How To Overcome Anxiety And Overthinking, According To A Psychologist
And why 'positive thinking' may be more harmful than helpful
Another day is drawing to a close and you're ready to slip into a deep slumber. But the moment your head sinks into the pillow, suddenly you couldn't be further from rest. Your mind goes into overdrive, replaying every daft thing you said, speculating about where your life is going, worrying about tomorrow's meeting and if the children will turn out okay.
It's a scenario psychologist Gwendoline Smith is all too familiar with. "You've been up half the night ruminating and predicting upcoming disasters. You haul yourself out of bed, feeling and looking like a train wreck. You go to the bathroom, look into the mirror and say to yourself: 'I think positive thoughts about myself and others. I like the person I see in the mirror.' How's that going"? she laughs.
If you've tried and failed to tame your distracted mind with positive thinking, meditation or affirmations, then rest assured her approach involves none of these strategies. "The goal of cognitive therapy is not to teach positive thinking, which I refer to as sugar on sh*t," she chuckles. "Trying to put positive thoughts on top of negative ones is like me telling you to stop thinking about camels. It doesn't work."
Similarly, while meditation can be a life-changing practice for some, for others it can be a recipe for double the stress and anxiety. "A lot of overthinkers find meditation incredibly difficult because they can't still their mind and they feel like a failure. These things don't fit everybody," she says.
To start with, Smith believes it's important to recognise that not all overthinking is bad. Everyone overthinks things from time to time. It's simply an unavoidable part of being human.
In fact, some overthinking can even be positive or pleasurable. Having your mind racing with thoughts of a heart-fluttering new romance, upcoming tropical getaway (well, in a post-Covid world at least) or an exciting new project is hardly anything to worry about – excuse the pun.
So when people ask the question, 'Should I be concerned about my overthinking?', Smith quotes one of her colleagues, psychiatrist and therapist Dr Robert Shieff.
"Yes, if it is thinking that gets in the way of your ability to function."
Specifically, it's 'worrisome overthinking' that creates problems; when you are putting too much time into thinking or analysing something in a way that is more harmful than helpful.
This can produce negative emotions such as regret, fear or anxiety, cause relationship conflict, dull your interest in things you used to love, or even lead to physical problems such as fatigue, gut issues or heart palpitations – all of which can interfere with your ability to function and enjoy life.
In her clinical practice, Smith specialises in depression and anxiety, and the further she delved into each individual's history, the clearer it became that patterns of worrisome overthinking played a significant part.
"I would say that seven or eight out of 10 people that I see are worrying. And it's the worry and anxiety that leads to your battery going flat, then the system shuts down and you move into a depressive disorder."
"When you really dig deep into these mood conditions, depression is when a person burns out from anxiety and worry. When you dig into how long they have been feeling that way, what you're going to find is a much longer story of a lot of anxiety," she explains.
She has decades of professional experience in the field, but her passion for mental health is much more personal. Smith herself has bipolar disorder and has been committed multiple times.
"When ever something happens to me, I tend to come out the other end and I think, 'What can I do now that would help other people who have gone through that experience?'"
Rather than attempting to override your thoughts with happier ones, or eradicate your negative thoughts altogether, her approach is about developing more constructive and helpful thinking by identifying your "thought viruses" and challenging your beliefs.
The reality is that feelings are not facts. Just because you feel anxious, doesn't mean there is a real threat or even that your thoughts are true. Feelings are merely a reflection of the way you are thinking.
Smith uses computer viruses as an analogy to understand the mind. In the same way that a nasty computer virus can interfere with the entire system, "thought viruses" can tamper with the mind and how we interpret reality. Some of these viruses include mind-reading, jumping to conclusions, predicting negative outcomes, catastrophising and disqualifying the positive.
"Probably one of the most powerful thought viruses is emotional reasoning – I feel this, therefore it must be true, or I feel this way, therefore it must be happening," she shares.
If you have worrisome overthinking tendencies, it helps to keep a 'thought record'.
One of the simplest yet most powerful tools she encourages, is to keep an ABC thought record – notes about activating triggers or events, your beliefs about the situation, and the consequences; any emotions, sensations and behaviour, thus allowing you to develop a clearer understanding of how they all connect.
Where things get interesting, is going through that thought record to pinpoint your own thought viruses, and questioning whether there is any concrete evidence to support your beliefs.
"If someone came into my office saying their relationship is a complete mess, I would say, 'Let me see your thought record.' There might be mind-reading, fortune-telling and predicting negative outcomes."
"I would unravel it and get it to the point of asking, 'Where's the rational thought? Where are the thoughts based in truth and reality? Let's now focus on those and talk about a solution."
It's not about making the giant leap from negative thinking to positive thinking; it's about the much more achievable shift from irrational thinking to rational thinking.
If, for example, you tend to avoid parties for fear of being judged, ignored or it being a catastrophic social disaster, you would start to replace those fearful beliefs with rational thoughts. Hopefully the crowd is friendly, but worst-case scenario, you don't have to stick around for long. Over time, this mental rewiring often lends itself to more positive thought patterns.
One of the most assuring things, Smith adds, is how getting a handle on the mind is no easy feat for anyone. A lifetime of habits usually can't be undone in a day, and it's naive to think that nothing in life will trigger those overthinking patterns ever again – it's all about being equipped with the skills to deal with it better.
"Worry is like a slippery snake. You think you've chopped its head off and that it's going to wither away and die, but it grows another head and turns up somewhere else," she laughs.
"It seems to go into remission, and then bang! Something will happen, things aren't working out, maybe a relationship has broken up, perhaps a job has gone belly up, whatever, and it sneaks back."
"It's like physio. You go to a physiotherapist because you've injured your knee, and every night you've got the band out, doing the exercises. Then as the knee comes right, you do the exercises less and then suddenly you're not doing them at all. Psychological therapy is the same. When you're really in a crisis, you're going to bust your ass and do every single thing imaginable to get that worry under control, but do less when things are good."
With jam-packed schedules, financial stress and all sorts of modern-day pressures, it's not hard to come up with a list of reasons as to why our minds are so chaotic, yet interestingly, the first thing Smith mentions is not modern lifestyle habits, but biology and the inseparable relationship between nature and nurture.
Genetics and family history are estimated to influence anxiety by 25 to 40 percent, and then any additional role-modelling of worry that you receive as a child is the icing on the cake. To an impressionable young child, every expression of worry – gasps, sighs, tears and anxious helicopter parenting – sends a strong message that the world is dangerous and that worrying is an essential behaviour for survival.
Given the current mental health crisis worldwide, Smith hopes that the skills she teaches will soon be compulsory education for young people. "
"I'm a great believer in prevention being better than cure," she adds.
At every age and stage, she has seen countless lives transformed by simply taking the time to understand how their mind ticks. People say it's all about the journey, but in this case, the destination is pretty phenomenal.
"I see people become more relaxed, assertive and confident. Stomach and bowel problems settle, too. Ultimately, it's about understanding what you think, rather than just reacting based on how you feel."
Text: baueryndication.com.au