• Modified: Feb 16, 2025 • Read in: 11 mins
— By Dr. Sandip Roy.An overthinking mind keeps your body in constant stress, due to raised levels of the stress hormone cortisol.
Overthinking or ruminating is a persistent, cyclic, negative thinking pattern. It’s usually about something bad that happened in the past. It can make you anxious, self-critical, and even depressed.
Did you know that women are twice as likely as men to suffer from depression because they ruminate twice as much?
20 Tips To Stop Overthinking For A Calmer Mind
“Stop overthinking” is easy to say, but hard to follow. Willpower alone can’t stop your mind from overthinking. Because willpower and overthinking involve the same parts of our brain.
These precise and practical tips will help you overcome overthinking:
1. Find solutions and take action.
If you’re overthinking unresolved problems, write down 3 potential solutions for each. Pick one solution, and act on it within 24 hours.
Brain scans show that problem-solving activities activate different neural pathways than worry-based thinking. That may explain why people who focus on solutions experience up to 60% less anxiety than those who dwell on problems.
2. Question your thoughts.
Write down a troubling thought. Question its validity and credibility.
List concrete evidence that supports or challenges it. This helps you detach yourself from your thought. So now, you can examine the thought objectively from a mental distance.
Know that your thoughts are not always telling you the truth. Your brain generates about 6,200 thoughts per day. Studies reveal that 80% of these thoughts contain some form of cognitive distortion or bias.
Realizing that your thoughts may be biased, irrational, or untrue takes away their power over you.
3. Redirect your mental energy.
Pick an activity that requires focus and hand-eye coordination. Painting, drawing, writing, playing an instrument, gardening, cooking, or crafting are great options.
Spend 20 minutes doing one of those things when overthinking starts. It can reduce rumination by 23% more than when you do passive activities like watching videos.
The brain uses roughly 20% of your body’s total energy. Physical activities shift blood flow away from areas associated with overthinking to areas associated with motor control.
4. Replace negative mental patterns.
Rewire your brain: Replace negative thoughts with something more positive, productive, and action-oriented.
Start with one thought replacement each day. It becomes an automatic habit after 66 days of ritualistic practice. Your brain starts to see things more positively and hopefully.
Our brains can adapt to new experiences at any age. This is called neuroplasticity. Use this superpower to let your brain create new thought patterns.
5. Track your anxiety triggers.
Keep a simple anxiety log for one week. Note the time, situation, and intensity of overthinking episodes.
Research shows that people who track their anxiety identify specific triggers 47% faster than those who don’t.
Knowledge transforms vague worries into manageable patterns.
6. Practice taking quick decisions.
Quick actions eliminate the burden of indecision and, therefore, overthinking.
Set a timer for 60 seconds when facing minor choices. Make your decision before time runs out. This trains your brain to trust your first judgment.
Studies indicate that 70% of rapid decisions turn out as well as those made after lengthy deliberation. Start with small choices like what to eat or wear.
People who think intuitively have one thing in particular in common: they look at situations in new ways and tend to disregard rules that don’t apply to a particular scenario.
7. Accept limited control.
Not everything is within your control — accept this reality.
Research shows people typically overestimate their control by 30%. Overthinking is often caused by trying to control every aspect of life.
Instead, focus on what you can actually influence. Pick one thing you can control right now. Start working on it. This can reduce stress hormones by 25% as compared to worrying about uncontrollable things.
8. Seek support from others.
Text or call one person when overthinking starts. It does two things — one, it distracts you from the problem, and two, your brain processes social support as a safety signal.
Talking about things that make you overthink can cut their emotional impact by half within 15 minutes.
Keep a list of at least 3 trusted people as your outreach system.
9. Try Box Breathing
Navy SEALs use this technique:
Breathe in for 4 counts, hold for 4, breathe out for 4, hold for 4. Repeat 4 times.
Practitioners say box breathing can calm the overthinking part of your brain in just 2 minutes.
Use it before tests, presentations, or important conversations.
