Stop Overthinking by Asking for What You Need

If you are an overthinker then you are familiar with having thoughts whirl around your head as you work through all the ‘what ifs’, including many that are almost completely impossible, and none of which are good outcomes, because you don’t spend your time creating positive scenarios do you?

This makes you spiral as you imagine outcomes that are worse than anything that could actually happen, and means that you are in a state of anxiety about things that you have created in your own mind.  The good news is that you can stop this pattern with a simple step.  Identify what you need and ask for it.  And you can, can you not? I will illustrate what I mean with an example.

A friend of mine noticed that her partner was quite distracted and wasn’t making plans to do anything together with her as they discussed what events they had coming up over the next few weeks.  In her overthinking mind she started to worry that he was not happy with their relationship, found spending time with her to be a chore, and wasn’t giving her priority in his life. This then spiralled into her thinking about what would happen when their relationship ended, whether she would feel able to meet other people with a view to a relationship with someone else, how she would tell their children, what their finances would look like, who would get the dog, etc.  Over the course of a few days she became more and more distressed as she thought about this scenario, and became more withdrawn from communication with him as she tried to protect herself from the pain of rejection.

Except that he hadn’t rejected her.  When we spoke about this I suggested that she think about what she needed – did she need more information, did she need a conversation, did she need a break?  At the heart of it she needed to know whether he was unhappy in their relationship.  After some encouragement she asked him.  And discovered that he was really happy with his relationship with her, was completely unaware of her thoughts and feelings that things were falling apart, and had been distracted because he was exhausted after finishing a big project at work.  He had taken her quietness as her understanding that he needed some down time to recover, and had been completely oblivious to her distress.  Sound familiar?  If she had asked for what she needed earlier in the process, she would have saved herself a lot of distress and worry, and understood what he needed and how it impacted her.  Her sleep would definitely have been better!

Sometimes what you need is not an answer from a person but a piece of information for a work project, or a decision from a business about a contract.  Recognizing that this is what is needed can be enough to stop the overthinking as it helps you to understand what is within your control and what is out of your control.  If you can’t make a decision about something until you have that piece of information, then no amount of rumination at 3am is going to change the outcome.

Next time you find yourself stuck in the overthinking loop, try asking yourself ‘what do I need’ as a pattern interrupter, and say it out loud to help you move forward.