Think of all the successes you’ve had in the past. Perhaps you got promoted at a job, aced a speech, or did something kind for a friend. Failure to live up to your past successes can be another major cause of overthinking. The book is not only relevant for people who suffer from overthinking, but also for anyone who wants to improve their thinking skills and abilities, as well as their creativity, productivity, and performance. While we may have gut feelings about situations, these are often systematically learned through subconsciously seeking out ways to confirm our own beliefs. We know that they will leave us, in the end, because everyone before has already left. So, when they do leave, for potentially irrelevant reasons, we confirm our fear. In the future, we then associate our dread and feelings of being unsafe with a "gut feeling", trusting our emotions and predictions over the seldom facts at hand.

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The stark truth is that you can’t worry and ruminate extensively about everything that’s gone wrong, or will go wrong, and at the same time stay emotionally balanced and without burdensome symptoms. Naturally, you’ll sometimes need to thoroughly think things through. So, what to do? My advice is that, if you want the best of both worlds – fewer symptoms and room for contemplation – then set yourself the worry/rumination time, as I described in the ‘What to Do’ section, and postpone your worries and ruminations to that specific time. Although I usually appreciate the addition of supplementary material to just about any book, I felt that there were a bit too many kitschy illustrations included here for my tastes... I would like to requote the phrase used by author - to ask a worrying person to think positive is like "adding sugar on shit".

Amen Clinic Chief Psychiatrist Dr. Joseph Annibali is here to bust you out with over three decades worth of experience. Also, if you have thought it all through, and you know exactly what you want to say and what the best solution is, you may end up missing some great possible ways out of the argument that only present themselves during the actual conversation. Because your brain is working so hard on getting in the right sentences at the right moment, there’s just not enough brainpower left to really be present in the moment. Even worse, research 2 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26158958/ shows that overthinking doesn’t just cause insomnia. Overthinking is linked to:

Stop Overthinking: 23 Techniques to Relieve Stress Summary: Stop Overthinking: 23 Techniques to Relieve Stress

It’s nearly impossible to think your way out of overthinking – even if you devise a perfect plan, your mind will continue to race if your anxiety remains elevated. I'm glad the author didn't lecture us with all that useless crap like "stop worrying!" "Be positive!" "Smile in the mirror and tell yourself you can do anything!". Kaiser BN, Haroz EE, Kohrt BA, Bolton PA, Bass JK, Hinton DE. "Thinking too much": A systematic review of a common idiom of distress. Soc Sci Med. 2016;147:170-183. doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2015.10.044 I'm not usually one for self-help books but I did really enjoy reading The Book of Knowing which was the earlier book from this author, and I shared that book with lots of students at school who found it useful and interesting. I was keen to read this next one. It is more focused on adults and I got a lot out of it personally. As someone who is mad keen on worrying it had some great exercises which I will continue to use, but it also clarified and put a name to what is happening in my brain when I do worry. I'm perfectly capable of overthinking the most ridiculous things and it is good to know that that isn't unusual or weird, but something I can do something about.But, he adopted a new philosophy when he went to visit India, a country he describes as overcrowded and wildly unpredictable…Which turned out to be great because people simply live in the moment there, and don’t have that much time to worry and overthink. Then you will ask them "how did that happen? How have you not aged at all? How are you so peaceful?" The Book of Overthinking was a decent short read, but there are other books in this genre that are much better, IMO... Worry is a spiral of thought going around and around taking you nowhere, apart from feeling more anxious,' she says. 'Concern, on the other hand, has specific destinations in mind: time frames, solutions action plans. Much more helpful and constructive.'

Stop Overthinking: 23 Techniques to Relieve Stress, Stop Stop Overthinking: 23 Techniques to Relieve Stress, Stop

So, if you’re struggling to manage your thoughts, if you feel lost in a haze, devoid of concentration, this book will help you Reclaim Your Brain and it might just change your life.

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In this Salon London online event from December 2020, now available on YouTube, I gave an introduction to the basic premises of metacognitive therapy. The surprising result? Students, on average, were pretty bad at not thinking of a white bear and thought of it at an average of more than once per minute!