Overthinking is the habit of thinking too much or too long about something, or making something more complicated than it actually is. Overthinking is also known as “analysis paralysis” because by thinking too much one is getting stuck and stopped from taking action.
Overthinking is a favorite topic for psychiatric and psychological review, as a symptom of a possible mental health issue like so-called depression or anxiety, with recommended treatments of psychotropic anti-anxiety or antidepressant drugs, or other harmful psychiatric interventions.
Sometimes the word “rumination” is used as a scholarly euphemism for overthinking. It means “obsessive or abnormal reflection upon an idea or deliberation over a choice.”
Overthinking may also be a symptom of justified thought, which is one’s futile attempt to analytically explain an irrational reaction to something.
Another word for this is a “via,” as in “They took a via instead of a direct approach.” That’s a Latin word meaning “way.” In this sense it means a roundabout way, instead of just a straight A to B. A via is a relay point in a communication line, and represents some interference between a cause and an effect. A totally rational activity strings a straight line between cause and effect; the reasons one cannot are vias. Enough vias between cause and effect make a stop. Almost all anxieties in human relations come about through an imbalance of cause and effect.
Well, how does one determine if one’s route is A to B, or if it is A to C to X to B? In other words, to B or not to B?
That is indeed the question!
We’d like to emphasize that overthinking is not a mental illness. However, psychiatrists have many ways to call this phenomenon a mental disorder, so that they can make a buck, and a patient for life, off of an unsuspecting and vulnerable person.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) is used to diagnose a number of related symptoms that could be presented by one’s overthinking:
- Intellectual disability (intellectual developmental disorder)
- Unspecified intellectual disability (intellectual developmental disorder)
- Unspecified mental disorder
- Unspecified neurocognitive disorder
- Unspecified communication disorder
- Generalized anxiety disorder
- Other specified anxiety disorder
- Unspecified anxiety disorder
Basically, if you think at all, you can be diagnosed with a mental disorder and prescribed harmful and addictive psychiatric drugs.
Back to the question. How does one effectively deal with this?
It can’t hurt to address it as a manifestation of anxiety. Anxiety is an emotion, and is really a conflict, or the restimulation of a conflict, or something containing indecision or uncertainty — in other words as above, obsessive deliberation over a choice. It is exemplified by a conflict between something supporting survival and something opposing survival. It is rooted in an inability to assign the correct cause to something, which itself is rooted in an inability to observe. The cure is not a drug, but in observing the correct cause.
Opposing ideologies, violent revolutions and a frail social economic structure have subjected more than one-third of the world’s population to oppression, poverty and brutal human rights violations. Terrorism and a global economic crisis rips at the very fabric of society, propagating a mindset governed by hysteria, fear and anxiety. It’s no small wonder why some are gripped by anxiety and its attendant overthinking.
The Bottom Line
Anything one can do to improve one’s condition in life, enhance one’s ability to get along well in life, to make good judgments and decisions, to reduce anxiety, and to relieve stress in the environment and in society, can likely help. But however one addresses the condition, the wrong way to deal with it is with psychiatry.
