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Let's just call it what it is. Overthinking is a full-time job that you have that has zero benefits to it.
Learn why overthinking happens, its childhood roots, and how it acts as a survival mechanism in this insightful mindset podcast episode.
Key Takeaways
- Overthinking is a learned survival strategy from childhood, not a personal flaw.
- It stems from the brain’s attempt to keep you safe emotionally and physically.
- Recognizing the trauma-based origins of overthinking can empower change.
- Overthinking is linked to fears of rejection, failure, and loss of control.
- Healing involves addressing the inner child and nervous system adaptations.
Summary
- Overthinking is described as a full-time, unproductive mental habit that affects most people.
- It often originates from childhood experiences where the brain learned overthinking was safer than taking action.
- Overthinking is linked to nervous system adaptations formed in response to emotional or physical safety threats in childhood.
- The brain’s primary function is safety, not happiness or success, which drives overthinking as a protective mechanism.
- Inconsistent or reactive parenting can cause children to tiptoe around actions to avoid reprimand, leading to overthinking.
- Overthinking is a form of hypervigilance, a trauma response where the brain scans for threats even when none exist.
- The inner child continues to try to protect the adult self by overthinking scenarios to maintain control and safety.
- Fear of failure, rejection, abandonment, and scrutiny often fuel the overthinking cycle.
- Understanding the childhood roots of overthinking helps in addressing and breaking the habit effectively.
- The episode emphasizes deep exploration of overthinking rather than superficial advice to stop it.
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
And you run through every scenario in your head like it's life or death, and you obsess over what you should have said or what you might do or what they're probably thinking about you.
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Or what could go wrong or what could happen or what could not happen.
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And you don't just overthink the big things. You've been overthinking for so long that you don't just overthink the big things, you overthink the small things. You overthink everything.
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It has become a habit for you that is just like an addiction, and you have no idea probably how to break it.
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And it's not just a personality trait, it's also a nervous system adaptation that you have gotten from childhood in some sort of way, and over time it has morphed and shifted into something way bigger than how it originated.
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And so, I just want you to know that if you're an overthinker,
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join the club, that's like 90% of people in the world, and you're not broken, you're not indecisive, you're not too sensitive.
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It's just that at some point in time, you have to understand probably in childhood, your brain learned that overthinking was safer than doing.
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And so, just take a step back and think about that for a second.
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Your brain learned that to overthink something was safer than actually doing something. And chances are, you learned it a long time ago,
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and it's probably coming from your childhood. And, you know, in your childhood,
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something happened. Maybe you did something, and you made a joke, or you were loud, or you decided to dance in public, and you might have been reprimanded for it or scolded for it, or made fun of for it or something in some sort of way.
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And you were, you felt a little bit of hurt in some sort of way from whatever that was, where you're reprimanded or scolded or made fun of.
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And it made you pause the next time. And you learned you needed to pause and think about what what you were about to do.
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Because last time you didn't think about it and you just let your true self come out, you felt pain.
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And you learned, well, you know what, I should probably think about this the next time I'm going to do it.
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And so, I want you to think about that. When in your childhood,
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did you learn to overthink before you actually did something or so that you wouldn't do something?
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Like when did you learn that what you did was wrong or that you messed up in some sort of way?
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Think about that for a second.
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And then we'll dive into it and it's going to probably mold and shift as we go into today's episode.
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So, um, let's dive into it because I don't want to talk surface level with you.
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I don't want you to just be like, oh, hey, stop thinking, stop overthinking, don't worry about it.
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Man, you got it. High five.
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Like I don't want to talk about that. I want to actually find the roots of it.
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I want to try to pull it out of the roots with you, okay?
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So, let's start talking first off about why you overthink.
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You know, it kind of starts at childhood.
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Like we were just talking about.
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You know, when you were little, your brain basically had one job.
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And your brain still has one job.
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And it's to keep you safe.
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It doesn't care about your happiness, doesn't care about your success, it doesn't care about your satisfaction.
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It's not here to help you take action.
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It's here to keep you safe.
