10 Struggles Only Chronic Overthinkers Would Understand

“There is nothing in this world that can trouble you as much as your own thoughts.”

I cannot emphasize how true these words are. We don’t realize how much we let our own thoughts ruin our relationships and our lives. Overthinking is a disease, which has neither a diagnosis nor a cure, but once you become prey to it, it will take a lot of effort and willpower to not let it devastate your wellbeing. Overthinking in its simplest form is defined as excessive thinking about a problem while losing focus on the bigger picture. In short, it leads to creating problems that aren’t actually there in the first place. The following are 10 struggles that only over thinkers would understand:

1. More planning and fewer actions: We tend to plan a lot of things in our heads but end up executing very few of them. Rather than spending so much time on the planning, we need to spend some time on execution as well.
2. Excessive worrying: This is one of the biggest struggles of being an overthinker. We worry about problems that aren’t even there and that may or may not emerge in the future.
3. Too much happiness scares us: We are so used to focusing on the negatives and the problems that excess happiness makes us uneasy. It gives us the feeling that something wrong is coming our way or that we are going to screw this up in one way or another.
4. Relationships are hard for us to sustain: We tend to drive our partners away thanks to our excessive analyses. It takes a very strong person to put up with us and that’s only if they really want to be with us in the first place.
5. We come across as insecure: Since we make a mountain out of a molehill in our minds, we need constant reassurance on things. This makes us come across as insecure and needy even though we aren’t.
6. Falling asleep can be very difficult on certain days: Bedtime is when our mind works overtime. We can sit and analyze the world’s problems at that hour. Due to this reason we have a difficult time sleeping, thereby ruining our mood the following day.
7. We keep replaying incidents in our heads: We somehow have this feeling that the more we replay incidents in our heads, the more clarity we will get on the matter. We feel like we will remember some detail previously forgotten which will help us feel better about ourselves. Unfortunately, the opposite happens and we fall deeper into the overthinking pit.
8. We lose the present whilst worrying about the past and the future: We are so concerned with how to fix something in the past or how to make our future better that we end up losing our present in the process. We can never live in the moment because before we come out of our overthinking zone, the present has slipped out of our hands like sand.
9. We are never 100% sure about anything: Sometimes you just know whether it is about a person or a thing. However, an over thinker will force themselves to think otherwise and create self-doubt. Even when we are absolutely sure about something, we can convince ourselves otherwise.
10. We just can’t let things go: The only way to be happy is to not let your mind overtake your life and to be able to let things go. We all make mistakes in life and life isn’t always rosy and nice. However, it is very difficult for an over thinker to actually let things go and accept the right and wrong without trying to fix the situation.

As an over thinker myself, I know how annoying it gets when people say, “you are overthinking this, let it go.” We are aware that we might be overthinking situations in our heads but we have become programmed to thinking of the worse case scenario. There is no switch which we can switch on and off to avoid overthinking; it happens naturally even though it’s not something we are proud of.

What we need to realize is that we need to make a choice and it’s time we make it right away. We get one life and we need to live it to the fullest rather than worry about problems that may or may not be there in the first place. There is no black and white in life, we need to learn to go with the flow and accept life with a grain of salt. Life is not easy but overthinking will just make it worse than it actually is. We are more blessed than a lot of people in this world; rather than hyper-analyzing problems, we should count our blessings instead. So whenever you have the urge to overthink, remind yourself that overthinking ruins you. It ruins the situation, twists things around, makes you worry and makes everything much worse than it actually is. Have some faith; it will only get better from here on.

Featured image via Aziz Acharki on Unsplash