Why Overthinking Is Destroying Us E-Book

Maher Asaad Baker

• Herausgeber: tredition
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 150

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

Why Overthinking Is Destroying Us invites readers into the hidden architecture of the mind. In this place, thoughts meant to guide us instead trap us, looping endlessly between past regrets and imagined futures. With striking clarity and psychological depth, this book exposes the silent mechanisms that turn the modern mind against itself: rumination that rewrites the past, worry that distorts the future, and a relentless search for certainty in a world that offers none. Blending scientific insight with profound introspection, it reveals how overthinking quietly reshapes identity, erodes emotional balance, and reshapes the body itself through chronic stress, tension, and exhaustion. It shows why sensitive, intelligent, and conscientious people are often the ones most vulnerable to this internal storm, and why the brain’s ancient survival systems are mismatched to the complexities of contemporary life. But this book is not only a diagnosis; it is a reclamation. It offers a path back to presence, clarity, and emotional freedom, away from the labyrinth of imagined scenarios and back toward the grounding reality of the moment. With compassionate reasoning and powerful metaphors, it guides readers in recognizing the difference between helpful reflection and destructive mental spirals, and in learning the rare courage required to let life unfold without rehearsing every possibility. For anyone who feels trapped in their own mind, Why Overthinking Is Destroying Us is both a mirror and a lifeline, a reminder that peace is not found in thinking more, but in thinking differently.

Leseprobe

Maher Asaad Baker

Why Overthinking Is Destroying Us

© 2025 Maher Asaad Baker

Verlagslabel: Maher Asaad Baker

Druck und Distribution im Auftrag des Autors:

tredition GmbH, Heinz-Beusen-Stieg 5, 22926 Ahrensburg, Deutschland

Das Werk, einschließlich seiner Teile, ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Für die Inhalte ist der Autor verantwortlich. Jede Verwertung ist ohne seine Zustimmung unzulässig. Die Publikation und Verbreitung erfolgen im Auftrag des Autors, zu erreichen unter: Maher Asaad Baker, Main 1, 28195 Osterholz-Scharmbeck, Germany.

Kontaktadresse nach EU-Produktsicherheitsverordnung: [email protected]

Contents

Introduction

The Collateral Damage

Why We Overthink

Reclamation

Living Free

About the Author

Introduction

It is a strange and somewhat incomprehensible tendency of the human mind, and such tendency to turn into a machine of self-perpetuation the natural process of thought into which ought to be a vehicle of clearness and understanding, but turns instead into a machine of self-perpetuation, a machine which at first seeks to act as a means of understanding himself, but which in practice only leads to him, which mentally is what I should call an equivalent of being unable to stop its own brains, and the mental activity so consequently becomes a machine in itself, which at the surface is productive, though beneath it is This process which is commonly referred to as overthinking is not merely thinking too much or merely being too preoccupied with worrying all the time or having the habit of playing out things that can never be changed; instead, it is a cognitive habit that runs so deep and is therefore out of sync with healthy mental functions whereby a person could plan, create, access and look back all purposely. Overthinking is a method of mental overactivation when the thoughts lose their direction and start circling one point, never leaving it, but rather moving with mindless and sometimes snow-blinding loops of doubt to doubt to doubt to doubt as in a(n) endless comparable whirlwind.

In trying to specify this beast one must admit that there are two prevailing forms of male-genera overthinking, both of which have their own psychological processes and emotional effects, though both sprouting out of the same cognitive compost, and both generally abetting each other in a matter duly silent at first but leading to misery in other times. On of them is turned backward, and drags the thought down into those moments that have already passed, into those moments which ought to be forgotten, but still somehow alive in mind, as though the mind is re-enacting a play that was closed long before, but will not let up its curtains. This retro-respective nature, so called rumination is the effort of mind to divide the past into minute particles re-running conversations which cannot be re-run, re-examining choices which cannot be taken back, rediscovering regrets which cannot be sweetened with time, and analyzing them on the hypothesis that there must be something under it--some truth, some mistake, some lesson--which, once found, will at last bring peace of mind to the thinker. Rumination, however, hardly ever leads to peace but further infuses the emotional ridges of the past with more defined cutting edges and makes a stronger impression of guilt, inadequacy and hopelessness. Whereas introspection makes an effort to comprehend, rumination attempts to write back, but since the past cannot be re-written, rumination ends up being a psychological treadmill wherein an individual makes an enormous mental effort, without making any progress, and the price they often pay to make this futile effort is an increasing bewilderment and stagnation.

