“Nothing can harm you as much as your own thoughts unguarded.” – Buddha
The destructive habit of overthinking causes more harm than good.
All of us are sometimes guilty of it, but imagine a life where you constantly overthink every single aspect of it. Sounds stressful, right?
Welcome to the mind of an overthinker. A place where stories of imagination are created, and where nothing seems to make sense.
Like an open ocean, you never know when a sea of peaceful sailing will turn into an untamed vastness of water.
This mind is like a machine that never stops. You can’t turn it off, you can’t tone it down.
It creates scenarios, plays pictures from the past, and it imagines the future (and trust me, it never seems positive).
Overthinking is like a stressful job that you can’t quit no matter how hard you try and eventually, you decide to give up and go with the flow.
However, is it really this hard to be an overthinker? Let me introduce you to the mind of one…
We overthink even the smallest problems or challenges and we do that until we give them the role of a huge undefeatable monster with superpowers.
For example, you went out on a date with a guy and you two had a great time. You came home, got undressed, and lay in bed.
Then you remembered the moment when he told you that funny joke.
You started laughing and made a tiny little sound that lasted for a whole microsecond.
Hmm… What did he think about that? He must’ve hated it, and he will probably never call you because of it. How could you have been such a fool?
From that tiny little issue, you’ve come to the conclusion that dating isn’t for you.
Also, negative past experiences that made us feel embarrassed will be replayed in our head a number of times.
Each and every time, we will try to come up with a solution to how it could’ve gone differently if we hadn’t reacted the way we had.
What if, what if, what if… The favorite start to any question by every overthinker.
It doesn’t matter if the embarrassing moment happened five years ago, it will still haunt us and be a source in our recollection of memories for a long time.
Besides the negative issues, we tend to overthink even the positive ones which happened at various points in our life.
Remember that amazing trip you had with your friends? Sea, sun, beach, parties, laughing till your stomach hurt!
However… That moment when two of your friends left you alone for fifteen minutes because they went to the department store without you must’ve been because you said something stupid, and they couldn’t listen to you anymore, right?
Overthinkers turn positives into negatives, and we can do that to every single experience we ever go through.
Besides overthinking about anything and everything, we also tend to apologize a lot. We are vulnerable and don’t want to hurt others.
In the head of an overthinker, conflict is equal to a nuclear catastrophe so we will do anything we can just to avoid any kind of misunderstanding.
We usually adapt to the opinions of others as we feel that expressing different views may hurt other people.
Otherwise, this would raise our anxiety and it would leave us thinking about it for days.
We will try to smooth over all of the rough patches so no one gets hurt or upset.
Of course, when we say ‘no one’, we mean ‘no one else’.
Our feelings don’t really matter at that point, as our own desires are always less important than those of others.
We never express our disagreement as it is more important to us for other people to feel happy and satisfied.
Overthinkers always need a second opinion as everything we decide by ourselves doesn’t seem good enough.
Shopping alone is a task in itself as we are not really sure if those jeans fit us.
Instead of listening to our mind and buying them because we feel good in them, we would rather leave them and come back tomorrow with a friend so they can help us decide.
A second opinion is a must as our mind can’t focus and make a decision because too many ideas and thoughts are going through our head.
Besides worrying about the past, overthinkers also worry about the future. So, for instance, you applied for a new job and you are waiting for a response.
In your head, you’ve already created a number of thoughts and arguments about why you won’t be accepted.
After that, you create numerous reasons why you won’t be good enough for the job even if you do get accepted.
When you’re done with those thoughts, you then create reasons why you will be fired.
All of this increases your anxiety and blocks your mind, which prevents you from thinking straight.
Maybe one of the worst things about being an overthinker is the way other people treat us.
Because we are so submissive and let other people decide for us, overthinkers are treated as insecure and unconfident.
This is hard as you are never seen as enough. You avoid conflicts and don’t want to hurt anyone, but instead, you let other people hurt you.
Because of the way other people see you, it is hard to show them who you really are as your personality is hidden deep down.
Even though you always want everything to turn out perfectly, you should keep in mind that this will never happen.
Your job is simply to give your 100% as you can’t influence anything or anyone else.
Don’t beat yourself up because you are an overthinker. It is the way you are and you should embrace yourself.
Like everything else in the world, people come in different versions and have different personalities, and no one will ever be the same as others.
Don’t spend your nights wishing you could be like someone else as you never know what others are going through. Instead, focus on the beautiful complexity of your personality and try to accept every single piece of it.
It may seem like a lot and it may be hard from time to time, but as soon as you accept who you are, things will start to work out on your behalf.
The mind of an overthinker is a complicated place where random thoughts keep popping up.
It seems like millions of browser tabs are open inside your mind but you still manage to find your way through.
Overthinkers are strong creatures who have a golden soul.
They just need to be reminded that everything will be okay and that their complexity is a beautiful feature that not a lot of people have.
Embrace your beauty! You are a pearl hidden deep down under the sea, and you just need to treat yourself the way you deserve.
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