Atharv Walimbe
You are a college student all set to graduate, or even if you are a first-time college student, have you ever worried or thought continuously about how life will be for you after you graduate? What will happen if you don’t get the right job or grad school? Or worse, what if a slight mistake from the past is used against you in the future? As a college student living abroad, away from my family and home country, I have gained the ability to overthink literally everything. Even as I write this piece for Euphemism, I am overthinking about how people will react to my nonfiction article: will they feel offended, will I be banned from writing for Euphemism, and so on.
One of the signs linked to overthinking is having to take second guesses on your decisions. This was a few weeks ago, there was an event I had signed up to attend a week before its actual date, and I was looking forward to this event since all my friends were going to be there. However, on the day I was supposed to go, I decided to back out without a fair and valid reason; I don’t know why but suddenly, the thought of going to this event may not be the best idea started to bother me like crazy; I was now more worried about when this event will end and what if the piece of clothing I had chosen to wear was not appropriate. There was only one thing that motivated me this time to not overthink: Food; if I go to the event, I will get food I don’t need to pay for compared to food from an external dining place. My friends were my second motivation. I thought all my friends would be there, and I had promised to join them; how would they feel if I decided to back out at the last minute? Sometimes positive overthinking is a good thing.
Another sign linked to overthinking, which honestly has turned into a blessing is catastrophizing. In simple terms, when someone is catastrophizing, they assume that the worst will happen or, at times, exaggerate the difficulties they face. So why do I consider it a blessing? Let me explain. It was finals for my finals for one of my politics classes, the test was highly challenging, and I knew that I was going to fail; overthinking eventually happened as I hoped for the worst; since the test was out of 100 points, I was expecting at least a 60. When the results came in, lo and behold, I earned 90. The same thing also happened with my grade for Economics; it jumped from a high C to a low A. Was this a miracle or a reward for preparing for the worst? Whatever it may be, ever since then, even if the exam may be the easiest one I have taken so far, I have always considered the worst-possible circumstances after getting the grades back.
I have had professors from my schools and colleges advising me to get at least 7-8 hours of sleep before every examination and/or final. I do “sleep” for 7-8 hours every day, but let me breakdown my sleep pattern for you: I spend my first-hour playing candy crush or watching Dr. Mike videos on YouTube, and the second hour involves resting my head on the pillow, and trying to get my eyes to close, the third to fourth hour consists of some amount of sleep, the fifth hour, however, is when I start thinking about how I may have not set my alarm for tomorrow, so I wake up and rush to check my phone, and finally the sixth and the half is spent sleeping. There isn’t one if you are curious about what happens to me during the seventh and eighth hours. So, this is a message to all professors and so-called “sleep scientists” out there: “when you talk about how humans must sleep for at least 7-8 hours per day, you are doing this near-to impossible task of turning this normative statement (what should be) into a positive statement (what is).
To please the curious nerd side of me, I looked up ways to avoid overthinking and came up with the following solutions: using distractions, challenging negative thoughts, working on interpersonal skills, meditating, and practicing self-acceptance. How these strategies help avoid overthinking depends on the individual, but for me personally, using distractions has benefited me a lot. The two most common distractions I love using are music and writing. Music calms my frightened brain, and writing helps me eliminate the thoughts that make me want to overthink.
I think of overthinking as an art because it awakens the creative side in me. I have often complained about how I am going through a stage known as “writer’s block,” in which I cannot think of what to write; now, all thanks to overthinking, I finally have a lot of things to write about. Overthinking is a cyclical process; one must either know how to escape this cycle or learn to manipulate it.
Sources: Overthinking