Overthinking: When your mind won't switch off

An ordinary evening

It's just after eleven. You're in bed, the light is off, and you're actually tired. Still, the meeting from this afternoon is playing in your head. That sentence you said – was it too blunt? The look your colleague gave you afterwards. What she must be thinking about you now. Then your mind moves on: to the email you haven't answered, to the thing with your mother, to the question of whether you're in the right job at all. You turn over. You resolve to stop thinking about it now. Two minutes later you're back in the meeting.

If that sounds familiar: you're not alone, and it isn't a sign that something is wrong with you. Overthinking is one of the most common reasons people come to counselling. And it has a logic of its own that is worth understanding – because that logic explains why the usual remedies so often don't work.

What's happening here, seen through ACT

From the inside, overthinking feels like problem-solving. Your mind presents a question – "Did I get that wrong?" – and you set about working on it. That makes sense at first. Our mind is a machine built to spot and solve problems, and in the outside world it works brilliantly: flat tyre, change the tyre.

With inner questions the same machine runs on empty. "What does she think of me now?" has no answer you could find. Neither does "Am I good enough?" But your mind doesn't notice. It treats the uncertainty like a flat tyre and keeps working. Every round feels as if the solution is close – and only ever delivers the next round.

There's a second mechanism on top. The thoughts in an overthinking loop don't arrive as guesses; they arrive as facts. "I embarrassed myself" doesn't appear as one of many possible readings, but as a description of what happened. When a thought sits so close to you that you can no longer tell it apart from reality, you respond to it as if it were reality: with shame, with tension, with the urge to check the situation once more. And that checking is the next loop.

And finally: overthinking often serves a purpose, even though it feels unpleasant. As long as you're replaying the meeting in your head, you don't have to feel the actually uncomfortable feeling directly – the uncertainty, the shame, perhaps the fear of not belonging. Overthinking keeps you busy. It's a way of avoiding the feeling by thinking around it. In the short term that's a relief; in the long term it's the reason the feeling doesn't shrink.

Seen this way, overthinking is less a thinking error that needs correcting than a pattern combining three things: a question without an answer, thoughts that feel like facts, and a feeling that would rather be bypassed than felt.

Why "just don't think about it" doesn't work

You've probably tried this many times: pushing the thought away, distracting yourself, telling yourself it isn't that bad. Sometimes it helps for a few minutes. Mostly the thought comes back, often louder than before.

That isn't a lack of discipline. To not think a thought, your mind has to keep checking whether you're thinking it – and to do that, it has to think it. The attempt to get rid of it keeps it alive. That's why ACT doesn't start with the content of the thoughts, but with your relationship to them.

Two exercises for everyday life

1. Naming the thought

The next time you notice you're stuck in a loop, try putting the thought into one sentence and giving it a small prefix: "I'm having the thought that I embarrassed myself." Or one step further: "I notice that I'm having the thought that I embarrassed myself."

It sounds clumsy, and that is exactly the point. The sentence slips a tiny gap between you and the thought. "I embarrassed myself" is a fact. "I'm having the thought that…" is an event in your mind that can come and go. Nothing about the thought changes – but you're no longer standing inside it, you're standing slightly to one side. From there it's easier to decide whether you want to follow it right now.

If you like, give the loop a name as well: "Ah, the meeting story again." Recurring themes become recognisable that way – and what you recognise has less power.

2. Back to your feet

Overthinking happens almost exclusively in the past or the future. So the simplest counter-move is to bring your attention into the present for a moment – not to chase the thought away, but to put something alongside it.

A version that works anywhere: feel your feet on the floor. Notice exactly where the contact is, how the pressure is distributed. Then five things you can see right now, without judging them. Then three sounds. That takes a minute. Your mind will keep talking the whole time – that's fine. You're just no longer listening with your full attention.

Then comes the step that actually matters: ask yourself what you wanted to do in this moment. Sleep. Talk to someone. Finish the task. And then do a small part of it – with the thought in tow, not once it has gone.

When counselling makes sense – and when psychotherapy is the better path

Counselling is a good place if you notice that certain themes keep taking hold, you want to understand the patterns behind them and develop a way of dealing with them that holds up in everyday life. Together we look at what your loops are actually about, which feelings sit underneath them and what you'd rather be doing instead. The exercises above are a start; in counselling they get tailored to your concrete situations.

Psychotherapy is the better path if overthinking is part of a persistent low mood, if it revolves around thoughts of harming yourself, or if it comes with pronounced anxiety, weeks of sleeplessness or noticeable withdrawal. That's not a question of "bad enough", but of the right place to turn: psychological counselling is not medical treatment and doesn't replace it. If, during our introduction or in the course of counselling, I get the impression that you'd be better supported elsewhere, I'll tell you openly – and help where I can with finding it.