Don't Overthink It - Anne Bogel Page 0,1

Nashville to begin work on a book tentatively titled Don’t Overthink It.

Overthinking: What It Is, What It Isn’t

Anyone who’s picked up a book called Don’t Overthink It can sympathize with me, because you’ve been there. You know what it feels like to get caught in a loop of unproductive—or even destructive—thought.

When we talk about overthinking, we’re not talking about having our basic needs met, like a place to sleep or where we’ll find our next meal. Those fundamental questions merit concern and require thought—sometimes lots of it. And we’re not talking about major life decisions, like whether to change careers or end a relationship or move across the country. Big decisions like these require dedicated thought. When we talk about overthinking, we’re talking about those times when we lavish mental energy on things that don’t deserve it. Those times when we can’t seem to think about anything else, even though we know our thoughts are better spent elsewhere.

Overthinking takes different forms. Sometimes it looks like worry. We might feel stuck reviewing something we’ve done in the past or imagining something that might happen in the future. We might spend twenty minutes leaping to imaginative and dire conclusions about that short email from our boss or the note from our child’s teacher, or we may construct an elaborate and scary scenario in our mind about why our mom hasn’t returned our call. We might lie awake at night wondering what our friends really think of us or if a loved one seems tired of us or if our library fines are getting really and truly out of control.

Sometimes overthinking looks like fretting about the small stuff, devoting disproportionate amounts of brain space to the relatively insignificant. We might catch ourselves in the middle of a long train of thought about whether we should exchange that new pair of jeans for the next size up, or why the washing machine water doesn’t seem as hot as it used to and what we should do about it.

Sometimes overthinking looks like second-guessing ourselves. We put just-because flowers on the grocery list, but are they really worth the money? We’re interested in that concert, but would we be better off with a night in? We want the kids to see the meteor shower, but will the loss of sleep be worth it? Seeing old friends is great, but will we regret using all our vacation time for the reunion? Waffling feels uncomfortable, but without any guiding principles or coherent philosophy, we can’t seem to help ourselves.

Whether the concern elbowing into our thoughts is big or small, we recognize the common thread: these thoughts are repetitive, unhealthy, and unhelpful. Our brains are hard at work but accomplishing nothing. It is exhausting and makes us feel crappy. Dr. Susan Nolen-Hoeksema was a psychology professor at Yale whose research focused on women’s mental health and well-being. Her studies over a twenty-year period showed that overthinking makes life harder, hurts our relationships, and may contribute to mental disorders like depression, severe anxiety, and alcohol abuse.

Overthinking also carries a significant opportunity cost. Mental energy is not a limitless resource. We have only so much to spend each day, and how we choose to spend it matters. As Annie Dillard writes, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing.”

When we spend our time overthinking, that’s what we’re doing.

Let’s face it: nobody wants to live a life characterized by overthinking. But it doesn’t feel like something we’re choosing; it feels like something we can’t escape. We don’t want to fritter away our one precious life second-guessing ourselves about a conversation we had last Thursday or whether we’re sick enough to go to the doctor or when we’re going to squeeze in a Costco run this week. We want better for ourselves. But we’re not sure how to get there.

A friend recently relayed some advice she’d read in a women’s magazine that advised to squelch overthinking by resolving not to think about anything that stresses you after dinner. We laughed about this together. It sounds good, but how does one actually do it? If one could simply decide not to think about it, we wouldn’t have an overthinking problem, would we?

Why is it so hard to untangle this one little thing that looms so large over our lives?

Overthinking Affects Women More Than Men

“We are suffering from an epidemic of overthinking,” writes Nolen-Hoeksema. The problem