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And in childhood, safety, the word safety and thinking about it wasn't just physical.
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It was definitely physical safety.
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But it's also emotional safety.
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And we will be right back.
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Hey, I want to interrupt today's episode.
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To tell you about my sponsor.
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It is me, myself.
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If you didn't know, I obviously have some coaching programs outside of the podcast to help you learn and grow and become a better version of yourself.
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If you want to learn more about it, you can go to coachwithrob.com.
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Once again, coachwithrob.com.
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Check it out, and let's get back to the episode.
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And so, if your parents were inconsistent,
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or they were reactive, or even overreactive,
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you might have learned to kind of tiptoe around your parents.
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You might have learned to kind of walk on eggshells around your parents so that you didn't do something quote-unquote wrong.
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You might have learned, you know, that you were praised only when you succeeded.
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And maybe you learned to obsess over things.
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Or, you know, you felt like maybe you were a burden, or you felt like you were too much.
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Or you were too loud, or you were too emotional.
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And you learned to shrink in some sort of ways.
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And, you know, when you look at this, what happens is, you learn to over anticipate
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things that could happen, to kind of look into the future and say, okay, if I do this thing,
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this could happen, but also I could get yelled at, I could get made fun of, I could be reprimanded in some sort of ways.
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And you learn to stop and pause before you took action and
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think about it, which if you do it long enough,
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turns into overthinking.
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And so, in this case, when you get
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hurt or scolded or made fun of, or whatever it might have been,
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what is your nervous system do? Well, your nervous system learns to adapt.
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And it got really good at playing out every single possible scenario.
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Your brain and your nervous system are like, hold on, let's stop for a second.
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Don't let your true self out, don't be too loud, don't be too emotional, don't tell them what you actually fear feel.
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Don't don't dance in public, don't run around in the rain, whatever it might have been that happened.
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Let me pause for a second.
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Let me think about it.
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And it learned to to adapt and to start getting really good at thinking.
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And then that thinking turns into overthinking, and that thinking is turns in overthinking turns into over-overthinking.
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And you think to yourself unconsciously, if I can think through every possibility,
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I can stay safe. I can stay in control.
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And that's what you're really worried about.
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If I can stay in control of a situation, I can stay safe.
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And so, in psychology, this is what we call hypervigilance. It's a trauma response where your brain becomes wired to constantly scan for threats,
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even when there's actually no threats that are present.
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And so, overthinking is just basically your your younger child that's still trying to protect you in some sort of way.
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You know, like, let's say, I've heard of many different times where like,
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a child is having a great time and they're dancing in public and they're having a whole lot of fun.
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And then their dad is like, hey, you're being too loud, shut up.
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Or children are meant to be seen, not heard.
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And they learn, oh, I'm not accepted as I truly am. I need to be somebody different.
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And that inner child is still what's kind of running the show and trying to protect you.
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It is a survival strategy that is dressed up in adult clothes, basically.
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So then you think, well, what if I mess this up?
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Well, if I mess this up, there's going to be some sort of failure.
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Or there's going to be punishment that's going to pop up.
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Well, what if they're mad at me?
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Well, then I'm afraid of the fear of abandonment, or the fear of rejection, and fear of other people's opinions.
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You know, I need to find the perfect answer.
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If you think that in your head,
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maybe you have the fear of not being good enough or smart enough or being able to do the thing right.
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You know, if you think to yourself like, what if I choose wrong?
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I have the wrong choice.
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Well, you know, it might be the fear of losing love from other people, or it might be the fear of scrutiny, or the fear of approval.
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And so, I want you to kind of really let this sink in, like your current overthinking,
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right now as an adult, is your childhood self trying to keep you safe in adult scenarios.
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Think about that for a second.
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It's you stuck at seven years old, mentally at some place in your brain, trying to run adult scenarios and hopefully make things go well.
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You know, it's like taking a seven-year-old and be like, hey, drive the car.
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You're not going to let a seven-year-old drive a car.
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That's something that an adult should be doing, right?
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So, your current overthinking is your childhood self that is stuck in time,
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trying to keep you safe in current adult scenarios.