The second prevalent type of overthinking is forward overthinking; and such overthinking is, in any case, imaginary, projected into futures not yet at hand, the same cannot be actualized, and which by the nervous attempt to anticipate and to govern are imaginings, a kind of imagining that is nearly cinematic. It is similar to worry, this forward leaning form and a continuous scan of possibilities that is part of the mind as a continuous attempt to prepare beforehand in anticipating danger, disappointment, loss or failure in the opinion that should one prepare ahead of every potential danger, then nothing bad will happen to him or her. However, this illusion of dominance becomes a pit, as the universe is uncooperative to imagined rehearsals and the more the worrier thinks about every possible thing, the more he or she discovers to worry about, and this causes a feeling of overwhelm, which only escalates as the mind volatilely moves through one disaster to another. Worry is the false effort on the part of mind to guard itself and yet what it usually defends one against is the power to be calm and forgetting that peace could not exist without uncertainty and that it is precisely the uncertainty of mind that the overthinking mind cannot stand. By so doing, the concern erases any feeling of security by making the thinker believe that there is danger everywhere when it may actually not be somewhere dangerous in reality but the thinking process has become such a tool of creating something dangerous that is not really dangerous beyond the confines of the mind.

Much as they are distinct, rumination and worry are united in their belonging to an underlying common factor: an increased vulnerability to emotional distress, a strong embedded assumption that ruminating more intensively over something will in fact somehow neutralize the fear associated with it. However, thinking, when prompted out of its legitimate measure, leaves fear no less formidable; on the contrary, the anxiety tends to make the fear ever more vivid, by putting it under the continuous examination of the mind, and in this way, to enhance the emotional coloring of the thought, instead of washing it out. This is where the difference between overthinking and creativity is paramount because creative thought operates imagination to create new possibilities but overthinking operates with the imagination operation, and its mission is to create psychological traps. The influence of creativity is to elevate the mind through joining ideas in new ways in a manner that results to something new, whereas overthinking depletes the mind through repetitive ways of involving fears that lead to nowhere new.

To determine why some people, enter the cycle of constant overthinking and others never engage is a certain lifestyle, it is important to look at the elements in thinking and feelings that tend to make a person vulnerable to this mental process. In the case of the over thinkers, they are not careless or impulsive and they are usually those types of people who take time to process information, they are emotive, seek clarity, demand certainty and need to be right and they are subject often to internally heightened expectations. Most of the overthinkers are highly sensitive and this means they perceive the world with a greater emotional resonance, they can see nuances in the speaking tone, expression or circumstances that others may not and this extreme sensitivity is an advantage in most circumstances but when the holder starts to see everything through his lens of potential injury or loss it becomes a liability. The high sensitivity often tends to accompany conscientiousness, the opposite end of the personality characteristic, which is responsible for caring and being careful of detail, but when conscientiousness amalgamates to fear of errors or fear of letting down others, it may transform itself into perfectionistic thinking and be a good breeding ground of overanalyzing.

The next characteristic shared by most chronic overthinkers is high level of mental capacity, a quick and clear mind and mind able to come up with a huge number of meanings or possibilities within few seconds, but it is a two-sided sword when it becomes uncontrolled and unchanneled. High intelligence tends to provide a person with the ability to imagine several things at once, and as long as the emotional system is not under control, such an ability may turn out to be a tide of mental clatter, excessively many variables, too many angles, too many possible meanings. It is commonplace that highly analytical individuals will think that thinking more will lead to a better solution but when feelings and emotion are introduced analysis will not always produce coherence rather an entanglement with its own reasoning and school of fanciful thought.

Among other features, chronic overthinkers have a high level of responsibility not only to them but also to others. They can be pressured by the need not to put any burden on other people, to avoid confrontation, to strategize in advance what people may want over others, and to make sure that all they do will not offend anyone innocently. This hyper-responsibility may easily develop into a permanent internal surveillance network where the over thinker analyzes every word, she/he said, every gesture they made, every choice they took, trying to find anything that can be considered a mistake. In such state, the mind perceives any interaction as a possible social threat, re-going through the course of action in the hope of finding some hidden errors that would thereupon need to be corrected. This is what makes so many chronic overthinkers feel worn out by social situations although this may not be the actual interaction, but the underlying mental commentary that accompanies it, and such commentary doesn't start until well after the talk has ended but rather continues commentating on each aspect long after the talk has been over.

Also, the fear of uncertainty is usually something that is deeply embedded in the profile of an over thinker. To others, uncertainty is an open door that directs to anarchy and since the human mind does not like anarchy, it tries to fill the void with projections or imagined stories that give the sense of control. Such avoidance of uncertainty is not a weakness; it is instead a measure of trying to remain emotionally secure in a world where few guarantees are provided. But the further one attempts to remove uncertainty by thought, the more they get into the same uncertainty that they dread because there is no way that thinking can give certitude of some things that require external conditions or the behavior of other people.

Overthinking, in most aspects, is a result of dissonance among the strengths of the mind and its instincts, the same qualities that enable an individual to be thoughtful, conscientious, analytical and emotionally perceptive can become in various wrong internal conditions, a mental liability. Those who overthink are not unintelligent or unaware, it is just that their intelligence and awareness is turned inwards instead of the outwards and makes an internal world that each thought is begged in a way that it becomes hard to differentiate what one considers important and what results are nothing but noise. The filter in the mind that is meant to be permeated by insignificant thoughts is blocked and all thoughts, even insignificant ones, jump out and demand analysis, interpretation or even an emotional judgement.

