How to Stop Overthinking

Overthinking might not strike you as a strenuous activity. You don't have to move a muscle to spend hours imagining worst-case scenarios, debating choices or playing the day's headlines on a loop. And yet, running mental laps can feel almost as exhausting as real ones.

You can blame a few culprits for that: When we have stressful thoughts, our brains — and in turn, our bodies — respond to them as if they were threats, which kicks off our stress response. While that process helps provide us with bursts of energy to respond to acute stressors, it drains us when activated chronically. Then there's the cognitive resources required for common overthinking activities such as making decisions, anticipating outcomes, remembering details and focusing on things that matter to us. Not to mention all the sleep we lose when anxiety keeps us awake.

If you identify as an overthinker, you can learn to recognize and manage those anxious thoughts — and finally give your brain the break it deserves.

Please select this link to read the complete article from The Washington Post.