5 Ways Stoicism Will Help You Overcome Overthinking

In its simplest terms, overthinking is applying too many interpretations to a situation. These interpretations are our natural emotions, judgments, and imagination. If we are unaware of these reactions, we can become lost in the past, the future, or fantasy. We lose our ability to feel peace, be present, and act from our best selves in any situation life throws at us.

Do we ever question where this automatic, reactive interpretation of events comes from? How many times have we actually got it wrong, following what our emotions pulled us to believe? We often suffer the whiplash of poor decisions or letting our lives pass us by without acting as the best version of ourselves. This article aims to reverse that habit.

We suffer more in imagination than in reality.

Seneca

Stoicism offers many solutions to unlearning an overthinker’s mentality. Firstly, we can choose to test these thoughts and hold them to the light, disregard interpretations, use their opportunities to affirm our character, visualise alternate pathways, or act without analysing them altogether. This article is for people who overthink and struggle to separate emotions from reality. A thought can ruin our whole day, but why do we act on it or let ourselves suffer because of it? Just as true as choosing to be hurt or consumed by a thought, we have the same choice whether to be hurt at all.

1. Test Your Interpretations

Choose not to be harmed – and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed – and you haven’t been.

Marcus Aurelius

Think of a memory or fantasy in your mind that makes you feel negative emotions. Now, remove any opinions, interpretations, and judgments you have added to that scenario. What is left? Is it as scary, painful, or upsetting if a situation is absent of your interpretations? Interpretations create expectations, and the pressure of expectations is the true cause of our unhappiness.

I know this because I have suffered from feelings of retroactive jealousy. These are feelings of jealousy from someone’s past experiences, which are entirely separate from you. Reminiscing over their past romantic partner made me uncomfortable. The pain of someone else being with my partner at the time hurt deeply, so I acted on it. This led to arguments that only existed because of my overthinking. There was no resolution because you cannot solve an irrational emotion with logic.

I held my interpretations to the light with curiosity rather than judgment. I found the cause was not her actions; it was my insecurity. Insecurity is only resolved within us and can be relieved by building our self-confidence. If you allow yourself the freedom to be exactly as you are, you also give other people the freedom to be as they are. Therefore, if I accept all my flaws and strengths as I see them, there is no more expectation that my partner will be anything other than who they are too. The feelings of jealousy become weightless because I feel confident in my own character to be enough in the relationship.

Once we realise an event only has meaning if we allow it to, we can also relieve that meaning if it is not helpful. Overthinking can be a symptom of hidden causes beneath our emotional reactions. We can find if we look at our interpretations with curiosity. Another person will have the same experience as me, but not feel jealous. Therefore, the choice is whether to feel jealous at all, and that interpretation was because I needed to heal myself first.

2. See Things Only As They Are

Truth is not what you want it to be; it is what it is. And you must bend to its power or live a lie.

Miyamoto Musashi

If we strip away everything that is subjective to a circumstance, like an opinion, judgement or interpretation, we are left simply what is there. This process is using observation over perception, which Miyamoto Musashi in The Book of The Five Rings applied. Observation empties the mind, leaving only what is objectively important in this moment.

Emptying your mind is emptying all of your personal biases and interpretations from a situation. Instead of a high stakes interview, you are left with a chat between two humans. Instead of a past that upsets you, you are left with an entirely obsolete event that happened, like the way the moon rises in the evening. Instead of running through future scenarios, you are left with nothing, and that’s entirely freeing.

Seeing things as they are alleviates the pressure you were complicit in adding in the first place. Perception is only your reaction to something based on past experiences and predictive functions in your brain. These are passive, prejudiced, and biased, unconsciously or not. If you add perspective to a situation, you are seeking truth, presence, and honestly relief.