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And so, you know, if you zoom in and you actually look at what's happening in your brain,
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there's a few different parts that are lighting up. There's the amygdala.
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Which I talk about a lot, that's your fear center.
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That's where the fear comes from in your brain.
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That thing is scans for danger at all points in time.
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And then it's looking for it. What is wrong? What could I do wrong?
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What could be wrong? What dangers exist in my reality?
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And it triggers the fight, flight, freeze, or fawn response.
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And it gets hijacked easily when you're unsure, or you're stressed, or you're emotionally activated.
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Or you're noticing a pattern of something that may have happened before in the past.
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So that's the first thing that that kind of lights up.
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The second part of your brain that lights up is the prefrontal cortex, which is your rational brain.
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Which helps you plan and problem solve and make decisions.
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And so, it gets hijacked when your amygdala is in overdrive, so it's saying, oh my God, there's something to fear.
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Let me think about all of the ways I could possibly get myself out of this thing that there might be that I'm triggered by in some sort of way.
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And so, your amygdala is lighting up.
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Your prefrontal cortex is lighting up.
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And then the other part of your brain that's lighting up is called the default mode network.
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It is your brain's daydream circuit.
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It activates during rest, but in overthinkers, they've actually found that it kind of runs wild.
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And so, you think that you're resting, but your brain is just going crazy.
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So it's your fear centers are lighting up.
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Your planning centers and thinking centers are lighting up.
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And then your daydreaming centers are lighting up as well, which is you daydreaming into the future.
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If I do this, this could happen. If I do this, this could happen.
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And you start basically thinking about all of the problems that could possibly happen.
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Or all the things that you could do wrong, and then you start thinking about them.
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And you start overthinking them, and now you're stuck in this vicious circle of just nothing happening.
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But your brain is going a million miles a minute.
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And so, what's really interesting when you look inside of the brain of somebody who's an overthinker, is overthinking actually mimics productivity.
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So people who are overthinking actually feel like they're doing something helpful.
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Like they feel like they're protecting themselves in some sort of way.
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But what it does is it increases the cortisol in your body, which is the stress hormone, which then keeps your body in this loop.
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So it's like you have something that triggers you, you start stressing out about it, your brain starts to actually create more cortisol.
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That more cortisol creates more stress, which makes you more hyper aware, which makes you more likely to look out for things that could threaten you.
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And that's how this cycle of overthinking actually happens.
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So the more that you overthink, the more that you do this, and you start to do it over and over, it becomes a pattern.
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And it becomes a habit.
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And as it becomes a habit, your brain, and you do it more and more and more, your brain actually builds pathways for it.
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Which means the more that you do it, the more likely you are to do it again, and the more automatic it becomes.
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That's just a downward spiral, isn't it?
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That sounds like it sucks.
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And so, that's how it starts, that's how it happens in your current life.
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And that's how it's built inside of your brain.
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And so, let's talk about how to stop overthinking and and not gaslight yourself in the process.
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Uh, because stopping overthinking isn't like about flipping a switch.
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You have 20, 30, 40 years of patterns and neural pathways built up.
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This is about about changing it over time, and it's about rewiring how you feel safe in the world.
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Because once again, if you're 37 years old, and this comes from an original moment at seven years old.
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And obviously it has happened many times since then.
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You have 30 years of patterns and habits where you don't necessarily feel safe in the world.
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I want to talk about how to actually help yourself feel more safe.
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So the first thing, step number one, is what you need to do is you need to name what's really going on.
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What you need to do is ask yourself, what am I trying to protect myself from right now?
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Is it rejection? Is it being wrong?
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Is it being a failure? Is it being
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is it feeling shame or guilt? Is it being ostracized or judged by other people?
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You have to understand, if you're not doing something that you want to be doing,
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there's some sort of fear behind it.
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And so what you need to do is you need to find the fear.
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You need to bring it to the light.
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Because your overthinking is always just trying to protect you from something.
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So you're not crazy.
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What you're really just unconsciously trying to do is stay safe.
