So, You're A Philosopher

Overthinking: Think, think...and think again!

• Chris Welsh

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0:00 | 21:41

Overthinking. Oy! It plagues us all. But…should it? Could we, perhaps, tame this cognitive beast and use it for good?


What comes up in this episode:

  • When is thinking overthinking?
  • Adaptive vs maladaptive cognition.
  • Two juicy Delphic Maxims.
  • Mason’s killswitch.
  • Crickets.


Referenced or mentioned:

  • Socrates
  • Seneca
  • Kierkegaard (briefly)
  • Mason
  • Sean

A thought to carry with you:
 Your ability to control your thinking is as much in your power as the power to think.


Credits / Links:



SPEAKER_02

So you're a philosopher? Hmm. Let's start with a story. A tale about a man on the cusp of immortality, and the seeds of some of his most profound ideas. The stocky, broad-shouldered man stepped up into the shade of the stoa, the open porch fronting the Temple of Apollo, licking honey from his fingers. He didn't see his friend yet, so he plunked himself down on the steps and considered the collection of treats he'd obtained from the market below. Honey cakes, sesame bars, ah, yes. He fished out a strip of fried dough, glistening with honey and flecked with poppy seeds. Just as he crunched down, his eyes met those of a priest ascending the steps. A very different figure, with his tamed beard, clean belted robe and fancy sandals. The man spoke to him with a fatherly tone, even though they were clearly of the same generation. Recall the words of the oracle, said the priest, pointing up. The man looked up and read the words carved at the top of the column he was resting against. Nothing in excess. There were similar maxims on all the columns of the stoa, and above the doorway leading into the temple. If the priest had more to say, it was lost as he dodged the sudden appearance of a gaunt, fast moving Chirophon, fresh from his visit to the oracle. He was grinning, and ignoring the flustered priest, stole the bundle of sweets before leaping down the steps. Well, he yelled back to his friend, who grunted but hurried to follow. I asked him, said Chirophon, as soon as they were side by side. The larger, balding man brushed crumbs from his beard and sighed. And what exactly did you ask? Chiraphon's grin somehow got wider. I asked, Who is wiser than Socrates? Another sigh. Are you really going to drag this out? What was the answer? Chirophon threw an arm around his oldest friend and steered him towards the market. The answer was this No one. Socrates scoffed. He looked back at the temple as they headed for the Fear at Games they had come to see. The words of a different maxim, carved into the doorway of the temple, caught his eye. Know thyself. After a moment he smiled, then snatched back the sweets. We'll see, Chirifon. We'll see. Know thyself, the most famous of perhaps a hundred or more Delphic maxims, and the foundational idea underpinning Socrates' approach to philosophy. This story was my own imagining of what might have happened, how Socrates and his pal Chairophon had encountered this maxim and asked this question of the oracle. Socrates tells us that to know ourselves is the most important thing, and that requires a lot of thinking, a lot of introspection. But, in a deliciously human irony, the effort of introspection can sometimes lead to a potentially painful situation we like to call overthinking. Not too long ago, I set out to understand this phenomenon a little better. I started with the Stoics, as I am wont to do, but then went on a married journey that included my therapist, a lot of internet research, and, eventually, Socrates. Socrates is known for many things besides know thyself. He was the tutor of Plato, devoted follower of Apollo, the inventor of the Socratic method. But first and foremost, he was a philosopher. And so are you. So you're a philosopher?

SPEAKER_01

Let me think.

SPEAKER_02

My name is Chris, and I believe you have a philosopher inside you. They may be hiding or have a small voice, but they are there, and I'd like to introduce you. You know, I never thought of myself as an overthinker. When I was a kid, I'd heard about overthinkers, I'd I heard people talking about it, and I just always thought overthinkers were unhappy, unproductive. I knew I was introspective. I was speculative. Spending time in my head was one of my favorite things to do, still is. But overthinker? I got even more introspective after my divorce a few years ago. Nothing like a massive change of direction in life to get you thinking. And as I met new people and I opened up to friends about what I was going through and the things I was thinking about, I got told that I was overthinking a lot. But was I? What does it mean to overthink? I was working things out, learning and discovering, wasn't that good? And how much thinking makes something over? How subjective is the concept of overthinking? How much of it is rooted in some kind of measurable, qualitative state? Am I overthinking? Overthinking. Possibly. Self-analysis is a bit of a hobby of mine. Some might say obsession, but that might be a bit much. So naturally, I took this question I had, this wanting to analyze my overthinking to my therapist. And I told her, I feel like it's a bit of a superpower. It's something I do well, this analysis. I can see things from many angles and perspectives. I can synthesize, I can analyze. I don't want to lose that. It's part of what makes me me. But I could see where I was tripping up. I was getting stuck. I was magnifying pain. And I didn't want that either. Let me take a side tangent here to say this self-analysis, this wondering about wondering, this ability to step outside of the mental process in the current moment and ask what if. This is prime philosophy in action. I don't think it's much of a stretch to say that people are flooded with stimulus from outside their brain, especially in today's world of always-on media and addicting phone apps. All of that outside brain stimulus influences what goes on inside their brains. Humans are already wired for anxiety. Kierkegaard wrote an entire book on dread and anxiety and how it was essentially part of the human condition. If you interviewed the most peaceful monk meditating on some remote peaceful mountaintop, you would probably find that there are moments that they have anxiety, worry about the future. They're just really good at managing that. Everyone deals with overthinking at some point. You have a story, I have a story, Mason has a story.