3. Overthinking is A Powerful Opportunity To Prove Who You Really Are

A blazing fire makes flame and brightness out of everything that is thrown into it

Marcus Aurelius

In certain overthinking frenzies, you can miss the opportunity to catch the impression, test it and disregard it. Sometimes the emotion feels so powerful you cannot apply perspective right away. Sometimes you are hit in the chest with a tsunami of pain, envy or worry… Another option is actually using the fire in your chest to prove you are not what you fear, but what you are.

The stoics call this ‘Amor Fati’, meaning ‘Love Fate’. Marcus Aurelius said, like a fire which cannot not burn all of its fuel becomes weaker, so does a person who cannot stomach everything he eats. If we cannot use our thoughts, then we become weaker from missing that opportunity to prove your good character.

You can be initially swept by an emotion, but you still have the power to channel it into proving who you really are. This is an actively defiant, aggressive charge which in its correct place, reinforced my character rather than poisoned it. That wave of emotion that hits you is so strong it can give you an intense fury of energy. You can stand in its face and say ‘I am going to spite this feeling, by using it to prove who I choose to be’.

If you can stomach a blow from your thoughts and actively defy it, you are not being consumed by it, but have used its opportunity to prove who you are. You can act with grace and have that fire in your chest. This fire does not burn up your good character, but ignites it further with intense fury.

What would have become of Hercules do you think if there had been no lion, hydra, stag or boar – and no savage criminals to rid the world of? What would he have done in the absence of such challenges? Obviously he would have just rolled over in bed and gone back to sleep. […] What would have been the use of those arms, that physique, and that noble soul, without crises or conditions to stir into him action?

Epictetus

4. Apply The Other Person’s Perspective

You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.

Marcus Aurelius.

Put yourself in the shoes of the other person. Using my previous example, how would you react if you were confronted with that retroactive jealousy interpretation. You would feel confused, judged and guilty, for something that is irrelevant and meaningless to begin with. If you apply perspective instead of perception, you apply better ways of thinking which are founded in understanding.

Memento Mori is the coldest but most potent stoic mantra that inspires finding new perspective. Meaning ‘Remember Death’, the use of our lives in this way is such a waste of our insurmountable odds of even being here, is justification enough to separate yourself from influences that poison your reality.

What if you did die tonight, next week, at the end of the year? What if the person you were overthinking did? How would that change how you think, how you act, or what was truly important in this moment? We can never truly guarantee we will be alive tomorrow, neither will our loved ones, so use that temporary and fragile reality, to act with virtue. Apply Memento Mori, and emotions from your overthinking will melt away into gratitude and clarity.

5. Action Over Thought

If we lock ourselves in a room for 4 hours and try to think our way out of problems, sometimes we may succeed, but others we only make our problems worse. Sometimes you cannot think your way out of overthinking, but you can act in the right way away from your overthinking.

There are times to continue mastering your thoughts, but there are others where action is far more potent in providing respite. If no matter how much you apply perspective, reasoning, fuel to your fire, you are still consumed, action is going to help unravel the knot rather than tighten it.

Exercise would be my number one action when I cannot reason my way out of a thought chain reaction. People like to take cold showers, see a friend, go for a long walk or watch a film. All of these require distraction from your mind, but creates a positive feedback loop from caring for yourself even in this feeling, loosening a grip that is woven well.

You may resolve the overthinking by simply doing something else. Other times you can come back to it with a new lease of energy by giving yourself that productive break. The stoics were always at peace in knowing there is always something you can do, even in things outside of your control.

Overthinking is a Habit That Can Be Unlearned

As you can see there are many vehicles to help you take the power back from your overthinking using stoicism. You can hold it up to the light and test it, you can strip away interpretations all together, you can use it to flame a stronger character, visualise new perspectives, and you can move forward by acting.

Overthinking is just a habit like any other. The only difference between a mellow and a neurotic person, are the patterns of thought they are familiar with. The purpose of this blog is to use stoicism to inspire the fact you have control over your happiness, because things are only bad if you add that meaning to it. Even in an emotional overwhelm from overthinking, there is always something you can do…