Why Is Over Thinking A Threat To Mental Health?

Though the term over thinking is self-explanatory, we are hardly aware what effect does it actually have on our mental wellness. Thinking too much about a certain topic and imagining situations that may or may not happen and thinking of the consequences that are mostly negative, distorts our mental peace. Instead of putting our mind to constructive works, when we indulge in thinking and analyzing about anything and get distracted from the current happenings, then it is called over thinking. Even repeating the thoughts over and over again is also a sign of over thinking.

Mostly all of us have the habit of wasting a good chunk of time in over thinking, which in fact, restricts our mental abilities. It causes a delay in performance of actions required and consumes our energy and attentiveness to the level that our concentration and decision making abilities suffer a setback. We get so entangled in the loop of thoughts that we gradually become habitual of sparing loads of time for over thinking that is surely not beneficial for our brain’s health. Additionally, medical experts have stated that over thinking diminishes your creativity skills as it stresses the brain muscles and pulls down your productivity too if you are addicted to over thinking.

It is true that when you strain your mind so much thinking of things that are mostly fictitious or that won’t yield productive results, then your mind will develop the tendency to worry. You may even suffer from anxiety and disturbed mental peace if you constantly think a lot.

It has been studied that people who don’t indulge in over thinking are more capable of taking quick decisions and are able to peacefully handle work and personal life stress. To stop over thinking, you must first know what happens when you over think:

1. You cannot keep your mind off from the thoughts of a person, event or any circumstance in the past or about a current problem. Your mind moves between thinking about what happened and how it happened and doesn’t focus on finding the solution to tackle the issue. Rather than devising initiatives and be active, your mind dwells in thinking about it deeply.

2. Our mind no doubt attracts negative repercussions first. If at all something happens whether good or bad, our mind starts over thinking how the situation would be if the thing happened the other way. We keep on drafting ‘what if’ situations and imagine the worst possible scenarios.

3. If we start thinking positive, then we don’t need to make deep analysis of any situation and our mind tends to actively work in the direction of finding suitable actions. However, the over thinking activity is bound to make us take frequent jumps into the whirlpool of negative thoughts.

4. You develop the habit of over analysing situations or your interactions with people and their reactions towards your work.

5. You may also indulge in exaggerating words, thoughts and event happenings to a totally hypothetical extent that you forget that nothing of such sort has actually happened.

6. Your worries tend to pertain about current or past problems or issues that you think have lead to unfortunate outcomes.

Recommended: 11 Tips To Shift Your Thinking From Negativity To Positivity

If you have noticed these symptoms in you, then you are probably what psychologists call, an over thinker. Researchers have found that prolonged habit of over thinking can even make a person prone to suffer from depression and thereby, save yourself from over thinking by following these easy and interesting ways:

1. Start Pursuing Creative Activities

Creative activities help in improving your brain’s cognitive functioning and allows your mind to remain focused on productive tasks that are enjoyable too. Swimming, painting, cooking, dancing, etc are some of such creative activities that provide your mind a respite from over thinking while it helps in keeping stress at bay. Your hormonal activity too regulates and you may even find yourself more efficient in all your tasks.

2. Watch How Much Time You Consume When You Over Think

The next time your mind takes you in a different dimension while over thinking, monitor yourself. See for yourself how much time and energy you waste in this non productive activity. You will notice that you will feel lethargic and energy deprived. Also if you start keeping such check, then your mind gradually gets signal to stop over thinking as it is alert in keeping the time check.

3. Understand That You Didn’t Attain Any Result After Over Thinking

This is one psychological exercise that will help you in knowing how much precious time you actually waste in thinking a lot. Take any topic that has been disturbing you for quite a while. Then keep thinking about it for a long, long time. But your purpose of thinking must be to know whether you get any solution or result by thinking for so long. You will definitely find that you just kept thinking about it and at the end there was no result to convince your mind to stop thinking about it yet again. Talking to a therapist at “thrivetalk.com” can help you to determine the impact that overthinking is having on your mental health. 

4. Practice Concentration Enhancing Activities

Reading, meditation and exercising are three simplest way of building concentration levels. Your mind is unable to focus because it is busy in over thinking. Give a break to your mind and start meditating and exercising so that you tackle stress in the healthiest possible way. Moreover start reading positive and motivational books because over thinking is basically a negative activity and by feeding your mind with positive energy, you can enjoy working with a sorted mind.

5. Keep Yourself Busy

Last but not the least, people generally indulge in over thinking because they have less activities in hand. If you are one among them, then ensure that you have a clear list of tasks to perform, so that your time table does not allow you to get free time for thinking about unproductive matters.

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