The Truth About Overthinking (From An Overthinker-Turned-Therapist)

"My mind is continuously on the go"

"I'm constantly thinking of what could go wrong"

"My overthinking causes me to procrastinate or not take decisions"

"My overthinking gives me anxiety"

These are all statements I hear every single day as a psychotherapist, and I’m sure that to some extent, each and every one of you can relate to at least one of them. Overthinking and rationalization have become incredibly common — especially in males. I would say that around 80% of my male clients are struggling with overthinking and anxiety.

The good news? This is completely normal. There’s nothing wrong with overthinking — as long as we understand why it’s happening, what purpose it’s trying to serve, and more importantly, how to make use of it productively. I can relate to this myself — because I’m an overthinker too. It was one of the things that held me back the most in life, and something I needed to learn to balance before becoming a psychotherapist. Actually, the road to becoming a therapist gave me the exact tools and awareness I needed to understand and calibrate my overthinking. That’s exactly why therapy can help you if you’re an overthinker.

The aim of this article isn’t to magically solve your overthinking problem — that’s not something that happens overnight. Overthinking has probably been a big part of your life and personality for a long time, and learning how to work with it productively takes time. What I do hope to offer here is a basic understanding of what can be explored in therapy, in the hopes that this inspires you to seek support if you feel stuck.

So why do we overthink?

Everyone might give a different personal reason, but at its core, overthinking is deeply tied to our human nature — specifically, our desire to understand. One of our greatest survival mechanisms is the need to make sense of things, especially in an age where information is always at our fingertips.

When we're faced with a problem, a dilemma, or a trauma, we try to rationalise it — even if we know there may be no satisfying answer. Think about how we deal with tragedy: we look for meaning. "Bad things always happen to good people." "God must have had a plan for him." "If only that didn’t happen, things would be different."

It scares us to not have an explanation. Our brain is wired to search for logic, even in illogical situations.

So what happens when we’re faced with something traumatic, or so emotionally overwhelming that it’s beyond our understanding? How do I deal with the grief of losing someone close to me when I can’t even begin to name what I’m feeling? No one can truly understand my pain, and I don’t know what to do with it — so I resort to my mind. I try to numb the emotions and over-rely on my thinking to find some sort of meaning or clarity.

This is what we call a defence mechanism. Whether you’re aware of it or not, we all develop these kinds of mechanisms — especially during difficult phases in our life. And they don’t have to be rooted in a major trauma. It could simply be a time in life where we didn’t know how to cope, and so we found something that worked.

For example, maybe I felt like I didn’t fit in at school or work — so I started spending more time online, through gaming or social media, to find that sense of connection elsewhere. Or I focused more on hobbies and reading to enjoy my own company. Or I became funny, sarcastic, and the master of deflection to avoid opening up emotionally.

All of these are valid strategies — they work for the time being. But the problem is we often carry them forward into adulthood without ever checking if they still serve us. Just because something helped me survive a phase in life, doesn’t mean it will help me thrive later on. And this is where some defence mechanisms can end up doing more harm than good. Why? Because they can prevent us from having new, crucial emotional experiences.

What purpose does overthinking serve?

One of the most powerful questions I invite my clients to ask is:

“What is this compensating for?”

Take a moment to reflect. What is your overthinking — or procrastination — compensating for?

Most of the time, the answer is emotional or experiential. People mention anxiety, insecurity, fear of rejection… the list is endless. But at the core, it often comes down to something you didn’t get to experience or process fully — because you were relying on your defence mechanisms at the time.

So your overthinking becomes the tool you use to fill those emotional gaps with logic and rationality. But here’s the problem — it can’t. So the mind keeps spinning, trying to approach the same emotional need from different angles, failing every time. This is why it’s so exhausting. Your brain is using up more energy than it should, while your emotions are being ignored or underfed — and that leads to burnout.

We’ve spent most of our lives being trained to rely on logic, and we often forget that emotions carry information too — and in many cases, even more valuable information than logic ever could.

This was a hard pill for me to swallow when I was studying to become a therapist. I knew I was an overthinker, and I thought I was in touch with my emotions… but I wasn’t. It was only through therapy that I learned how much information my body could give me.

So how do I “fix” my overthinking?

Let me be clear: there’s nothing that needs to be “fixed” — only calibrated.

And the answer is much simpler than you might expect: You need to learn when to quiet your mind and listen to your body. That’s it.

Once you learn how to ground yourself, practice simple techniques, and give yourself emotional feedback, you’ll be able to start this journey of growth and balance.

Something I always share with my clients — and something that helped me massively — is this phrase:

“Right now, the way you think is affecting the way you feel. We need to reverse that, and learn how to let your feelings affect the way you think.”

These are the kinds of things you can explore in therapy — only personalised to your story, your patterns, and your needs. I genuinely hope that this article makes you feel seen. You are not alone in this.

You might find yourself brushing it off. You might think, "this is normal, I don’t need therapy for this." But ask yourself — what if that is your rational mind kicking in again? What if it’s just another defence mechanism?

Listen to what your emotions are telling you right now.

Did you feel something reading this?

Did something resonate with you?

That feeling might be exactly why it’s worth giving therapy a shot.

Give yourself the chance to grow. Imagine what you could achieve if you turned your overthinking into a superpower — where your energy is balanced, and your emotional experiences guide your sharp, analytical mind into doing something truly purposeful.

Thanks for reading. I hope this article reaches at least one person who feels inspired to try therapy. That alone would make this piece worth writing.

Let me know in the comments if this resonated with you — and remember: Trust the process.