I have a confession to make. I am a chronic over-thinker.
I have a love-hate relationship with the term “over-thinker”, primarily because I think the term is often used discouragingly. No one should be afraid to think harder about a problem or issue. However, there are times where thinking more just won’t help.
Over-thinking is not just about, as social media would have you believe, how many negative outcome scenarios you can think of before you go on a date. It’s also, about meta-thinking. Thinking about each thought as it comes.
Social media loves the idea of the over-thinker. People are anxious. Anxiety sounds okay when it’s attributed to just thinking a little more than usual. However, I’d argue there are few people who actually over-think. I’ve seen people tagged in over-thinking memes and these are some of the most shallow people I’ve met.
I don’t want this post to become an example of the No True Scotsman fallacy. Nor do I intend to be positing how cool I am by being an over-thinker. You will know by the end of this post if you really do over-think. Truth be told, everyone does once in a while. The chronics of us, however, have to deal with the double edged sword every day.
Why I Hate Being an Over-thinker
It’s a tough thing to say you hate something about yourself. Especially when doing so publicly. But hey, I pledged to be honest. So, I will.
When you experience something, you tend to receive a stimulus and attach some kind of judgement to it. If you control these judgements, you control how you feel.
The difference between thinking — something you do all the time, without even thinking about it — and over-thinking, is that the over-thinker will then question that judgement. Is this really how I ought to think about this? Will this way of thinking bring me closer to my goals? If everyone thought like this does it make the world a better place? Why does this way of thinking make me feel this way?
For the over-thinker, it never ends.
Given many of the questions asked are unanswerable, we become frustrated. In fact, if the root cause analysis is unsuccessful, it is torturous. We think of ourselves as analytical, so when our analytical faculty fails we feel we have failed in a fundamental way.
Sometimes not knowing the answer to those questions is paralysing. We get stuck. We can’t move on without solving it. It’s all consuming and the only way out is through.
The Emotional Dagger
The over-thinker is not an emotion tamer. He is an emotion analyst, and often, exterminator.
The amateur over-thinker enters her analytical mode because she’s feeling low. If happiness, equanimity, eudaemonia or Nirvana is the goal, then when it has been momentarily achieved there is little reason to distract ourselves from the moment with analysis. So the amateur believes.
A professional strives to analyse the highs as much as the lows. The professional realises that these moments are fleeting. He realises it’s just as important to learn what to do, as it is to learn what not to do. In this way, the professional has a more complete arsenal to deal with the lows and reap the rewards of the highs.
Everyone experiences heavy emotional stress at least once in their life. Some people deal with it by listening to their emotions, guided by them. The over-thinker will always analyse emotions in an attempt to silence them.
When emotional stress becomes significant, it can hinder these investigative tools, disabling any opportunity to expel the emotion. The cogs of analysis try to produce answers but, the emotion — very often known to be irrational — is a spanner in the works. Under extreme emotional stress, the over-thinker cannot do what she has trained all her life to do. She is stuck. Helpless. Hopeless.
Why?
Uncertainty. Uncertainty is agony to the logician. Mathematicians worked hundreds of years to prove Fermat’s last theorem is indeed a theorem (not just a conjecture). The logician will use any means necessary to allay uncertainty. Uncertainty is amplified by the clouds of emotional stressors. Very often it is the uncertainty, rather than the emotional stress that bothers him more.
Why Being an Over-thinker is Fantastic
When you think about your thoughts deeply, you expand your circle of influence. You gain a better understanding of yourself.
When you discover the answers hidden within uncertainty, you gain clarity. You were not gifted this clarity, you found it. You exercised your autonomy and this propels you into a forward momentum.
As an over-thinker, you see more. Solutions you wouldn’t have known you needed before embarking on an adventure appear from the outset. “Prepared” is the over-thinker’s middle name. You’ll be the one to bring the extra towel, knowing you may have to drive a friend home after rainy soccer training session.
Producing an array of possible answers to the stress-inducing questions means: a) You’re more likely to have the correct answer amongst them. b) You are less confident in the answer you select. Epistemic modesty is a natural consequence. This lower confidence does seem very similar to the uncertainty mentioned earlier. However, the reason lower confidence is positive in this context is that it’s regarding solutions themselves. The troublesome, emotionally driven, uncertainty lies in uncertainty of approach. A complete loss of direction.
The amateur’s shield of preparedness weakens the body behind it. While it usually protects the over-thinker, a swift lunge with an emotional dagger cuts much deeper. The professional realises the amateur’s mistake. The amateur wields a shield to protect herself. The professional requires no shield, for she thickens her skin.
Removing the Curse
You only realise over-thinking is a curse when you’re struck by an emotional dagger or stuck deep in creative work. The daggers come in a many shapes and sizes and you never know when one might catch you. Also, you always know the next stuck-point is never far away.
To protect yourself you must strive to become a professional. You must hone your thinking skills such that you conclude correctly more often than not.
In emotionally stressful situations, one way a professional does this is through reframing any attacks from outside as an attack from within. Reframed this way, he is able to gain more insight into the cause of his emotional turmoil. In turn, this puts him in a better position to retaliate.
For example, say the emotional distress is caused by the loss of a loved one. When the amateur analyses the death, she might say “death is natural” or “she’s in a better place” or “I am grateful for my time with them”. The professional analyses her own reaction. She says “I cannot control it, therefore it ought not perturb me.” Of course, she feels the loss, she is no psychopath, but she is not overwhelmed by it. She does not believe someone insults her, but that someone said something to her commonly regarded as insulting. She recognises it is her own mind attributes hurt to the words, and that if she chooses, she does not have to be hurt by them.
The curse manifests as perfectionism when regarding productive activities. To overcome perfectionism the professional realises that perfect is impossible. This is no excuse for poor quality. The reward for oneself and for humanity is far greater if the professional produces more art (in the most general sense) than none.
