Overthinking changes the structure and connectivity of the brain leading to mood disorders therefore it can lead to mental illnesses such as anxiety, stress, and depression. Moreover, it can decrease your energy to focus and can affect your problem solving and decision making power.
"Overthinking can affect how you experience and engage with the world around you — preventing you from making important decisions, keeping you from enjoying the present moment and draining you of the energy you need to handle daily stressors," explains Dr. Fowler.
Cortisol is the main villain who creates unhealthy overthinking and is released in the hypothalamus – a region very near to the centre of your brain.
Overthinking is not a recognized mental disorder by itself. But research has found that it's often a symptom of other mental health conditions, including: Depression. Anxiety disorders.
While overthinking itself is not a mental illness, it is associated with conditions including depression, anxiety, eating disorders and substance use disorders. Rumination can be common in people who have chronic pain and chronic illness as well, taking the form of negative thoughts about that pain and healing from it.
Overthinking is commonly associated with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), says Duke. GAD is characterized by the tendency to worry excessively about several things. “Someone can develop GAD due to their genes. Or it could be personality factors like the inability to tolerate uncertainty in life.
Chronic worrying is not permanent. It's a mental habit that can be broken. You can train your brain to look at life from a different perspective. To overcome overthinking, Pittman recommends you replace the thought.
It's a common stereotype that is often humoured, but it turns out there is actually scientific backing to it. A study reported in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease has confirmed that women overthink more than men do, due to their brains having more activity.
Overthinking can put you under constant stress and stress can increase levels of cortisol, which can wear down your brain's ability to function properly. It can even kill brain cells and reduce the size of the brain.
Hyper-Rationality is a trauma response and coping strategy. Overthinking, over-analyzing, and over-rationalizing are coping strategies that we learned early on to help us make sense of an unpredictable environment that at some point made us feel unsafe.
Overthinking strikes all of us at some point, but if it goes unchecked and unresolved, overthinking can certainly morph healthy relationships into toxic relationships. If you fall victim to your thoughts and allow them to go too far, they can end up driving a wedge of distrust between you and other people in your life.
Take, for example, ADHD. While most people associate ADHD with hyperactivity and impulsivity, it can also manifest in more subtle ways, such as through intrusive thoughts and overthinking.
Being nervous shows you care about the outcome. Once the event is over, anxious thoughts usually disappear. Overthinking is when you continue to worry. You may think you are just problem-solving, but it's actually far less helpful than your brain would have you believe.
If you have anxiety, medication can help because the medicines used for anxiety alter the chemicals in your body and brain, reducing symptoms, and often helping you calm down and focus on other things.
While both mental health conditions involve repetitive worrying, people with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) often engage in unwanted and repetitive behavior in response to their worry. People with anxiety, however, tend to overthink their worry, but don't act in specific responsive manners.
"Frequent racing thoughts may be related to anxiety disorders, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), trauma, or other mental health issues that need exploring," says Fabrett.
Oftentimes, signs of overthinking are usually linked to mental health disorders like depression and anxiety. Regardless of whether these thought patterns are ruminations about the past or worries about the future, overthinking refers to a constant loop of thoughts that don't seem to have a resolution.
No. Overthinking isn't thinking, it's having the same thought and never moving on. It's unhealthy. Intelligence is practically the total opposite of overthinking.
Suffering from severe fear, anxiety, or depression. Unable to form close, satisfying relationships. Experiencing terrifying memories, nightmares, or flashbacks. Avoiding more and more anything that reminds you of the trauma.
The Dysregulated Post-Trauma Brain
Unexpected rage or tears, shortness of breath, increased heart rate, shaking, memory loss, concentration challenges, insomnia, nightmares and emotional numbing can hijack both an identity and a life.