Getting Carried Away by the Overthinking Surge
Anyone who thinks and cares too much like I do will know what it is like to be sucked away by the roaring overthinking waves. One moment you’re working on a new project, hoping you’ll have the courage to finally put it out there this time; the next you’re desperately trying to stay afloat as doubt and fear keep dragging you down. Anxiety and perfectionism come splashing in and now you’ve created the perfect rip current.
Several surfers run toward it, ignoring the life guard’s protests and accepting the challenge. Every one of them comes back, bragging about how they beat the erratic flow of the waters. They wave their surfboards in the air like trophies.
I’m still looking for the opportunity to go in and try to win my own bragging rights, to overcome one of my greatest weaknesses. That moment never arrives.
There is a difference between being an intellectual and being an over-thinker, a pragmatist and a dweller, a have-done and just a have.
I’ve always been the latter. I’ve always been the one who’s been notorious for having all the information, all the answers, facts and figures… to my classmates’ questions on the homework from last night (or at least what I think are the answers).
As I’ve said, information isn’t worth a thing if you can’t do anything valuable with it.
I’ve always been one to value the thinking mindset more than the action mindset. I’m the one with the notes app clogged with ideas and plans, blueprints for the future. Or just a euphemism for missed opportunities.
I’ll always be the one who labors over the most straight forward math problems, only to feel like really stupid realizing that all that needed to be done was to solve for x.
Life, school, and writing, however, aren’t as simple to navigate as figuring out the value of some variable or finding the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. But I forget that they aren’t rocket science either. They are all journeys and adventures into the great unknown; nothing can be discovered by pondering relentlessly.
Life, like journalism, is a trade, not an academic study.
I know all these things and yet whenever I’m confronted with a blank page or screen I think about introductions, conclusions, body paragraphs, quotes, word order, and syntax. I think about when I’m going to run out of ideas and what I’d do then. I thirst so much for answers and rules that don’t exist that I end up not writing at all. I let myself become overwhelmed by all the different writing styles and voices that have far more experience than I do. I think about what to do and how to do it, and start constructing backup plans. The Worst-Case Scenario lives without rent in my mind, scheming over how to strike me next while I sacrifice so much expensive time trying to counter it. Despite my best wishes, I can’t conquer the natural forces.
My inner overthinker knows this, and therefore tries to convince me that my work will never be acceptable, that people do a ton of things in their lives but achieve little because they never thought anything through and chose the wrong battles, that it’s better to take a million years to act and get it right the first time than it is to immediately start doing and get hit by a brick wall.
Which story would you rather read? it demands. The thin novel that ends in triumph that everyone is bound to pick up, or a tedious Harry Potter-like series in which the protagonist falls head-first into the ocean and struggles to not drown for seven books? Which one are you more likely to get through? Which one are you more willing to endure?
My inner overthinker goes on. Are you like Harry and Ron, who take action first and ask questions later, or are you Hermione and her sense and brains, the only reasons why those two idiots are alive?
It’s like those games of volleyball I’m forced to play in gym class. I’ve acquired this horrible instinct of flinching away and covering my head whenever the ball comes in my direction, but most of the time it doesn’t even hit me.
“‘Cause I’ve learned to slam on the brake, before I’ve even turned the key. Before I make the mistake, before I lead with the worst of me.” — “Waving Through a Window”, from the musical Dear Evan Hansen
But it wouldn’t really matter if I try to protect myself from the wilderness, from everything that isn’t my comfort zone. It’s a lose-lose situation. If I dodge the ball, my teammates will scream at me in anger for letting the other team score a point and not doing anything. If I try to hit it and miss like I always do, I will still be screamed at.
Failure is inevitable, but that only makes me run faster away from it by thinking harder and longer.
The rip current of overthinking pulls me under.
I never learned how to swim so I’m stuck floundering in the sea of darkness. I’m blind and lost, wandering aimlessly and trying to find a map that isn’t there. I call for help but there isn’t a reply and I wait for an answer to appear as the thoughts start to consume me.
I think about academic fulfillment, I think about the rest of my life ahead of me. Adults tell me not to think about these things yet, to stop worrying, to embrace my youth and lack of responsibilities because I’ll have to start paying bills eventually and will regret all the unnecessary stress I put on myself. But what really is there to embrace, except the ambiguity of it all? This crushing uncertainty has already ruined the little childhood I have left. Youth itself is an enigma, nothing less than slogging around through a swamp of memories you’d rather not be burdened with. You have no idea where you’re going and if you lose your way, no one tells you where you went wrong.
It brings questions that will be left for me to experiment and slave away for, just to find “the right way”. Do I make a left or just keeping going straight? And then what happens next? When an opportunity arises, do I take it or leave it? It could be the best thing that ever happened to me or it could destroy my life. Do I accept the risk for it to all blow up in my face or do I retreat into my comfort zone and regret my decision later?
How long will I have to stand out in the sun, holding my finger up in the air to see which way the wind blows, before I get burned again?
How long am I willing to keep up this self-sabotage?
Overthinking is merely self-destruction waiting to happen.
I like to think that I’m getting somewhere, that things are getting done, that one day I will actually accomplish my exhaustive List of Things I Don’t Commit To. However, it’s just as bad as sitting around and not moving an inch, never even having picked up a pen to write anything down. It’s just as bad as that, after you strip away all the good intentions and excuses.
I’ve always seen my weaknesses as disadvantages and never got past the planning stage. That made me realize planning is the worst, most insidious form of procrastination ever. I mean, first you write a bunch of bullet points and outlines, then you just keep adding on to them until it all snowballs into a giant, intimidating stack of long overdue homework assignments that were never completed. It becomes your life, and there goes your real story and in comes the impossibly long to-do list.
I am not a to-do list.
Or a collection of backup plans and alternatives.
Or an impostor.
I can’t replace creativity and risk; there’s only complacency and fear left.
Once you’re caught up in the trap, struggling will only worsen your state. Escaping is an art that takes a lifetime to master and from what I’ve learned, it isn’t easy at all.
Telling yourself “don’t overthink it” will not work. When I overthought stuff, I never realized I was doing it until it was too late. Telling yourself that will only make you start pondering over what it is you’re overthinking, and that gets you nowhere.
I listen to my inner overthinker whenever it barges in to rain on my parade now. I listen, but I never answer it because that will only strengthen it. It feeds and thrives off of my words. Instead, I defy it. I start happening to things instead of thinking about what’s going to happen to me. I start doing things of my own volition, not because I feel obligated to in order to quell the voice in my head.
That’s why I write. No one ever accomplished anything by thinking. Writing is my form of change and it’s the only thing I’m decent at. I want to end something instead of just starting it for once.
It’s the tough conversations that I have with myself, the controversial topics I bring up and refute through my own voice and words that bring me my own answers. Those answers may not be “right” or “true” and I may not ever unearth the world’s narrative, but they’re as close I can get for now.
It isn’t as mentally exhausting as trying to fill up the silence. I can only add to the noise that’s already there.