Although rumination and worry are two separate issues, they can be so closely related to each other that a person can fail to realize that he or she has shifted his or her thought process to another one. One can start by playing back a past event wondering whether he/she dealt with the situation like the correct way, whether he/she misread the tone of the other person, whether he/she did not have chance to speak more precise or act firmer. When reenacting these memories, the mind can slip slightly forward to envisage what could go wrong should a similar situation happen once again, what errors can be recurrent, what effects can take place, how others will react or be judgmental. Such a mixture of the past and future forms a psychological reality that in which the present moment does not have a place to breathe because the mind is either working backward or moving forward and can find no rest to perceive the actual reality that stands in front of it.

Being overly concerned is especially harmful when taking the form of hard work or lacking duties since in that instance the person might not even notice that he is stuck in the thought process. They might think that they are being cautious, that they are making sure that they cover every side, that they are making sure that everything is taken into account but the more they discuss the situation the less clear they become because overthinking does not compensate hard work with understanding, it compensates it with more and more variables and possibilities and thus with more doubt. This interaction in turn leads to a sadistic paradox whereby that person becomes convinced that he has not thought enough whereas what he has been all too keen upon is that he has thought far too much and has thus lost the power to determine what actually matters.

Overthinking is psychologically a healthy environment where one cannot get clear emotional closure. When a person has no resolution, feedback, or confirmation, his or her psyche tries to find internal closure in the form of analysis, yet it cannot replace emotional one, and, therefore the mind turns into a machine that tries to find the answers that it will never be able to form. That is why overthinking is more probable at ambiguity moments, when one waits to see what message will go through, awaits the resolution of an issue, gets into a conflict, or works with emotionally-charged scenarios in which the outcome is an uncertain factor. The mind cannot speed up time, but rather can speed up thought, adversary that fills the vacuum of the imagined explanations or imagined situations that tries to lessen confusion but, in the process, causes more torture than relief.

The overthinking structure is more like a labyrinth, as opposed to a staircase. A staircase is linear and, as you go up it, you get some progress and then a step ahead, and a labyrinth draws the walker deeper and deeper into its twists and turns, giving an illusion of movement when you cannot escape. The mind that over thinks tends to confuse mental movement with mental progress yet, progress needs to have direction, and overthinking has no direction whatever, since the real business of the overthinking mind is not to solve but to analyze interminably. The more they think the more ways their minds make, and the more ways they make, the more difficult it is to make a choice and instead of seeing the truth one would be paralyzed.

Overthinking has also emotional signature that is not similar to healthy thought. Healthy thinking in contrast to complicated thinking is stable and comfortable to think, unlike overthinking which includes a feeling of uneasy, urgent, or uncomfortable despite the extent of thinking put into it. This distraction usually occurs in the form of some tightness felt in the chest, body restlessness, tension in muscles, or a feeling that the body is ever overloaded mentally. It is not relief that imbues the emotional residue of overthinking it is more often than not, fatigue, confusion or increased anxiety.

The most troubling aspect of overthinking is that it advances slowly and usually with the initially very rational endeavor to prepare or comprehend. The thinker might fail to realize that s/he has crossed the boundary between reflection and rumination, between planning and worrying, since the boundary is between the two is very fine, subtle, nearly impossible to notice, but once the threshold is crossed, returning to the state of a normal psychology becomes harder and harder without bringing oneself to attention. Excessive thinking is not something committed once, it is more of a habit that feeds itself and creates a system of neural connections that makes it easier and easier to do the same thing.

Most people with overthinking problems do not represent overthinking as an activity they engage in but rather forced by a force that occurs to them like a force just dragging them in whether they have the desire or not. They can attempt to distract themselves, talk, become engrossed in work, or they can compel themselves to be relaxed but once the silence has re-ignited the thoughts restart their persistent march and like the mind cannot stand empty spaces and must then occupy each space by an analysis or imaginative fantasy. This automatic nature is one of the reasons that make overthinking so all-consuming because it is not only the excessive use of thought but loss of control over thought as well.

Finally, a definition of overthinking must consider that it cannot be just defined as overthinking but think differently and no longer in a way that is beneficial to the well-being of the person. It is the distinction between applying thought as one guide and being lost within the thought, between precisely being at sea and blindly meandering along as wisdom. The concept of overthinking is a seeming pattern of thought that promises a certain understanding yet yields complications and disorders, that promises comfort yet yields worry and anxiety, that promises a more definitive answer yet yields endless questions. It is a psychic tempest that hides itself in the guise of preparation, that is psychic burden that hides itself in the guise of responsibility, source of suffering that hides itself in the guise of diligence.

And here, in the effort to sense its composition and its forms, one initiates the gradual, arduous volley of reclaiming upon itself the brain of surrogate, technique is, to know the beast, the initial stage of acquiring to control it.