The Overthinker’s Guide to Overthinking (Yes, We Overthought the Title Too)

Have you ever wondered why overthinkers think so much? Think the worst possible situations, suffer through them, and then, plot twist, overthink about their own overthinking?!

If you or someone you know is part of the overthinking club, this party is for you!

Being an overthinker myself, and someone who has lived through a deep phase of depression, let me tell you, I have some thoughts on this. Probably too many.

The Ice Cream Problem (And Every Other Problem)

If you have choices, you are bound to make your overthinker friend anxious. Sometimes they cannot make up their mind. Juggling different options while getting lost in permutations and combinations, pros and cons of buying one thing over another. They want the best quality, at the best price, at the best quantity, so now they sit and research and would have cross-verified their own decision a thousand times before reaching a conclusion. They are terrified of ending up with the wrong choice.

I want to buy vanilla ice cream. I don’t want to buy Costco because I’m dieting. I don’t want a very small bottle at a high price. I find one with good quantity but I’m not sure about quality. With all this calculation, I end up 30 minutes in the store researching which brand of vanilla to buy, while my husband sits in the car wondering what on earth is taking so long to get vanilla ice cream. And just when I think I’ve decided, I notice there’s Old Fashioned Vanilla versus Regular Vanilla Bean. Back to square one.

Overthinkers and Perfectionists: A Love Story Nobody Asked For

In every single situation, they are just trying to do their best. Unfortunately, most overthinkers tend to be perfectionists, which just intensifies their own misery. The need to find the perfect answer keeps the mind looping long after a normal brain would have grabbed the nearest tub and moved on. Science actually has a name for this: analysis paralysis, when too many options make it harder, not easier, to decide. A famous study found that people presented with 24 choices of jam were ten times less likely to buy anything compared to people who had only 6 options (Iyengar & Lepper, 2000, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology). Imagine that, but for every decision, every day, forever. Welcome to our world.

So if an overthinker ever loves you, know that they have already imagined every worst possible situation, every way you could hurt them, every scenario where it all falls apart, and they still chose to be with you. Honestly, that deserves some kind of award.

Are We Just Being Dramatic? Spoiler: No.

Psychologists don’t use the word “overthinking.” They call it rumination (think of it as your brain’s very unhelpful replay button, stuck on the past) and worry (your brain’s equally unhelpful trailer reel of every bad thing that might happen in the future). Together these fall under what researchers call Repetitive Negative Thinking, which sounds very official and is very much a real, studied, measured thing.

Dr. Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, a psychologist at Yale University, spent decades researching this and found that rumination doesn’t just come with depression. It actively causes it, prolongs it, and makes it significantly worse. She followed thousands of people through major life events, bereavements, natural disasters, life upheavals, and the pattern held every time. Overthinkers didn’t just feel bad longer. They felt worse (Nolen-Hoeksema, 1991, Journal of Abnormal Psychology). So no, not dramatic. Clinically validated.

And I Know This Not Just From Research

I myself went through a period of deep depression. It didn’t announce itself. It crept in quietly, first as persistent anxiety, then as a fog that made even the simplest things feel impossible. Depression isn’t sadness. It’s not a rough week or feeling low. It’s waking up and feeling like a stranger to your own life. It’s exhausting in a way that sleep doesn’t fix.

I started working with a clinical psychologist, who introduced me to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. She taught me to question my thoughts. Not silence them, not pretend they weren’t there, but genuinely ask: is this thought true? What’s the actual evidence? What would I tell a friend who thought this way? It wasn’t magic. It wasn’t instant. But slowly, surviving one day at a time, sometimes one hour at a time, I started to manage. I eventually wrote an article about stress, anxiety and depression. Writing became part of how I processed.

I’m sharing this because it is not a character flaw. It is not weakness. Seeking help is not something to whisper about. It is one of the most practical, courageous things you can do for yourself.

So What’s Actually Going On In There?

Your brain has two key players in this story. The amygdala, your internal alarm system, ancient and fast, designed to scream DANGER before you’ve even had time to think. And the prefrontal cortex, the calm, rational part that’s supposed to look at the alarm and say “it’s fine, it’s just vanilla ice cream.” In overthinkers, brain imaging studies show the amygdala tends to be overactive, firing alarms loudly and often, and the prefrontal cortex, the one meant to quiet it down, is underperforming. The brake is weak. The alarm keeps ringing.

