what we overthink can’t be solved by thinking about it. What your colleague meant by that email. Whether you made the right call last spring. How a conversation next week is going to go. There’s no answer waiting at the end of another pass through it.

I’ll sometimes ask people, “If you gave this another hour, what do you think you’d find?” There’s usually a pause, and then some version of, “Nothing new, probably.” That pause is important and is telling you that on some level you already know that thinking has stopped going anywhere.

Is it overthinking, or are you thinking it through?

Not all repeated thinking is a problem. Hard decisions often take more than one pass, and that’s fine. The question is whether you’re getting anywhere.

Here’s a simple test. After ten minutes on it, do you have a next step? It doesn’t have to be big. “I’ll call her tomorrow.” “I need to ask one more question before I decide.” If you’ve got something like that, you’re problem-solving. If you’re in the same spot you started, only more wound up, you’ve slipped into what us psychologists call rumination.

There’s a good deal of research on rumination, and it’s fairly consistent. It’s closely linked to anxiety and depression, and it tends to make people worse at solving problems, not better. That’s a hard thing to accept, because from the inside, rumination feels like you’re getting closer to an answer when in fact you’re probably getting more and more lost – which of course leads to more ruminating.

Why capable people get stuck here

A lot of the people I work with are very good at what they do, and part of what makes them good is that they think ahead. The attorney who sees every way an argument could fall apart. The physician who keeps the less likely diagnosis in mind. The executive who plans for what no one else saw coming.

That habit is valuable at work. It just doesn’t clock out at six. The same instinct that catches a problem in a contract will replay last night’s dinner at one in the morning, looking for the thing you shouldn’t have said.

There’s often a belief tucked underneath overthinking: that if you think about something carefully enough, you can keep it from going wrong. Seen that way, overthinking feels responsible, and putting a thought away feels a little reckless. Therapists aren’t immune to this, by the way. I’ve replayed my share of conversations on the drive home.

How to stop overthinking, in practice

The first thing that helps is simply noticing that you’re doing it. When you catch yourself going around again, acknowledge it to yourself. “I’m doing the thing.” It sounds almost ridiculously simple, but naming it puts a little space between you and the thought. You’re watching the loop instead of riding it.

Then try changing the question. “Why did I say that?” and “Why does this keep happening?” tend to keep you circling. “What’s one thing I could do about this?” or “What would I tell a friend who was stuck on this?” tend to move you somewhere.

It also helps to get the whole thing out of your head once. Write it down, all of it, as messy as it is. If there’s something to act on, write that down too. If there isn’t, that’s useful to see in black and white.

For decisions that have already had enough thought, give yourself a deadline. Many choices don’t get better with more deliberation. They just get made later. Make the best call you can with what you know, and let that be good enough.

And do something that needs your full attention. Overthinking does best when your mind is idle. A walk, a workout, cooking, a real conversation: anything that takes up your attention for a while will often do more than trying to think your way out.

Finally, notice when it’s worst. For a lot of people it’s late at night, when they’re tired and there’s nothing else competing for their attention. If that’s you, my post Why Can’t I Sleep? goes into how that connection works.

When it’s more than a habit

Sometimes overthinking is just a habit of mind. Other times it can be a part of something bigger, most often anxiety, depression, or obsessive-compulsive patterns. It’s worth looking at more closely if it takes up a good part of most days, if it’s getting in the way of sleep, work, or relationships, if you feel you have to go over things in a particular way before you can let them go, or if it comes with a steady low mood or sense of dread.

All of these respond well to treatment. Therapy, including approaches like cognitive behavioral therapy, works directly on the patterns that keep overthinking going.

If you’d like some help with this

If you’ve been trying to figure out how to stop overthinking on your own and keep ending up back where you started, it may be time to talk with someone. That isn’t a failure of willpower. Some of these patterns are just easier to see from the outside.

Much of my work in individual therapy in Bethesda is with thoughtful, capable people who are tired of living so much of their lives in their heads. If that sounds like you, reach out through my contact page. We can have a first conversation and take it from there.