SPEAKER_00

I've always considered myself an overthinker. It really kind of paralyzed me as a kid. Like I'd always think to myself think way too much about someone to the point where I just didn't actually do it. I think growing up it really affected on relationships. A couple years back, I really kind of focused in, started working myself.

SPEAKER_02

Mason came to his moment of clarity regarding overthinking a lot earlier than I did. But I got there. So there I was, trying to figure out what overthinking is. Is it good? Is it bad? How do I manage it? Overthinking isn't one thing. It's a category of things. It's a condition of thinking. There's a lot of ways to break it down. It kind of depends on the features of the thinking. There's a bunch of different kinds of overthinking. Catastrophizing, indecisiveness, perfectionism, worrying, future tripping. It all just depends on kind of which direction your mind is going, what the subject is, and kind of what you're trying to get out of it. Interestingly, overthinking is an effort to try to resolve worry, concerns that you might have, to try to settle your mind, and often winds up doing just the opposite. So catastrophizing is assuming worst-case scenarios. Indecisiveness is where we get the famous uh analysis paralysis, where you're just sort of stuck in a trying to make a decision loop. Perfectionism, similarly, you're stuck in a loop, but you are going over and over and over, trying to get something just right, which can arrest action. Future tripping, your mind is always jumping ahead to try and figure out problems instead of staying fixed in the present moment. But what's interesting to me, what I discovered, is that if you look at all those types of things, future planning, reviewing past behaviors, et cetera, these are all useful things, right? So why do they hurt? And maybe the better question is, when do they hurt? When does thinking about something that purportedly is beneficial or could be beneficial, when does it become not beneficial? So this is adaptive versus maladaptive. Adaptive meaning this is something that is useful to you, helps you adapt to things, helps you move forward in life and achieve what you want to achieve. And then there's maladaptive, which does the opposite, holds you back. It doesn't allow you to adapt or adjust. It keeps you stuck. Really, thinking is natural. Overthinking is a qualification. It's thinking about something to the point where you go, Oh, I'm overthinking it. And that sense of overthinking is a good signal to your conscious self to take a step back and take stock of the situation. It doesn't mean you have to stop thinking, just that you should be aware of what's going on. It's a call to presence. So how do you know you've gone into the overthinking uh territory versus the I'm thinking carefully about this thing territory? Part of it is your gut feeling. Is it starting to make you feel bad? Now, I I can see and I've experienced a little bit of anxiety when I'm trying to plan for the future, and there's uh different ways to manage that. I definitely think it's a skill. And the good news is you can learn a skill. And I've got some suggestions here that that could help out. Overthinking qualities include a thought being sticky. You can't get rid of it. It just keeps coming back and back. So it's also repetitive. In fact, one of the psychological codes for it is RNT or repetitive negative thinking, is one way to think about overthinking. And see, it's that's the uh that's the interesting part, is it even just thinking about something being overthinking, I have to sometimes take a step back and say, okay, am I just throwing that term around too loosely, or am I actually overthinking? And that's when I kind of turn to my gut and how does my nervous system feel. Another signal of when an adaptive cognitive process crosses over into maladaptive overthinking is when the thinking begins to preservate, when it it lasts beyond the stimulus that caused it. You know, someone break checks you on the highway, and 20 miles after they exited, you're replaying the incident and cursing their stupid giant SUV with the coexist bumper sticker and the out-of-state plates. No reason for that very specific example. So, what do you do if you get stuck in a loop and you realize that you're overthinking? There's actually a lot of different remedies, and they can match up with the type of overthinking. So we won't go into all of them, but I want to give you a couple of examples. Satisficing is one example. Sounds like satisfaction. That's because that's essentially what it is, is that you make a decision to satisfy the moment. A good example of this is um, and there's there's a lot of studies and evidence, especially in today's world, that the overabundance of choice causes stress and anxiety in our lives. This, by the way, is featured in Kierkegaard's book, The Concept of Anxiety. He calls this phenomenon the dizziness of freedom. Very poetic. I don't remember where I heard it, but I remember the example of buying jeans. Used to be you would go into a store and they'd have a limited selection of jeans. You would find the best pair you could, and you'd say, Well, these are all that they have, so I'm satisfied that I got the best I could get. Whereas today, you've got unlimited options. You could spend months online shopping for jeans. And yeah, you might find something in the first 10 minutes, but you're like, well, what else is out there? What if these aren't the best pair of jeans for me? Another example in something that I try to do is when I go to a restaurant, if they have a pretty exceptional menu and everything seems to look good, after a moment or two, I'll start over again and I'll the first thing that I stumble across that I know I'll like, even though there's five other things I might like and they're all new to me, I just pick that first one. I know I'm gonna like it. Or at least I know I'm gonna have a new experience, and I work on being satisfied with that. And a lot of the times, just deciding to do that, you find that that uh that FOMO goes away. You're satisfied. So that's an example. Uh if you're stuck in analysis paralysis, you can use satisfying to get out of it. Another thing you can do, if you're stuck in a uh rumination, for example, you are reliving that dumb thing you said to that cute guy that you are interested in, and it's driving you crazy, and it's gonna lead into catastrophizing. You're gonna start, oh they're gonna think I'm an idiot and I've ruined my chances. Take action. That's what Mason does.

