What If Overthinking Isn't the Problem?

One of the most common things I hear from clients is, ‘I can’t stop overthinking.’ They tell me that their minds never seem to switch off. Their internal life consists of analysing conversations long after they have ended. They replay situations from days, weeks and sometimes even years ago. They imagine possible futures, prepare for every outcome. This part of them is searching endlessly for certainty. It’s something that I have real experience of too, perhaps we all have.

When this part of us is around, when it is active within us, we can become exhausted and desperate for it to stop. It’s painful, it’s debilitating and it can ruin the quality of our lives. Overthinking can feel relentless and more than anything, it pulls us completely away from the present moment (where all our power is) and leaves us trapped inside our own heads. We lie awake at night, our overthinking part keeps us tossing and turning or just rigid in our beds.

Interestingly, although the part that overthinks is very active and sometimes doesn’t let us get a whiff of peace, it’s rarely the problem, there is usually an underlying issue and becoming curious about this can help. Within the Internal Family Systems (IFS) modality, we understand that our thoughts, emotions, and behaviours are connected to different parts of us and that each part has developed for a reason and that every part is attempting to help us in some way. I think that’s worth repeating - that every single part (or emotion, however negative it feels) is doing its best to help us, that that is its intention. This can feel very weird when we first hear it, I know.

When we begin to look at overthinking through this lens and bring curiosity to the forefront instead of condemnation (a part of us that can be angry or frustrated with the overthinking part), something interesting happens. Instead of asking, ‘How do I make this stop?’, we begin to ask, ‘What is this part trying to do for me?’ I am not going to pretend that this is easy to do at 3am when you are lying awake in bed ruminating on all the things that have happened throughout your life that have been painful or punishing yourself for something you said or did 20 years ago, relitigating the past, and in fact, that’s not the time to do it.

But this question, when we ask it, changes everything. The reason is that when I sit with clients and support them to get to know their overthinking parts, it is clear that this part is not trying to make life difficult but that it is trying to protect another, often much younger, part that is wounded.

Our overthinking parts truly believe that if they think hard enough, plan carefully enough or analyse thoroughly enough, that they can prevent pain, disappointment, rejection, failure, embarrassment or loss. They are working very hard to create safety because safety is certainty.

Sadly, it’s a universal truth that certainty is something that life rarely offers us and so the overthinking part works overtime in its attempt to create it even though it is impossible to achieve. It revisits conversations looking for clues. It scans for mistakes and rehearses future scenarios. It searches for the perfect answer, the perfect decision, the perfect response - it wants to get it right. But there is no perfect answer, no perfect protection from the uncertainties of life, nor is there a way to change the past.

The work then consists of finding out what would happen if their overthinking part stopped doing its job, finding out what concerns it has around the role that it plays in trying to keep us safe. It’s then that other emotions begin to emerge, perhaps anxiety, sadness or vulnerability, perhaps a fear that has been carried for a very long time. What always becomes clear is that the overthinking part is always standing guard over something else.

Finding out what would happen if the overthinking part didn’t work so hard doesn’t mean that overthinking suddenly becomes comfortable. The thoughts may still come. The urge to analyse, plan or seek certainty may still be there. But understanding changes something. When we begin to see overthinking as a part that is trying to protect rather than punish us, we stop fighting ourselves quite so fiercely. Instead of becoming consumed with making the overthinking stop, we become interested in what it is protecting and why it believes it has to work so hard.

And it is there, beneath all the analysing and rehearsing and searching for answers, that we often discover something much more vulnerable. A fear, a hurt, a loneliness, a belief that has been carried for far too long.

The goal was never really to eliminate the overthinking. The goal was to understand it. Because when a part finally feels seen, heard and understood, it often no longer has to work quite so hard. And in that space, something else begins to emerge. Not certainty, because life can never promise us that, but a deeper trust in ourselves and a little more compassion for the part that has been trying, all along, to keep us safe.