10. Count Your Thoughts
Put a counter on your phone. Click it each time you catch yourself overthinking.
Most people discover they repeat the same 5–7 worries. Naming these repeated thoughts reduces their power. Track them for 3 days to find your pattern.
11. Use the Two-Column Method
Draw a line down the middle of your paper. Write your worries on the left. Write facts that prove or disprove each worry on the right.
Studies show this technique helps 83% of people see their thoughts more clearly.
13. Measure Your Worries
Rate each worry from 1-10 based on how much it might matter one year from now.
Focus on worries rated 7 or higher. Let go of the rest.
Research shows 85% of what we worry about never happens.
13. Use the 2-Minute Rule
Set a timer for 2 minutes when making small choices.
Brain research shows decisions use glucose. Your brain has enough glucose for 3 hours of hard decisions each day. Save it for important choices.
Skip lunch spot? 2 minutes. Test prep plan? Take your time.
14. Record Your Voice
Scientists found speaking beats silent worry. Record yourself saying “Stop. Next action.” Play it when thoughts spin.
Your own voice works 40% better than others’ voices at stopping thought loops. Make three 10-second recordings.
15. Break Thought Cycles
Count backward from 100 by 7s. This math task uses the same brain areas as worry.
Studies show it stops thought loops in 30 seconds. Too hard? Count back by 3s. The key is to make your brain work on numbers instead of worries.
16. Schedule Worry Time
Pick 15 minutes each day for worry time. Studies show this cuts random worrying by 35%. Write worries in a note app when they pop up. Review them during worry time. Most will seem smaller by then.
17. Move Your Body
Exercise releases BDNF, a protein that helps your brain build new thought patterns.
A 10-minute walk changes brain chemistry for 2 hours. Jump rope for 1 minute. Do 5 pushups. Small moves reset your mind.
18. Build a Gratitude Routine
Scientists scanned brains during gratitude practice. It activates dopamine, a feel-good chemical. Name 3 good things each morning. Studies show this simple habit cuts overthinking by 31% within 2 weeks.
19. Join Group Activities
Team sports and group projects reduce cortisol, your stress hormone, by 21%.
Pick one group activity. Show up twice. Research shows the second time feels 40% easier than the first.
20. Create a Night Plan
The brain rehearses tomorrow’s worries at night. Write tomorrow’s first task before bed.
Studies show this cuts midnight worrying by 47%. Your brain relaxes when it knows the next step.
How To Stop Overthinking Using Psychology
1. Intentionally distract yourself with another thought or task.
Women may especially benefit from this strategy: When you catch yourself overthinking, intentionally divert your attention to something pleasant.
Try physically moving, like going for a walk, or engaging with an upbeat song or activity. This reduces information overload in your brain and breaks the cycle of negative thoughts.
In this study, Susan Nolen-Hoeksema and Jannay Morrow found that depressed students who focused on specific geographical locations or objects (like “the size of the Golden Gate Bridge” and the “shape of the African continent”) felt significant mood improvement compared to those who focused on their emotions.
Nolen-Hoeksema’s other research found that women are more prone to rumination than men, which made her say that this difference may explain the 2:1 ratio of depressed women to depressed men.
Men often engage in distracting behaviors when depressed, while women tend to overthink problems.
2. Accept the past as unchangeable and let yourself move on.
Overthinkers often struggle to halt their thoughts, causing anxiety and feelings of helplessness.
Mindfulness meditation can help the overthinking mind accept thoughts without judgment or attachment, allowing them to dissipate.
In mindfulness, overthinkers no longer attempt to control or change thoughts, paradoxically reducing their frequency over time.
A meta-study by clinical psychologist Lilisbeth Perestelo-Perez and colleagues found that Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) significantly reduced overthinking, proving as effective as medication and CBT. Positive effects persisted even a month after the end of MCBT.
3. Dedicate your brain’s power to solve a new problem.
Overthinking can diminish motivation to solve problems. Research suggests that shifting focus to problem-solving can stabilize mood in individuals prone to rumination.
