Don’t Overthink
By URANIA SHI ‘28 and ANDREW YANG ‘27
You’re at a start-of-the-school-year social. It’s up to you to make friends for life at Exeter. You want to be funny, but you can’t be a clown. You have to take risks and make friends as soon as possible!
You find your way to a small group of people who just started talking and crack a joke. You expect laughs and an invitation to join the conversation—but to your horror, you’re met by awkward stares and an uncomfortable laugh. Embarrassed, you apologize and leave the circle. What have you done?
How come making friends is so hard? Was your joke that bad? Did you come in at the wrong time? Was it not funny enough? Are you even a funny person? Did they just not like the way you spoke or the way you looked or the way you walked or—
Pause. You’re overthinking.
Overthinking is dwelling on negative thoughts or situations to the point where it disrupts your life. You either regret or plan excessively, which serves as a major driver of anxiety. Why does this happen?
From a young age, we are taught to be goal-oriented. Our parents and teachers assign us specific tasks and reward us with a prize upon completion. A pattern of thinking emerges: do A to get B. We tend to believe that our decisions and actions can directly impact the result. In reality, this is often not the case. Let’s revisit the scene mentioned at the start. You don’t fit in and start blaming yourself, thinking you could’ve done something different to change this outcome. However, many factors are simply out of your control: your friends’ sense of humor, cultural differences, your friend’s judgment… We must realize that events in life are not organized like a rulebook. There is no “perfect” solution to every circumstance. Most of the time, how things turn out is not your fault.
Overthinking is also a coping mechanism that allows us to gain “control” over our situation and escape reality. Imagine this, you just finished a math major assessment and checked your answers with your friends. You realize that you got three multiple choice questions wrong. Anxious thoughts fill your mind. Two points…maybe three for each question…100-3-3-3=91. Take away three points for silly mistakes. 91-3=89… Rationally, this does not make sense. No matter how hard you think about this test, you can’t change the results. However, since you dislike uncertainty, you escape the “uncertain reality” and try to warp it in your mind. You try to gain control over your situation that you don’t have control over anymore. Voila. You were overthinking to cope with a difficult situation.
Overthinking is exhausting and can affect much more than your mood. Studies show that overthinking can be a root of depression and/or anxiety, and causes individuals to burn out, fatigue, and incessantly seek social validation or reassurance. For example, social trends such as hustle culture glorify busyness and achievement, and can often provoke harsh self-scrutinization and comparison, which can all lead to overthinking. This causes a multitude of repercussions, which can exacerbate feelings of insufficiency further, leading individuals into a harsh cycle and diminishing the quality of life.
So, what is a solution to this seemingly unavoidable aspect of human existence?
First and most importantly, you can reduce your social media use. Apps like Instagram and TikTok use likes, shares, and comments as a form of validation, and users may feel the need to curate their habits or lives around receiving validation. This can be a large stressor and can create insecurities that would otherwise not exist.
Secondly, you can let go of unrealistic ideals or figures that you may hold yourself up to. Although having a role model can be motivating, comparing yourself to others can harm your self-esteem and exacerbate your overthinking tendencies. This ties into the impact that social media can have on you: despite not directly giving you a model of someone to compare yourself to, validation feedback on social media can subconsciously bring you to adhere to certain social standards. These social standards can be toxic and are also one of the root causes of overthinking.
Third, be aware of your mindset towards failure. Reflecting on your past mistakes and planning ahead is great to do. But when does it get to a point where it turns into overthinking? We think of hypothetical situations out of our control because we find controlling the things we can control too challenging or pointless. Try to catch yourself when you’re overthinking, and find a healthier approach to reflection.
In the end, overthinking is harmful and is hard to catch when it’s happening, especially when you’re facing a hard reality that over-analyzing or over-planning can appease. Try to capture the root causes of your overthinking, and you’ll find healthier approaches to your past mistakes without falling into a negative spiral.
