The Psychology of Overthinking, Rumination, Worry, and Intrusive Thoughts

And what I want to focus on today is something that I think is...

It's interesting because I come across this a lot in doing diagnostics when people talk about, you know, symptomatology.

And I want to focus on, you know, the whole concept like overthinking and rumination and intrusive thoughts where I think a lot of us can say, you know, we've had this conversation.

And then at some point we spend the rest of the day thinking.

having that conversation again in our heads, like, you know, why did I say that? What did she mean by that? You know, is he angry with me? And then this, you know, five minute conversation becomes five hours of our life where, you know, we'll wait until we go to bed.

You know, you're exhausted, you want to sleep, but then your brain decides, all right, perfect.

Now's the time to review every unresolved problem in your life.

That's what we sometimes call when the night vultures come.

And I think the more desperately we tell ourselves, just stop thinking about this, the louder the thought seems to become.

And I want to talk to you, why as human beings do we do this? Because I think we casually call these experiences overthinking, but Psychologically, they're really not, I would say, necessarily the same thing and want to kind of differentiate between like productive thinking and reflection, worry, rumination, intrusive thoughts, obsession, worry.

reassurance seeking, hypervigilance, and, you know, attentional dysregulation.

Because those distinctions really matter because the solution depends on what kind of thinking someone is actually experiencing.

And an important point, thing that i want people to remember is um a thought can feel extremely important without actually being useful and your brain's insistence that you continue thinking about something that doesn't necessarily mean that more thinking will solve it and ironically sometimes thinking um is the solution.

And sometimes thinking has become part of the problem.

And overthinking is, you know, it's a useful expression, but it's, it's definitely not, you know, a diagnosis.

There's, there's no overthinking disorder, but, you know, repetitive thinking is, It does occur across many different psychological conditions and also in people without psychiatric conditions.

Maybe you can see it in like anxiety, OCD, panic, depression.

You know, there's productive thinking, and that's what most of us, I think, strive for in our daily lives, in our relationships, in work, and just day-to-day life.