Challenge yourself to break the thought loop and find innovative solutions.
Susan Nolen-Hoeksema recommended lifting your mood with distractions before tackling problems.
Engage in enjoyable distractions like funny videos, Sudoku, yoga, or juggling. Afterward, concentrate on finding a clear solution to the issue at hand.
4. Practice feeling grateful for what you are today, despite your past.
Gratitude can buffer against stress from intrusive thoughts.
Rumination is of two types: intrusive and deliberate.
- Intrusive rumination involves automatically re-experiencing thoughts, emotions, and images from specific incidents. After a traumatic event, persistent intrusive rumination can lead to PTSD.
- Deliberate rumination is intentional, focusing on understanding the cause and purpose of an event. Deliberate rumination promotes post-traumatic growth (PTG) — a greater appreciation for life, meaningful relationships, personal strength, shifted priorities, and a richer existential and spiritual life.
Gratitude can help people find new purpose and meaning after a traumatic experience, as well as accept the painful experiences as a part of their existence. Gratitude is a thankful and joyful attitude toward the benefits and gifts received from other people and nature (Emmons and Shelton, 2002).
- Gratitude promotes deliberate rumination, and therefore promotes post-traumatic growth (Wood et al., 2010; Zhou and Wu, 2015; Kim and Lee, 2016).
- A meta-analytic study found that gratitude is a significant predictor of PTG (Jang and Kim, 2017).
5. Build A “Thought Box” — a prefixed time to let yourself overthink.
The “Thought Box” process is a greatly helpful way to reduce overthinking.
Set aside a little time in the day, say 20 minutes, when you allow yourself time to overthink. Set up an alarm on your phone for the end of this interval. During this time, begin by telling yourself you have absolute freedom to ruminate until the alarm bell rings.
Then let your mind do all kinds of overthinking. There are no limits and no control over your thinking process. Call this your “Thought Box.”
Small addition: Keep a writing pad and pen handy. Note down a few thoughts from the bunch moving through your mind. Don’t stress if you have to write every thought in. Instead, be easy on yourself, and jot down just one or two streams of thoughts. It will be fine.
How does the “Thought Box” Strategy help?
- First, whenever you feel you’re slipping into your habit of overthinking during the day, remind yourself you have fixed up a time for it in your Thought Box, and stop overthinking right there.
- Second, by writing the thoughts, you force your mind to recognize you have already given your attention to a particular worry. So now, it is no good repeating it over in your mind since you have already noted it down on a piece of paper.
Here’s entrepreneur and philosopher Albert Hobohm speaking to a TEDx audience on how to stop your thoughts from controlling your life:
Did Einstein Overthink?
Short answer: Probably yes. Long answer: What scientific thinkers like Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, and Stephen Hawking (who felt humans need more empathy in their lives), did more of was deliberation.
Deliberation is thinking deeply about something over a long time to reach a careful, conscious decision. Deliberate thinkers often collaborate with others to troubleshoot and expand their input-to-output journey.
The keyword here is output.
Thinkers from any field — science, philosophy, politics, business — always think to reach a decision or conclusion.
In contrast, the overthinkers almost always do all the thinking on their own without reaching out for any collaboration. Also, as opposed to thinkers, their thoughts produce no output or action.
How do you know it’s overthinking, not deep thinking? Overthinking does not let you reach any final decision or take any action. Deep thinking does.
Health Issues Due To Overthinking
Some health issues associated with overthinking:
- Depression
- Procrastination
- Severe stress and anxiety
- Impaired decision-making
- Reduced ability to think clearly
- Decreased attention to others
- Hesitation to start new ventures
- Difficulty maintaining a calm demeanor
- Chronic stress leading to functional impairment
Final Words
Overthinking what happened in the past hurts your ability to move forward and prevents you from reaching your goals. To live in the present and find joy, learn to step out of your past.
However, if you find it hard to get over it yourself, please seek expert psychological help.
√ Also Read: Are You Thinking Or Overthinking: Take The Quiz
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