How to Stop Overthinking

How to stop overthinking right now

Write the thought down, decide whether there is one step you can take in the next 24 hours, and if there isn't, park it for later. Picture 11 pm and a lunchtime conversation playing for the fourth time.

Do: write it as one sentence.

Why: a specific sentence ("I haven't answered Dana's email") is easier to act on than a vague feeling ("everything is a mess").

Do: ask if one small step fits into the next 24 hours.

Why: if it does, the thought is a task. Do it, or give it a time.

Do: if there is no step, or you aren't sure, park it with a time.

Why: the thought gets a place to wait, which is what the trials below tested.

Do: when it returns, say "Not now, at 6:00 pm," and go back to what you were doing.

Why: you move the thought to later, so there is nothing to argue with.

Run the tool once for each thought, and keep the list open in the tab until your worry time.

Worry time: how to postpone a worry

In a 2013 trial, McGowan and Behar had people with high trait worry keep a 30-minute, time- and place-restricted worry period each day for 2 weeks ^[1]. The method has older roots: Borkovec and colleagues described stimulus control for worry in 1983 ^[3]. Five rules turn it into a habit:

1. Pick one slot of 15‑30 minutes at the same time and in the same place each day. A chair that is not your bed works well.
2. Keep it away from bedtime. We suggest at least 2 to 3 hours before you sleep. No trial tested that gap.
3. During the day, write one line and move on. Use the tool or a note on paper, then return to what you were doing.
4. In the slot, read your list. For each item, ask the 24-hour question again. Write the step if there is one. If there isn't, let the worry sit on the page for the rest of your slot.
5. Stop when the time is up. Whatever is left waits for tomorrow's slot.

The first days can be hard. In the online trial that did not work, people with high trait worry reported difficulty with postponing worrying ^[4]. If the thought comes back, say your line and park it again.

Does worry postponement work? What trials found

The trials are small, and not all of them worked. We read the abstracts of four of these five studies; PubMed shows none for the fifth.

Two trials found less worry than their control, one found no effect, and one found that adding an if-then plan shortened worry. We found no meta-analysis.

Worry, rumination or problem-solving?

Worry looks ahead, rumination looks back, and problem-solving ends in an action. Repetitive thought can be useful: Watkins' review lists recovery from upsetting events and preparation and planning as its constructive uses, and points to abstract versus concrete thinking as one factor that separates helpful from unhelpful ^[6]. Thinking turns into overthinking when it stays abstract and circles instead of moving to a decision.

If what loops is one thing that already happened, a conversation or a mistake, see how to stop ruminating. This page is built for worries about what comes next.

The tool's 24-hour question sorts the three. A yes means problem-solving. A no sends worry and rumination to the worry window. A sudden unwanted thought that shocks you is a different thing; see intrusive thoughts.

How to stop overthinking at night

If you would rather practice than plan, mindfulness for overthinking is a 3-minute exercise for thoughts that won't settle. If the worry is waiting for you in the morning, see morning anxiety.

Night can be harder, but one thing has lab support: write tomorrow's to-do list before bed. In a sleep-lab experiment with 57 healthy adults aged 18 to 30, people who wrote a to-do list for 5 minutes fell asleep significantly faster than people who wrote a list of what they had already done, and the more specific the list, the faster they fell asleep ^[9]. It was one night in a lab and there was no group that did not write, so we give no minutes.

Postponing a worry is a different tool, and it did not help sleep in the 14-day trial: none of the sleep outcomes improved ^[5]. Park worries during the day, and use the to-do list at bedtime.

The NHS gives the same advice in plain words: if you often worry in bed, try making a list of things you need to do the next day before you go to sleep ^[10]. If one worry keeps coming back, five minutes with one of our journaling prompts for anxiety can get it onto paper.

For the body side, try the body scan script or the breathing pages in how to calm your nervous system. Tonight: keep paper by the bed, write 3 to 5 lines for tomorrow, and leave the rest to your worry time.

Overthinking at work or after a mistake

If work leaves you drained most days, not only after one mistake, try the burnout test.

The thought "I made a mistake and can't stop thinking about it" needs a different move depending on the situation:

• If the mistake can still be fixed, answer yes in the tool. Write the step (email the client, correct the file) and the time, then do it.
• If it can't be fixed, write one thing you would do differently next time, and park the replaying.
• If you keep imagining what others think of you, ask what you would tell a coworker who made the same mistake, and write that sentence down.
• If work thoughts follow you home, write tomorrow's first task and park the rest for the worry window.

Does distraction help?

Short distraction helps your mood more than ruminating, but it does not solve the problem behind the thought. In an experiment with 76 people treated for depression, a short induction of distraction or of mindful self-focus had clear beneficial effects on the course of negative mood compared with rumination ^[11]. A review of rumination research sums up the lab work: across dozens of experiments, it reports, "positive distractions relieve depressed mood" ^[8].

Both findings concern low mood and short inductions, not hours of worry. Use distraction after you park a thought: the thought has a place to wait, and you get a break from it. If low mood has made you drop things you used to do, behavioral activation works on that side.

Therapy approaches that target overthinking

If overthinking fills hours of your day, therapies built for it exist: CBT, rumination-focused CBT and metacognitive therapy.

A systematic review of 19 studies concluded that mindfulness-based and cognitive behavioural interventions may be effective in reducing both rumination and worry, in internet and face-to-face formats ^[12]. In a trial of 42 people with residual depression, adding rumination-focused CBT to usual care improved symptoms and remission rates, and the change in rumination mediated that effect; the trial had no attention-control group ^[13].

A meta-analysis of 25 studies found metacognitive therapy effective for a range of complaints, with the strongest evidence for anxiety and depression, and its authors say more and larger trials are needed ^[14]. An internet-delivered rumination-focused program with therapist support, tested on 118 adults with depression and anxiety, lowered worry more than a waitlist (d = 0.62), and the gains held at 6 months ^[15].

If this sounds like you, see when to see a professional.

Frequently asked questions