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Even if you consciously know that what you want to do is safe, unconsciously, there's a part of you that's like,
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no, no, no, remember when we were seven years old, and then nine, and then 10, and 12, and 14.
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All of these things happen, these could be happening in this moment.
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This is why you need to overthink and overplan.
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But you have to understand, at some point in time in your childhood, you did something.
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Maybe you got yelled at, you you felt like you're your parents' love was retracted from you.
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Or you were made fun of in class or something.
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And you didn't like it, so you learned to question yourself to protect yourself.
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So you see that?
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It's not something to battle, it's something that exists inside of you to protect you.
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And so what you want to do is you want to find the fear, and you want to bring the fear to the light.
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Fear that is brought to the light immediately has less power over you.
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That's one of the things that I found with so many people is that as I'm coaching them and I'm working through them,
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like, you know, if we're on a live in Mindset University and someone's saying, hey, I have trouble procrastinating.
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And I'm I'm overthinking.
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And I say, okay, what are you afraid of?
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They're like, I'm not really sure.
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And we find out what they're afraid of, and they they write it down and they talk about it.
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They realize it's never as bad as their brain actually makes it out to be.
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And so that's the first step is you really need to understand like and name what is it that's going on inside of your head.
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Step number two is to soothe your your nervous system before doing anything else.
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Like you cannot think clearly from a disregulated state.
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It's like when your emotions are high, your logic is low.
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So you need to calm yourself down first.
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It could take two minutes.
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You know, before any big decision, just do my favorite, and you don't you could do any type of breathing.
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It's just four, eight breathing.
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Breathe in for four seconds, breathe out for eight seconds.
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Breathe in for four seconds, in through the nose for four seconds.
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Out through the mouth for eight seconds.
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And then you can just shake your hands, shake your body, you can do some tapping.
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Get your fist and have your fist go all over your body.
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And you can tap out all of your muscles.
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Try to like get the cortisol out of your out of your muscles.
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You can splash cold water in your face.
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Um, you can go for a five-minute walk, you know, movement is a a nervous system reset.
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Basically what you're trying to do is you're just trying to change your state.
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You were in a fight or flight state.
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And you're trying to get yourself out of that state before you do anything else.
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So, you must get your nervous system out of that fight or flight, so you can think clearly again.
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So that's step number two.
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Soothe the nervous system, soothe it.
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Step number three is to externalize the chaos, right?
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Chaos is usually all in your brain.
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Like overthinking thrives in your head.
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So you've got to get it out.
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Got to get it out of your head.
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And so, when you get clear on these things, clear like the clarity behind what's going on,
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will usually strip it of its power.
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And so what I recommend is that you do a brain dump. You just get scrap piece of paper, a new sheet of paper, whatever it is.
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Whatever it is, you dump every thought, every fear, everything that's running through your head.
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Put it on paper, no filters.
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And put everything down.
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And then take another piece of paper, and you want to draw a line down the middle of it.
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And the left side, I want you to write down what I know is true.
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Like absolute truth.
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And on the right side, what you want to write down is what I'm assuming will happen or that I'm afraid of.
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So what I know is true on the left.
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On the right, what I'm assuming will happen or what I'm afraid of.
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Most of your fears are going to line up in that category.
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And so you're going, oh,
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first off, I'm just noticing that I'm just making a whole bunch of assumptions.
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And so what this does is this is this helps your prefrontal cortex
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re-engage and start sorting real data from fear stories.
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And a lot of times, once people put it all on paper and actually see it,
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I can't tell you how many times I've done this.
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Where I've had people take all of the chaos in their head and put it on paper.
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And they're like, oh,
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no, this is bullshit. Like I don't even believe this.
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Like this is ridiculous.
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And so, one of the things that's really, really important is actually put it on paper and externalize the chaos.
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Because you'll realize it's you'll get much more clear on it.
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And a lot of times it has a lot less power on you, uh, over you just by writing it down.
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So that's step number three.
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Step number four is to talk out loud to your inner protector.
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That overthinking voice that's going on in your head.
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Like I said, it's not your enemy.
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It's a scared part of you that's trying to protect you.
