Don't Overthink It - Anne Bogel Page 0,29

intrusive thoughts and the only three words that have ever helped her deal with them. Once she was on a North African cliff with a kind Coptic minister and had to make this embarrassing confession: “I promised my psychiatrist I would tell whomever I was with when I was in any high place that since childhood, whenever I’m very, very high up, I think about jumping.”

Of the minister, Lamott says, “He didn’t miss a beat. Waving away my concern, he said, ‘Oh, who doesn’t?’”

Lamott relates that his response was exactly right. It made her feel better, and it was true. She explains that she isn’t depressed or suicidal but nevertheless has these unwelcome thoughts sometimes. The minister’s response empowered her to brush them aside.

The vast majority of us have intrusive thoughts like this from time to time, ideas we don’t consciously create and that don’t represent our true thoughts and feelings. In their excellent book Overcoming Unwanted Intrusive Thoughts, Dr. Sally N. Winston and Dr. Martin N. Seif define unwanted intrusive thoughts as “uninvited thoughts that jump into the mind and do not seem to be part of the ongoing flow of intentional thinking.” If you have an unwanted intrusive thought yourself—like Lamott’s thoughts to jump from high places—you may be concerned, knowing that your life reflects what you persistently think about. Rest assured that not every thought that flits through your head speaks to your underlying character.

It’s a mistake to give all your thoughts equal weight. Some thoughts do not deserve to be taken seriously, so don’t dignify them with a response. That only serves to empower them, because the effort you use to combat the unwanted intrusive thought only serves to strengthen it. “The simple truth is that what you resist tends to persist.”

Instead of choosing to nurture those unwanted thoughts, simply choose to notice them, and let them float away.

Schedule Time to Overthink

The brain likes to have a system it can trust, so give it one. Johnny Cash famously included worry on his personal to-do list (along with “pee” and “call mama”). It sounds silly, but this counterintuitive strategy actually works. If you schedule time every day to worry or overthink, your brain is less likely to nag you with those thoughts throughout the day.

In 13 Things Mentally Strong Women Don’t Do, therapist Amy Morin reports that many of her therapy clients have found this much-recommended strategy to be effective. “Rather than allowing their worrisome thoughts to affect every waking hour, they find they’re sufficiently able to contain their worrying to a specific portion of the day.”

When you schedule time to overthink, you may be able to trade fifteen minutes of concentrated overthinking for twenty-three hours and forty-five minutes of relief. Give yourself permission to indulge these thoughts for a limited time period—and set a timer when you begin so those thoughts don’t spill into the rest of your day. This keeps the dandelions from taking over the whole garden.

Write It Down

It’s easy to build things up in your mind to be much bigger than they actually are. Sometimes I’ll notice I’m feeling completely overwhelmed because it seems like I have so much to do, but when I stop to capture my swirling thoughts—or even better, my action items—in writing, it doesn’t look so bad.

This strategy works because it allows us to wrangle our unwieldy thoughts into a more manageable format, which restores our objectivity. This is old advice, but it remains useful. Many things don’t feel so daunting once they are written down, because the act of writing forces us to clarify what’s actually happening and what we need to do about it.

Many find writing to be a helpful tool, but watch out. Morin calls journaling a “common trap” for those inclined to ruminate. She writes, “For overthinkers, journaling may backfire. If you write about bad things that happen, things you worry about, or uncomfortable emotions you experience, your journal may reinforce your negative thoughts.” If you relate, Morin’s advice for your journaling sessions is to stick to the facts rather than dwell on the emotions surrounding them.

You can take this a step further by writing down your negative thoughts, ripping up the paper, and throwing away the pieces. An old coach of mine once had our team perform this exercise before we began our practices. We’d write down our negative thoughts on paper, ball them up, and physically toss them in the trash can. I was skeptical at the time, but science was on my