Overthinking is a common form of anxiety says psychologist Gwendoline Smith.
But there are ways to get it under control. Dr Smith offers practical ways to shut down the worry machine in our heads in The Book of Overthinking: How to Stop the Cycle of Worry.
The first thing that overthinkers experience is sleep disturbance, Dr Smith says.
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“All of the mental health conditions have a relationship with sleep.
“With schizophrenia you will see a sleep disturbance before an episode, with bipolar disorder you'll see no need for sleep prior to mania, with depression people tend to oversleep or wake up in a black hole at 4am.”
Chronic overthinkers are like to wake every two or three hours, she says.
“People will hit the pillow, then might go off to sleep quite quickly because they're exhausted. But then every couple or three hours, they're waking up and worrying about the subject or overthinking the subject if you like.
So, the sleep is never refreshing. Nobody wakes up thinking ‘Yeah! The batteries are recharged, what a fabulous night's sleep that was!’
“They wake up, they're burnt out, they're exhausted, it will affect mood.”
Anxiety is the epidemic from which depression flows, according to Dr Smith.
“I see depression as when the battery goes flat and high functioning people, or people with a lot to do, they're going to keep going …they keep going, keep going and they're running on empty.
“No sleep, it's not refreshing, running on empty, and then slowly but surely the battery goes flat. And that's when you start to see that neurological pathway into depression.”
Although there are exceptions the vast bulk of depression cases are the outcome of endless “anxiety-fueled, noon-constructive overthinking,” she says.
Lying awake at night and thinking is always catastrophic and negative, Dr Smith says.
“The filter’s always negative, and that's how it runs amok.
“I always make a big deal to talk about feelings are not facts, that people run away with a feeling, as if it's telling them the truth. Feelings are not telling you the truth, they are a reflection only of what you're thinking.”
This negative, feelings-based thinking is a called amygdala hijack, she says.
“What happens is someone says something to you like, ‘Oh get over yourself.’ And that reminds you, perhaps, of your father having said that to you when you were growing up. That will then trigger the emotional memory of how you felt as a child when dad was putting you down.
“So therefore, the response that you have in the here and now, when someone says that, goes backwards, collects the memory in the amygdala, which then - and this is how it works - which then hijacks the ability to rationally think, because the amygdala is where the fight-flight mechanism is.”
Once that is switched on the game is up, she says.
Gwendoline Smith Photo: http://www.gwendolinesmith.co.nz
“Bang! All we're prepared to do is run, jump, attack, fight flight, freeze. So, the oxygen that would be used to keep the temporal lobe tickety-boo, thinking rationally has now gone to the extremities. So, the temporal lobe is hijacked.”
Chronic worriers often have a mistaken belief that their worrying is on some level useful, Dr Smith says.
“Here’s the mythology - how am I going to A, prevent bad things from happening?
“And B, am I going to lose the edge on predicting bad things coming my way.”
Dr Smith says that is “superstitious bullshit”
“Worry is superstitious behaviour, it has no power to prevent, it has no power to predict. The only power it has is to give you a restless night's sleep, and on a bad day irritable bowel syndrome. It has no power what so ever.”
The way to alter such destructive patterns is to alter thinking, she says.
It’s not about replacing negative thoughts with positive thoughts, she says.
“It is not an adequate approach for someone to say, look into the mirror - like yourself, be at one with the universe, you know, you're beautiful, your soul is beautiful to people who are negative thinking and worrying. I mean that stuff's just rubbish, it’s just nonsense.”
Cognitive science is about taking the thinking, identifying where it is distorted, and replacing it with “factually evidence-based, rational processing.”
It is important to remember, she says, that thinking is just us talking to ourselves.
“Our internal dialogue, that process is actually referred to as neuro brain linguistics, the language of thought. And so when you've got this going on, it's all negative, that's you talking to you, and your mood and your well-being is going to be a function of what you're saying to yourself.”
Therefore, avoid using words like “should” she says, because it is associated with guilt and resentment.
“If you're constantly saying should, should, should, should, should, you’re never really going to be able to just chill out.”
