Source: Aleshyn Andrei/Shutterstock

Overthinking is miserable. Trapped in your own head, you may torture yourself for hours and sometimes days. Knowing where overthinking stems from and why it occurs can help you cope with it better. The first source may be interpersonal relationships. If you are a person who cares deeply about your relationships, you may overthink when interacting with a certain type of partner. The second involves your sense of self. You may be embarking on a career change, returning to school, or getting divorced. Whatever it may be, if it is a brand-new chapter in your life, it may ignite a period of significant overthinking. Third, you and many other people may suffer from a type of overthinking that can be described as “weird worries.” These are sometimes dark or crazy worries that creep into your head and camp out for a while, especially at night.

1. Interpersonal dynamics

You may be a person who pays close attention to how your actions and words impact loved ones. Not afraid to look in the mirror, you are conscientious and attempt to understand a loved one’s perspective. When you realize that you may have done or said something hurtful, you quickly seek to take responsibility and repair the rupture in the relationship. Although these are emotionally intelligent qualities that serve you well when you are interacting with a person who has the same gifts, they can go a bit sideways when you are dealing with an emotionally unavailable person.

An emotionally unavailable person is egocentric, which prevents them from understanding your viewpoint if it differs from theirs. In their mind, they are always right. In addition, their staunch and rigid defensiveness prevents them from looking inward and examining their flaws, selfish moments, and hurtful behaviors. Instead, they play the victim and label you the antagonist. This can be extremely confusing. Your reality clashes with your loved one’s reality and because you look at yourself, you wonder if you are in the wrong, even when you are not. The dynamic can cause a rash of overthinking and can be miserable. Take some time to evaluate the emotional safety of this relationship. It may be time to set some healthy boundaries.

2. Sense-of-self issues

You may be embracing a new phase of life. It may be healthy and positive, like a transfer across the country for your dream job, or it may be bittersweet, like a divorce or retirement from a field you are passionate about. Either way, this substantial life change does funky things to your sense of self. A huge life pivot forces you to shed small aspects of your identity. For example, during a job change, you leave your old title behind, as well as some work attachments that may be grounding and comforting. This strips your sense of self of some important stuff that used to anchor it. Although necessary, the departure from these things results in a temporarily wobbly self-esteem. The brief, but destabilizing phase can cause a surge of overthinking. For example:

• Am I doing the right thing?
• Am I cut out for this?
• Am I good enough?
• I feel like an imposter.
• Will I make it?
• What if I fooled myself into believing I could do this, but I can’t?

Although you may be consumed with self-doubt and are analyzing everything you do, it may be temporary. Your sense of self is actively re-consolidating with every stride you take towards your new endeavor. It takes time, but your sense of self will integrate the new in order to fill in the gaps that the old left behind. You will likely re-stabilize, and the overthinking may slow down.

3. Weird worries

Often at night, when there are fewer distractions, you may be consumed with weird worries. These are the thoughts that are sometimes bizarre and feel dark. For example, you suddenly worry about getting into a horrific car accident on the way to work the following day. Often you may wonder, “Where is this coming from?” The dark thoughts may make you feel like you are dark and it can be unsettling.

These gruesome thoughts may stem from past trauma. Although you may have processed this trauma and largely recovered from it, your brain has changed. The thing the human brain hates the most is being blindsided by an event that causes its world to crash in an instant. The experience is so distressing that it is hard for your mind to reconcile that anything at any moment can happen and turn your world upside down. So, there are moments when your brain attempts to predict it. That way it is not blindsided. So, every so often, it reminds you that, in this life, anything horrible can happen at any time and you have very little control.

Possibly the most helpful thing to do in this moment is to help your brain “change the channel.” Immediately think of something really appealing but kind of dreamy. For instance, if you won a kitchen remodel, how would you design your new kitchen? Or, if you inherited a large sum of money from a long lost and distant relative, what would you do with it? Perhaps you would buy a lake cottage, or a cabin in the mountains. It is OK to cancel out the dark thoughts with appealing and fun ones.

Overthinking is rough. However, understanding the reasons for it may help you know yourself better, provide reassurance that it may settle down in time, and have the confidence to recognize that it is not you, it is past trauma. You are human and our minds do funny things. You are not alone.