There’s also something called the Default Mode Network, the part of your brain that runs in the background when you’re not focused on anything specific. Think of it as your brain’s screensaver. In most people it hums quietly. In overthinkers, a 2020 study pooling 14 brain imaging studies found this network stays stuck in overdrive, replaying, looping, narrating, completely uninvited (Zhou et al., 2020, NeuroImage). This is why an overthinker can be watching Netflix and simultaneously rehearsing an argument that hasn’t happened yet. The brain is not broken. It is doing exactly what it was trained to do. It just hasn’t gotten the memo that the threat has passed. Or that the threat was vanilla ice cream all along.

So Who Asked For This? Nobody. Here’s Why It Happens Anyway.

What trains it this way? A few things, and not always the same things for everyone. Genetics plays a significant role: research on twins shows the tendency to ruminate runs in families, because some people simply inherit a more sensitive, reactive nervous system. Major life stress at any stage can trigger it. Personality traits like perfectionism are among the strongest predictors.

For some, it starts much earlier. Growing up in environments where love felt conditional, where unpredictability was the norm, or where being perfect meant being safe, these experiences can wire a young brain to stay permanently on guard. That guard doesn’t always switch off in adulthood. And sometimes it’s just the accumulation of enough pressure, enough uncertainty, enough times the world felt unpredictable, at any age, at any point in life. In other words, you don’t need a dramatic origin story to be an overthinker. Life hands most of us enough material on its own.

Wait, We’re Worrying About Things That Never Even Happen?

And here is perhaps the most quietly devastating finding of all. Researchers at Penn State University asked people with anxiety to log every single worry over several weeks, then track whether each one actually came true. 91.4% of everything they worried about never happened (LaFreniere & Newman, 2020, Behavior Therapy). And of the small percentage that did come true, about a third turned out better than the person had feared. Overthinkers are spending enormous amounts of emotional energy suffering through futures their own minds manufactured. The pain is completely real. The event, most of the time, is not.

Good News: Our Brain Can Actually Chill (A Little)

Yes, not cured completely, but meaningfully improved, and for most people that is life-changing enough. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is the gold standard, with a large analysis of 55 clinical trials and nearly 5,000 participants showing it significantly reduces repetitive negative thinking (Stenzel et al., 2025, Psychological Medicine). Rumination-Focused CBT goes further, treating rumination as a habit and targeting triggers before the spiral starts. Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) teaches you to watch the thought arrive without climbing on board, and a major clinical study found it reduces the risk of depression returning by 31%.

CBT was part of my own journey. It didn’t erase the overthinking but it gave me tools to live alongside it. The goal isn’t to become someone who never overthinks. It’s to widen the gap between the thought starting and it taking over your entire afternoon. That gap absolutely can be widened.

You Are Not Alone

It feels hopeless sometimes. Lonely. Even terrifying. The loop that won’t stop, the decisions that paralyse, the love you can’t fully receive because your brain keeps poking holes in it. Only you can show up for yourself. People can provide love and support, and that matters, but the work is yours. Motivation will come and go, so don’t wait for it. Build a system, build discipline, and show up even on the days you don’t feel like it. One day. Then the next.

And to everyone who loves an overthinker, stop telling them to calm down, relax, or just stop thinking about it. Trust me, if they could, they would have. What they actually need is for you to sit with them in the discomfort for a moment. To say I know this feels very real to you, and I’m not going anywhere. That’s it. That’s the whole job.

The overthinking club didn’t choose its membership. But we’re here, we’re self-aware (painfully so), and we’re doing our best, one very thoroughly researched vanilla ice cream at a time. 🍦

Sources:

Nolen-Hoeksema, S. (1991). Responses to Depression and Their Effects on the Duration of Depressive Episodes. Journal of Abnormal Psychology. | Zhou et al. (2020). Rumination and the default mode network. NeuroImage. | LaFreniere & Newman (2020). Exposing Worry’s Deceit. Behavior Therapy, 51(3). | Iyengar & Lepper (2000). When Choice is Demotivating. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. | Stenzel et al. (2025). CBT and repetitive negative thinking meta-analysis. Psychological Medicine.