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It's the voice of that child that was wounded in your past in some sort of way.
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And doesn't want you to be your true self, and doesn't want you to to dance in the rain.
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Because you got in trouble for it when you were six years old.
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So you want to speak to it, like speak out loud to the inner protector.
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And you can say stuff like, hey, I see you're trying to protect me.
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I know you're scared.
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But I've got this now. Like I'm going to do X, Y, and Z.
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It's safe. I need you to chill out for a bit.
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And it's okay.
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It's not weird.
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You might think it's weird the first couple times.
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But it's not weird to talk to yourself out loud.
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You'll actually notice your nervous system starts to calm calm down.
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And this is called inner reparenting.
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Like giving yourself the emotional safety that you didn't get as a kid.
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And that you might have not gotten in that moment where there was a breakaway from your true self.
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And so, once you just see it as something that's trying to protect yourself,
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you don't see it as an enemy. It's not something that you need to be at battle with.
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It's just a scared part of you.
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It is a part of you.
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It will be there probably forever.
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It's just a scared part.
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And it's okay to be scared sometimes.
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But you just have to be to decide like right now, I'm going to be brave.
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So that's step number four.
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And then step number five is to build trust through micro actions.
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Like you don't.
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You don't overcome overthinking by thinking less.
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Or by thinking smarter.
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That's not really going to happen.
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You overcome it by acting more.
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In small consistent ways in the direction of the person of who you want to be.
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And every time that you make a choice to follow through to do it anyways, to let go of I'm not good enough.
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You prove to your nervous system that it's safe to step outside of your comfort zone.
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And that starts to show your nervous system, it's okay to do the things that we're afraid of.
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We're not going to die, maybe we can chill out a little bit.
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Action and taking action breeds clarity.
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Overthinking just breeds more and more confusion.
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So that's step number five. And then step number six, the last step.
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Just let it be messy.
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Like you're not going to stop thinking overnight.
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You're literally trying to rewire decades of things that have kept you safe.
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And so, it's going to be clunky.
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Let it be clunky.
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Let it be imperfect.
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And, you know, when you do something in the right direction, like celebrate your tiny wins.
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Look for tiny bits of data to prove that you're safe.
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That you're doing it right.
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So that you can see those and see, okay, it is I am safe.
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That you can do things that you're afraid of.
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You can see that you can step out of your comfort zone.
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It might be that you still spiraled out of control, but this time it was for five minutes instead of two hours.
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That's a win.
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You know, you made a decision to to do something without asking three different people.
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You you made your own decision.
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That's a win.
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You spoke up even when you were terrified and your voice was shaking.
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That's a win.
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Like every one of those moments is a new neural pathway proving to yourself that it's safe.
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Every one of those moments is healing in some sort of way.
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And so I want you to understand like,
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you're you're not broken because you're overthinking, you're brilliant.
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Like your overthinking brain, it's brilliant, and it learned to anticipate, to predict, to to avoid, to protect.
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All to keep you safe.
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But you're not in that old environment anymore.
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You know, you're not seven years old trying to decode your parents' emotions.
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You're not nine years old thinking that you're too loud or you take up too much space.
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You're not 13 years old anymore trying to get uh love by being perfect in some sort of way.
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Like you're an adult now.
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And so what you get to do is you get to choose a new pattern.
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So the next time that your brain kicks into overdrive, just gently ask it, like, what are you trying to protect me from?
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And then what do I want to believe instead?
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And then you pause, and you breathe, and you don't wait for permission, but you just talk to your old self and say, hey,
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I've got it from here. I'm going to be safe. We're going to do this together.
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And then you take one step in the right direction.
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And then slowly but surely, you'll start to repattern yourself.
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Hey, thanks so much for watching this video.
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Based off of what you've been watching recently, YouTube thinks that you should watch this video next.
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And if you want to make sure that you subscribe so you don't miss any more of these episodes, click this button right here.
Topics:overthinkingmindsetmental healthchildhood traumanervous systemhypervigilanceself-improvementemotional safetyfear of failureThe Mindset Mentor Podcast
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