Inside the mind of an overthinker.

Overthinking is a side effect, or rather, symptom of depression and anxiety. All three go hand in hand. Once you experience one the other two aren't far behind. All three are a part of the mental illness family and I'm sure seeing that word, mental illness, caused you to raise an eyebrow. When you hear or think mental illness you think "crazy" right? Well when referring to a schizophrenic or bipolar diagnosis you're technically not far off but there's much more to the topic than just simply being "crazy". It's way deeper than that. 

Let me provide an example. You remember that time you got a text from that guy or girl you like and you immediately sent it to your best friend and said "oh my god idk what he/she means? Does he/she like me? And then you went on to spend the next thirty minutes, the next hour, the next however long trying to get to the bottom of this message you got? Congratulations, you now know what it's like to overthink something. Now imagine feeling that same feeling every day about everything all the time. Sounds exhausting right? Well it is. It's extremely exhausting, and draining, and frustrating and any other negative emotion you couple possibly attach it. To put it simply, it sucks. 

Trust issues are a major trigger for overthinking. If you find it hard to trust people fully or at all, it's easy to try and find lies in anything people say to you. The biggest trigger of all is fear. The fear of failing, fear of being hurt, fear of  feeling like you don't measure up to someone else's standards, or your own for that matter. 

One of the worst feelings in life is to constantly feel like you're being played with or lied to by everyone. No matter whether they gave you reason to doubt them or not somehow you always find yourself feeling like you're not being told everything you need to know in every situation you find yourself in. It's a lonely and miserable feeling always thinking to yourself "what am I missing?" "What are they not saying?". This is not something you can just stop either. It becomes a trained response after awhile. As soon as something happens your mind takes off at 100 MPH and goes for what seems like infinity. Not to mention the physical toll it takes on you. 

The emotions it invokes are so intense it literally drains you. Drains you of your overall mood, your appetite, your energy, your will. Anger, sadness, regret, confusion, frustration, sadness all become amplified. You become a prisoner inside your own mind with seemingly no way out. No matter how hard you try to remain calm and level headed but it just doesn't work. I've read there are ways to try and combat this behavior and to put it frankly it's easier said than done. Things like thinking of the positives, giving yourself a timeline in which to come to think about things and come to a decision, not second guessing. All sound good on paper but actually training yourself to use these methods is the real challenge. 

I'll give you a personal example. A few years back I found myself in a situation in which I knew I wasn't being given all the facts. Pieces of the story weren't adding up or making sense, the overthinking kicked in and sent me into detective mode. I drove myself nearly insane trying to find the answers I was so desperately seeking. Until that is, I went searching for those answers, and found EXACTLY what I was looking for. It's one thing to have an idea of the truth in your mind but to actually see it it's 100 times worse than any thought can ever be. I made  myself literally sick. It ruined me. I made a secret promise to myself to never let that happen to me again. Never to allow myself to get that far gone to put myself in that position ever again. And I haven't. 

At the risk of repeating myself on anything we'll end it here. Hope you appreciate the "behind the scenes" look into the mind of an overthinker. Probably a lot darker and deeper than you imagined it could ever be. But then again, so is life.