Why Overthinking Can Feel Impossible to Switch Off

It's twenty to midnight and the house has finally gone quiet. You're lying in the dark with your phone, looking again at a message you sent a friend at lunchtime. She replied with a thumbs up and nothing else. You've looked at it more times than you'd like to admit, going over whether yours sounded a bit off, whether she's just busy or whether she's still upset about last week. You know it's probably nothing. Knowing that doesn't seem to help at all.

And once your mind gets going, it rarely stays with one thing. It drifts to something your manager said in Tuesday's meeting, then to whether your mum sounded tired on the phone. By the time you check the clock again it's nearly one, and you're more awake than when you turned the light off.

When people talk to me about overthinking, they often sound a little embarrassed, as if it's something they ought to have sorted out by now. "I know I'm doing it," they'll say. "I just can't make it stop." Most people who overthink know full well that they're doing it. Being told to stop, even when you're the one saying it, doesn't tend to get very far.

Why it's so hard to put down

Overthinking usually feels like it's doing something useful. If you go over the conversation one more time, maybe you'll work out what went wrong. If you picture every way tomorrow could go, maybe you'll be ready for whatever happens. It feels a lot like being responsible, and that's what makes it so hard to walk away from. Stopping halfway can seem almost careless, as though you'd be leaving something important unattended.

The trouble is that it hardly ever gets anywhere. When you think a problem through, you usually land somewhere, even if it's only deciding there's nothing more you can do tonight. Overthinking keeps going back over the same few questions, and each time round leaves you a bit more tired and no more sure than before. Late at night it tends to get louder, partly because there's nothing else to fill the space and partly because there's nothing you can do about any of it until morning.

What it takes out of you

From the outside, overthinking doesn't look like much. You're just lying there or folding the washing. Inside, it can be one of the most tiring things you do all day and one of the hardest to explain to anyone. A lot of people tell me the worst part is how much they miss while it's going on. You can spend a whole afternoon with friends and come home barely remembering it, because part of you was replaying something you said when you first walked in.

It finds its way into relationships too. Some people catch themselves checking in more than they'd like ("Are you sure you're not annoyed with me?") or rewriting a two-line text five times before they send it. The relief when someone says "of course not" is real, but it rarely lasts. Before long there's something else to go over.

That sounds exhausting. Your mind has been doing a lot of extra work, often for years, on top of everything else you do in a day.

What might be underneath it

I'm often curious about what the overthinking is trying to make sure of. When we slow it down in a session, there's usually a worry sitting under all the noise. Often it's a fear of having upset someone or of getting something wrong and it being your fault. Once you can see that worry, a lot of the late-night questions start to make more sense.

Sometimes the thinking is doing another job as well. As long as you're working something out, you don't have to stop and feel it. Going over the message again is, in a strange way, easier than sitting with the sadness of maybe having hurt a friend. Or with not knowing either way. At least the thinking feels like you're doing something.

You can know a worry is out of proportion and still feel it in your whole body. Usually that means it has touched on something that matters a lot to you, like being a good friend, being liked or not letting anyone down.

If you notice the same kinds of worries coming back night after night, it might be worth wondering what they have in common. What is your mind trying so hard to look after?

Letting it soften a little

I don't think the aim is to switch your mind off completely. Most people can't, and trying hard usually makes it louder. For some people, it starts with noticing when they've come back to the same question for the third time and saying to themselves, kindly, "I've been here already." Not arguing with the thought, only noticing that it's back.

Others find it helps to say the worry out loud to someone who isn't caught up in it, whether that's a friend or a counsellor. Something that feels enormous at midnight can sound quite different once you've said it to another person.

Some nights your mind still won't settle, and that's alright. It doesn't mean you're getting this wrong. Usually it just means something matters to you, or you've had more on your plate than usual lately. You don't have to finish every thought before you're allowed to rest. Whatever it is can wait until the morning, and you can come back to it then, with some sleep behind you, if it still needs thinking about.