SPEAKER_00

A couple of years back, I really kind of focused in, kind of start working myself, exercising all this other stuff, and kind of learned how to kind of install a kill switch in my mind. So if I just find myself overthinking and I really just need to do something, and I just kill the thinking altogether and just kill. Just put yourself in a situation where you just have to do something.

SPEAKER_02

Mason figured that out on his own, which is pretty awesome. Some of us need a nudge or to be introduced to a tool that we can use. Mel Robbins has a nifty five-second rule that she recommends that we use in order to go from idea to action. She says that it doesn't take long for the brain to kill the willingness to take action, thanks to maladaptive thinking. So she wants you to make a deal with yourself. You have an idea, and in this case the idea is I need to get moving to get myself out of this overthinking hell, and then you count down five, four, three, two, one, and then just fucking start. I've done this myself, and it's amazing how well it works. And just to underline her rule, because I can't help myself, with a quote from a philosopher While we deliberate how to begin, it becomes too late to start. That line comes from Seneca, who we're going to talk about a little bit later. So, what if you are stuck in a RNT loop and you don't know what to do to break out of it? Go for a walk. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, out the door. And there's a lot of evidence that exercise has a lot of biochemical effects that counteract the biochemical effects that come along with anxiety, and it also quiets the mind. So to expand on this idea of overthinking simply being a qualification of normal thinking, I want to show you a counterpart to a type of thinking. If we take, for example, future tripping or catastrophizing, there's a really cool idea that works to take this maladaptive thought process and turn it into an adaptive strategy.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, so I wanted to call in about something that stoics use called pre-mana.

SPEAKER_02

This is Sean. He's put up with my blathering on about philosophy quite a bit. He is an MBA, he's a polyglot, and he also once convinced me to pretend to be a lawyer to get his car out of the shop. He's gonna tell us about premeditatio malurum.

SPEAKER_01

What that has to do with is that you are thinking about everything that might possibly go wrong in the situation, considering that deeply, so that you are prepared to emotionally deal with that once you once it actually occurs. I think that's what pre-Toman Nama is.

SPEAKER_02

Exactly. Now I wanted to introduce this concept to you. It comes from Seneca, a philosopher who is he's like part of the Justice League of the Stoic school of philosophy. Even though other members of the Stoic Justice League talk about the same concept, Seneca is the one who talked about it the most. And what premeditatio malorum basically means is the meditation, the pre-meditation of evils. For example, I'm recording a bunch of these episodes before I've officially launched the podcast. Once I launch it, any number of things could happen, including this. So I've used premeditassium malorum to examine the various outcomes in advance, and decided that I want to move forward regardless of the outcomes. Now, how I use this to help me when I'm writing and recording and producing, when those maladaptive thoughts start to bubble up, I can tap into the emotional steadiness that I have waiting for me by reminding myself that I'm aware of what might happen, and that everything's going to be fine. I want to do it anyway. If I work on this podcast and it falls flat, that's not the end of life. So, when you're faced with one of the maladaptive forms of overthinking, remember there's another side to that coin, a productive, adaptive form of cognition.

SPEAKER_01

It's not just free free free meditat.

SPEAKER_02

The Stoics in particular seem to lean in hard on managing overthinking in its many forms, which makes sense when you consider that the ultimate goal of Stoicism is ataraxia, or peace of mind. Actually, a lot of the different schools of philosophy had that or a similar goal in mind. They just differed on their approaches. Which is all Christ for the episode mill, my friend. We'll likely get into all the adaptive counterparts to the various types of overthinking in future episodes, but if you want to get a head start on the basics, you can't go wrong with the book How to Be a Stoic by Massimo Piliucci. That was the first book I read on the subject, and I highly recommend it. I'll link it in the show notes. Thinking back to our story in the beginning, the maxims, the Delphic maxims, the most famous of which, know thyself. That's what gets you thinking, which is good. But nothing in excess advises knowing when to stop thinking, which is even better. Cognition in all its awesome potential is yours, your birthright as a human being. But you know what else is? Agency. The ability to control that big bouncy brain is just as much of a human heirloom as thinking itself. As you go on about your day and you find yourself maybe stuck in a little bit of repetitive negative thinking or caught in a loop and feeling worrisome. I want you to remember that there's a tool out there that you can use to help yourself get out of it. And if we haven't discussed it yet, let me know what you're looking for. I'll help you find it. In the meantime, say hi to your inner philosopher for me. So you're a philosopher?

SPEAKER_00

Yes. I think very deeply.

SPEAKER_02

What do you think?

SPEAKER_01

Um