What’s Really Going On in Our Minds When We’re Overthinking?
Overthinking can feel a lot like a traffic jam in your brain. Every thought is trying to push forward at the same time, but instead of moving smoothly, they clog up the mental highway. Some cars are stuck behind you, honking about the past (rumination). Others are inching anxiously toward the future (“what if I mess everything up tomorrow?”). Some of the drivers are swerving and shouting nonsense (self-criticism, imagined judgment from others). No matter how hard you try to direct traffic, the gridlock leaves you feeling stuck and overwhelmed.
We’ve all been there… Lying awake at night replaying a conversation we wish had gone differently. Or second guessing ourselves about a decision that still hasn’t been made. We call it “overthinking,” but what’s actually happening in the mind is more complex than it seems. When people say they’re “stuck in their head,” it can be a mix of mental habits that can keep us stuck in the past, anxious about the future, or disconnected from the present in some other form.
Here are a few common offenders, taking the form of emotional or cognitive loops:
Thinking about the Past:
Rumination
Replaying past events on repeat, often with a sense of regret or self-blame. It feels like your brain won’t let you move on, even though nothing can be changed. We can usually grow from our mistakes when we think things over in a structured way. When we’re ruminating, we’re usually just stirring up negative emotions again and again.
Hindsight bias
Judging yourself harshly because you believe you “should have known better”. Even though we can only operate with what we know at any given moment, and with the tools available to us at that time, we tend to think we should have anticipated the way things would turn out.
Personalization
Taking excessive responsibility for how things turned out, assuming everything that went wrong was your fault. We can even find ourselves taking responsibility for someone else’s emotions, behaviors, and moods if we’re not careful.
Magnification
This is like catastrophizing the past. Blowing the significance of past mistakes out of proportion, treating small mistakes as defining moments. When we do this, we can easily minimize the impact of things that went smoothly enough, or let this pattern overshadow our wins.
Thinking about the Future:
Constantly worrying about the future
Running endless “what if” scenarios about things that haven’t even happened yet. This creates a false sense of control but leaves us feeling drained. It’s as if our mind has been convinced that a busy mind is a prepared mind.
Catastrophizing
Jumping straight to the worst-case outcome and treating it as likely, even when evidence doesn’t support it. This can take the form of outlining all the failures we might experience. For those who are visual thinkers, it can be like a cinema playing a film of your potential failures 24/7.
Analysis paralysis
Getting stuck trying to find the “perfect” answer, which leaves you unable to make any decision at all. Our brains are trying to multitask 100 potential mistakes until the whole system shuts down.
Decision fatigue
Feeling completely worn down by the number of choices you face each day, until even small decisions (like what to eat or which email to answer first) feel overwhelming. Have you ever had a meltdown the moment you arrived home after work, just trying to figure out what to tackle first?
Thinking about How We’re Perceived by Others:
Self-doubt and inner criticism
Constantly questioning your worth, replaying mistakes, or assuming others see you as “not good enough” or incompetent. Even though we seem to be focused on the experience of others, we’re still self-absorbed in calculating our own sense of worth.
Mind Reading
Convincing yourself you know what others are thinking about you, usually in a negative light. We can find ways to judge ourselves endlessly by imagining how others might be perceiving us. This can fuel the fire of imposter syndrome, since we have an endless supply of judgments and evaluations we can dream up.
Perfectionism
Scanning our experiences, appearance, or things we said for errors, or replaying how we “should have” done things differently. This assumes that every moment leads to either the right outcome or the wrong one, and it makes it nearly impossible to accept that being human means being imperfect.
So Why is Overthinking so Painful?
Our thoughts can loop endlessly.
The same idea or fear circles back again and again, no matter how many times you try to “figure it out.” It’s like being caught in a mental gridlock.
This can make our nervous system go into overdrive.
Beneath all these thoughts, your body’s alarm system is often switched on. The fight-flight-freeze response keeps you hyper-alert, as if something dangerous is happening right now, even when you’re safe.
Overthinking isn’t a personal flaw. It’s your brain’s way of trying to protect you from pain, embarrassment, or danger. The problem is that instead of keeping you safe, these mental loops often leave you feeling stuck, exhausted, and even more disconnected from the present moment. Therapy can help you understand where these patterns come from, calm the nervous system when it’s operating in overdrive, and build tools to step out of the traffic jam. With support, it’s possible create more space for clarity, rest, and meaningful connection.
Dr. Amy Waldron offers specialized psychotherapy for those who refer to themselves as “overthinkers”, especially those who are highly sensitive and tend to experience a depth of processing. There’s no shortage of strategies you can practice on your own to detach from thought loops and patterns of overthinking. For those feeling stuck, Dr. Waldron continuously engages with research and practice to help her clients feel more empowered to manage their patterns and befriend their minds.
Contact Dr. Waldron to schedule a complementary 20-minute consultation to explore options for treating social anxiety, imposter syndrome, or to heal from trauma that’s driving patterns of overthinking. Dr. Waldron offer EMDR, ketamine assisted psychotherapy, art therapy, and traditional forms of therapy in San Francisco, CA, Marin county (Corte Madera), CA, and online throughout CA, NC, and FL.
