Overthinking is trying to solve the wrong problem: How I (kind of) stopped overthinking everything

Originally published on Medium

Hi, I’m Aneisha and I’m an overthinker.

My husband watched me type this sentence then nodded and said “Yep, that’s very true” which ruins my next claim that I’m a reformed overthinker.

Okay, truth? I’m not as bad an overthinker as I used to be.

So how did I go from a chronic overthinker to a part-time one?

How I stopped (mostly) overthinking

I realized my overthinking focused on problems with no resolution.

My brain would think over a problem, sure it would eventually find the answer if it kept clicking to the next page in the mental Google search. And when it found nothing, it returned to the first page to restart. It didn’t make any changes, just kept restarting over and over.

And then my math tutoring experience inspired me.

As a math tutor, I saw that the students who were able to verbalize or write down the actual problem hidden in a difficult word problem were halfway to the solution.

But it’s not easy identifying the actual problem. The quicker students tried several different times before they figured out the real problem. Once they did, though, they could work step-by-step to find the solution.

I applied this to my overthinking problem. Maybe overthinking was a complicated word problem I didn’t understand yet. So instead of trying to solve the same problem over and over, I could try a different one?

And that worked.

An example of changing the problem

For example, I commonly overthink about why I have a hard time walking over to someone to say hello.

Before, I would think: Why can’t I just get up and say hi? Just go now. Okay, now. Okay, let’s do it, step by step. Just stand up! Darn. Too much time has passed, now it feels weird. I never found an answer to why sometimes I could do it and sometimes I couldn’t.

And then I changed the problem. Instead of seeing the problem as Why can’t I walk over to say hi? now it’s Do I want to go over and say hi? Simpler, right?

Sometimes the answer is no, I don’t want to. So I let myself not go and it’s not a problem anymore.

Sometimes the answer is yes so I can keep digging to find the answer. Why can’t I go say hi? Do I want to go now or later? If later, do I want to say hi one-on-one or with other people? And eventually I figure out the problem is (for example) I always see this person with my sisters but my sisters aren’t here right now. So how do I say hi alone? And that’s a simpler problem to solve than the more critical Why can’t I say hi problem.

I still overthink, though.

The difference? I indulge in overthinking now. I ruminate over an unsolvable problem, clicking through obscure mental Google search pages curious about what I’ll find.

A recent overthink? A fellow passenger introduced herself to me on the plane. It was a first for me and I had a nice time overthinking my feelings about it. Was it nice? Should I also do this? How common is it?