The Beautiful, Bad, and Ugly of Thinking Things Too Much

graphic by Emma Niggley

Imagine it’s late (maybe it is by the time you’re reading this). You’re getting into the passenger side of your friend’s car, clicking the seatbelt into place, and taking a deep breath — overlooking the fact that the car’s scent is lingering a little extra in your flared nostrils. You’ve been at a party for maybe an hour or so, and all that you can think about is the stupid thing you said.

“Sorry if my hands are sticky, I spilled some Malibu on them.”

That’s what I said at a Halloween party this year. It was incredibly dumb and full of all that nervous energy every person feels occasionally in their life.

This instance is probably the least anxiety-inducing type of overthinking that I’ve probably ever had. It’s something the awkward extra actor would say in a coming-of-age film. Which in reality is not that bad. In my mind though, it just alienates me more than I already feel half of the time.

That's overthinking. It’s always there. It’s a frenemy. More often on the lines of an enemy than a friend. I like to think of overthinking as someone we thought would help out, but in reality, they’re just the person who has the really bad intention of scrutinizing easily overlooked things to the millionth degree. That means I’m left with the option of little to no sleep or worrying about it for the next two weeks. How productive.

Most people only start overthinking in their late teens or early 20s. That’s because we start registering shame, consequences, and fear more than we did in our youth. Then, by the time you hit wrinkles and retirement, you let go and realize that the practice of overthinking is overrated. So, we essentially start and end with a blissful, carefree nature and spend the middle in this frenzy of overthinking, regular thinking, and not thinking at all. Such is the cycle of this vicious, beautiful life.

Personally, I believe a lot of my overthinking stems from my thoughtful nature. Growing up, I was given the term of endearment “mini Rodin” because of his Thinker statue. My teachers always remarked on how meticulous, precise, and “deep-in-thought” I was. It concerned many, annoyed others, and to the ones who knew me and loved me, it was just the facet of my personality that made me caring and detail-oriented. Sometimes, in the moments when my overthinking became an extreme, category 5 hurricane, the people who saw it destroy my happiness and mental health found it worrying.

Overthinking gets this bad reputation, and I think it’s rightfully earned. Overthinking can ruin healthy relationships, pure interactions and can suck a lot of energy out of the present. It feeds into anxiety, depression, and OCD to the umpteenth degree, and it makes you feel that life is more stressful than it is. I’ve wasted a lot of my teens overthinking about past decisions, whether or not I’ll be marriage material when I want to get married, and whether or not my best friend was annoyed at the fact that I was nervous about talking to a cute guy in my class. Sometimes, I’ve spent years thinking about that random thought I had on an August day from two years ago, contemplating if  I was a horrible person.

There were some days in which the marble head of overthinking breathed down my neck so hard that I would stay in bed  (or if I did get up, I would go back to bed because I felt so physically ill). Some days I’d cry for seemingly no reason at school when in reality, it was this marble head punching me in the gut with these awful “what-ifs.” Every day I was asking: when will this stream of negativity that wastes my precious time come to an end?

Most days though, I can live like a normal person, and the marble head that nitpicks my brain to shreds is on vacation. I live for those days when my smiles reach up to the sun, I’m drinking with friends without the fear of saying something stupid, and I’m vacuuming my apartment because I want to, not just because I’m trying to drown the bad out. I’m glad that I have reached a point in my life where most days are relatively balanced and good, if not great. Thank God.

Why do I think my period of overthinking has dwindled? I don’t have a conclusive answer, but I like to think it’s a multitude of things. On the one hand, I’m no longer in the hellhole of puberty and extreme hormonal changes, so that’s nice. I’ve gotten more mature and the conversations we’ve been having around mental health are making everyone a little less intimidated about bettering their own mental health. When an intrusive thought threatens to destroy my day, I go to church, I call a friend and I immerse myself in the beauty of keeping myself busy. The marble head of overthinking gives up, and I laugh at its stupid face.

Overthinking loves to live in the people who believe that life is a game of comparisons or those who believe that life is all rooted in what goes on in our head. If we take a look around, we notice that a lot of the things we overthink don’t ever come to fruition, and in the rare case they do, we are more than capable of handling the issues than we think. Overthinking likes to tell you the worst is permanent, and it’s so believable, but we just have to keep thinking that today is temporary, tomorrow is temporary, and yesterday at one point, was temporary. Therefore, the worst we usually think about happening — is temporal.

Another helpful tip: Reframe the way you see your overthinking so it no longer has a death grip on you. If overthinking is my vice and is telling me about all the bad I am, then I can counteract it with the many times my head, my heart, and my soul flooded with pure thoughtfulness. I’m the first to open the door for others, I’m the one who’s putting in so much effort into a “get well” card, and I’m giving my Target gift card I won in a raffle to a neighbor going through a hard time. That’s who I’ve always been, and if overthinking tries to tell me I’m a failure or I’m not as good as I can be, I root myself in the times I felt that I was more than just good enough.

With all this advice and truths about overthinking in mind, let me just say that I probably won’t ever stop overthinking. It’s a cross I have to bear in this life, but I’m getting so much better at it. There is so much freedom and relief in accepting that overthinking is a part of life that can be worked on. While it takes a while for the overthinkers to get to this epiphany, I’ll be cheering for all of you when you do.