What Is Overthinking (and Why Is It So Hard to Stop)?
Overthinking happens when your mind gets stuck in repetitive, unproductive thoughts also known as rumination. While it feels like problem-solving, it rarely leads to clarity or action.
Here’s the part most people don’t realize: your brain is trying to protect you.
Overthinking often develops as a coping strategy to avoid uncertainty, rejection, or emotional pain. The problem is that your mind goes into overdrive.
Common causes of overthinking include:
- Past experiences of criticism, rejection, or judgment
- Anxiety about making the “wrong” decision
- Perfectionism and fear of failure
- Unresolved stress or trauma
- Feeling out of control in certain areas of life
When you’re stuck in your head, your brain is trying to think its way out of uncomfortable feelings. Unfortunately, overthinking doesn’t solve problems, it creates new ones.
The Real Cost of Chronic Overthinking
Overthinking isn’t just annoying. It affects nearly every area of your life.
Sleep:
You lie awake at night replaying conversations, mistakes, or “what if” scenarios.
Relationships:
You overanalyze texts, assume the worst, or pull back because you’re convinced people don’t actually like you.
Decision-making:
You freeze. Or you make a decision and then mentally torture yourself wondering if it was the right one.
Mental health:
Chronic overthinking fuels anxiety and depression, keeping you stuck in cycles that feel impossible to break.
You deserve to feel calm in your own mind.
How Therapy Helps You Stop Overthinking
Therapy for overthinking is practical, collaborative, and grounded in real toolS, not fluff.
Here’s what we actually work on together:
1. Identifying Your Overthinking Patterns
We figure out what specifically triggers your mental spirals in work, relationships, social situations, or decision-making. Awareness is the first step to change.
2. Challenging Anxious Thoughts
Most overthinking thoughts aren’t facts, they’re fear-based predictions shaped by past experiences. In therapy, we learn how to question and reframe them.
3. Building Coping Tools That Actually Work
You’ll learn techniques to calm your nervous system and interrupt spirals, including grounding exercises, mindfulness strategies, and thought-stopping tools you can use in real life.
4. Addressing the Root Cause
Overthinking is often a symptom of deeper issues like anxiety, trauma, or low self-worth. Therapy helps you heal what’s underneath not just manage symptoms.
5. Practicing Self-Compassion
Overthinkers tend to be incredibly hard on themselves. We work on shifting your inner dialogue from harsh self-criticism to self-support.
Affordable Online Therapy Across Canada
Accessing quality mental health care shouldn’t feel out of reach.
I offer online therapy for overthinking and anxiety at an affordable rate, that can be reimbursed with your insurance company (if applicable).
I’m licensed to provide virtual counselling across British Columbia, Ontario, Manitoba, Yukon, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland and Labrador, so you can attend therapy from the comfort of your home. No commute, no waiting room, no long waitlists.
You Don’t Have to Live Stuck in Your Head
Overthinking can feel permanent, like your brain is wired this way and nothing will ever change.
But people do break free from mental loops that kept them stuck for years. With the right support, you can learn how to quiet your mind, make decisions with confidence, and stop replaying your life like a disaster film.
You deserve support that fits your budget and your life.
Author: Dani Clarke, MACP, Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying)
Contact Me
Email: worthyfromwithin@outlook.com / Call or Text: 647-872-9323
Worthy From Within Psychotherapy - Toronto, Ontario, Canada 