5 Effective Ways to Stop the Overthinking Spiral

How to distract your brain to stop it from overthinking.

You’re alone again in your bedroom. Mind seemingly blank.

So your mind decides to overwhelm you with thoughts, rendering you to start overthinking about even the simplest thing it can come up with.

Before you know it, you’re now worried about whether you have enough income to cover your monthly expenses, and whether you’re living a good enough life, or whether you’ll ever find the one.

Sigh.

Your thoughts are stopping you from acknowledging the present and the current event going on in your life. The what-ifs are blinding you from the good things you most likely own.

But don’t worry, here are a couple of ways to shield your mind from them when you don’t feel like indulging in them.

The secret recipe is to pour the energy your mind uses to overthink into something else.

1. What’s better than simply picking colors?

It’s time to paint!

Before you say, “but I suck at painting!” Hear me out.

What you’re aiming for here is not the aesthetics or whether you’re doing it with the right technique or not.

They don’t matter.

The purpose is to busy yourself to give your mind no chance in feeding you anything except for what shapes should I draw or what colors should I use for that circle.

See the picture on the left? That’s what I did yesterday. Before I knew it, I had already spent 5–6 hours in front of the wall painting.

I was definitely spent, but afterward, my mind was empty and peaceful.

*Note: If you have no paint, give coloring a try!

2. Hint: You get baked goods afterward.

Yup! You guessed it right, it’s baking. There is a reason why stress-baking or procrastibaking is a thing.

We don’t like to overthink. It’s because we can’t do anything about the problems (existing or hypothetical) that constantly try to get our attention. It leaves us with too many currently unresolvable issues and helplessness.

We also know that there is no answer yet, and the only thing we can do is wait.

So if waiting is all we can do, why don’t we do it with baked goods on our side?

“Paraphrasing the words of psychology professor Tim Pychyl, Moskin writes: ‘procrastibaking … is an unconsciously deployed strategy that makes us feel skilled, nurturing and virtuous in the present while distracting us from the future” — Zhang, Quarantine Baking in Times of Crisis.

In brief, if overthinking makes you feel helpless, make yourself feel helpful once more by making your favorite dessert or bread.

Personally, nothing could go wrong with making these fudgy banana brownies (I recommend decreasing the amount of sugar though).

3. Make your own night club at home.

A lot of people go to night clubs to enjoy themselves, to stop thinking for a moment. The false confidence granted by alcohol is an additional reason why it’s a good idea to go up to the dance floor.

I’ve gone a few times, and I admit, it is liberating.

Unfortunately, it’s impossible to go to one during the pandemic, and it’s not an option for those who aren’t into the scene.

As an alternative, you can designate an area in your bedroom or living room as a dance floor instead.

There are many advantages to doing so, which are:

• Alcohol doesn’t need to be involved (You can if you want to).
• No sweaty bodies are waiting to bump into you.
• You get a boost in endorphins.
• At the same time, you get to have your workout.
• If you’re self-conscious, the safety of your home protects you from wandering eyes.

I purposefully dance not to only empty my mind but to get a workout too.

If you’re wondering, I would do this dance below 10 times every day (Don’t be fooled by the seemingly easy and not so sexy moves):

4. Do what you secretly dislike but have to do.

Mine is chores.

Ironing clothes replace my thoughts with smooth them wrinkle out baby.

Washing the dishes forced me to focus on yup, get that grease out of the pan. BEAUTIFUL! Great job soap!

And sweeping makes me feel like a shepherd herding his sheep, but with a broom, and the sheep are dust on the floor.

Once you’re done, you’ve fulfilled one of your responsibilities, and overthinking is out of your window.

5. An empty book is your friend.

To put it simply, it’s to do journaling. But journaling is indulging your thoughts! No, not necessarily. I’ve written a lot of journal entries that consist of:

“So my brain decided to overthink:

- A

- B

- C

But I have 0 clues on how, why, or what to do with it”

Think of it this way:

You’re loitering around in the mall with a friend. The only reason you keep on holding your wallet, phone, and the like is that your pocket is too small, or you aren’t wearing a fanny pack or any kind of bag to put them in.

But when you do have a bag of some sort, you will place them in your bag and not think about them at all.

Similar to your thoughts. Store them somewhere outside of your mind, and the overthinking will cease.

Bottomline

No one likes overthinking. It’s tiring and consuming, especially when you’re alone when it happens. But it doesn’t mean that you should let it bring you misery.

Simply do one of these 5 things when you feel like you’re about to overthink:

1. Paint or color something.
2. Bake your favorite dessert or bread.
3. Dance, dance, dance!
4. Tick your least favorite responsibility.
5. Write the mess in an empty book.

You don’t have to stick to one, alternate between the 5 depending on what you feel like doing, and see how they erase your intruding thoughts away.

“And if all you did today is try your best, then you did a good job”

Further reading!