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Thinking Too Much: What It Means and What Helps

Thinking Too Much: What It Means and What Helps

You wake before the alarm again. There’s a headache behind your eyes, the same one that was there yesterday.

Last night you lay in the dark going over the same conversation. The one from three weeks ago, with your brother, about money. You worked out what you should have said, then you worked it out again, and then it was 2am. Nobody else in the house knows.

During the day you’re tired in a way that sleeping doesn’t fix. You lose your temper with people you love. At six o’clock you’re standing in the kitchen with the rice on and your mind is somewhere else, back on the phone call, back on the thing you can’t do anything about tonight.

If someone asked what was wrong, you’d have trouble answering in English. “Depressed” isn’t it. “Anxiety” sounds like a thing a doctor hands you, with a form.

And if you did find the words, who would you say them to? Your mother would worry about you for a year. At work it turns into something people know about you. So it stays where it is, and you carry it through the week, and nobody has to be told anything.

You’d probably say you’re thinking too much.

Your words got there first

You’re not the only person who says this. A researcher named Bonnie Kaiser read more than a hundred studies from countries all over the world. In country after country, people used the same phrase for the same feeling. Thinking too much.

That phrase is now in the book psychiatrists use. It sits in a part of the book that lists the words people use for their own suffering. It isn’t a diagnosis.

Why it doesn’t stop

Your brain is doing three things at the same time.

  1. One part keeps making the same thoughts, over and over. It does this most when you’re not busy, which is why it’s loudest at night.
  2. The alarm system in your brain (the amygdala) treats each of those thoughts as danger. So every time the thought comes back, it feels urgent.
  3. The part of your brain that would normally move your attention somewhere else isn’t strong enough to move it.

Put those three together and you get a loop. The same thought, coming back, all night. We’ll call it the loop from here on.

Think of a car parked in the driveway with the engine running. The engine works hard for an hour. The car doesn’t move, and there’s less petrol in the tank at the end than there was at the start.

Why your body hurts

I see this most in people who come to us with a body problem instead of a feeling. They tell me about the headaches first. Then the sleep. The mood comes up last, if it comes up at all.

While your mind is in the loop, your body stays ready for danger:

  • your muscles stay tight
  • your heart beats faster
  • your stomach slows down
  • your sleep stays light, so eight hours in bed still leaves you tired

The headache is the loop, arriving in your body.

Six things you can do this week

The most useful way to treat this is as a behaviour. Something you’re doing, that has quietly taken the place of doing something else.

1. Say it in the words you already use.

You don’t need the complicated English words to ask for help. “I’m thinking too much and I can’t sleep” is enough for a health professional or a psychologist to work with. Anyone worth seeing will start where you start.

2. Check whether the thinking changed anything.

Ten minutes that ends in a decision is problem-solving. Two hours that ends exactly where it started is the loop. Same feeling from the inside, completely different activity, and the only reliable way to tell them apart is whether anything came out the other end.

3. Do the small thing before you feel ready.

Waiting until you feel ready means waiting for the loop to let go of you, and it doesn’t let go on its own. Walk to the letterbox and back. Ring someone back. Action comes first and the feeling follows it, in that order, every time.

4. Put the problem on paper and take one step.

Write the actual problem in one sentence. Not the whole situation, one sentence, which is harder than it sounds and is most of the work. Then list what you could do, including the options you don’t like and the ones that feel too small to bother with. Pick one. Do it this week. Then look at what happened. Most people skip that last part, and it’s the part you learn from.

5. Give the thinking a time and a place.

Pick fifteen minutes a day for worrying. Same time, same chair. When the thoughts turn up at any other time, tell yourself you’ll get to them in the chair.

6. Guard the hour before you sleep. Give that hour to something dull and physical. Dishes, folding, a walk around the block.

One thing this article is not for. If the thinking includes thoughts about ending your life, or you’re carrying nightmares and flashbacks from something that happened to you, six sessions of skills work is the wrong first step. That needs a different kind of help, and sooner. Ring Lifeline on 13 11 14, or tell your GP plainly, and ask to be sent to the right kind of care.

Being understood the first time

When you talk to someone in your own language, you can say what you actually mean. You get understood the first time. You don’t have to make the story smaller so it fits the English words you have.

You can see a psychologist who speaks your language. Ours speak Vietnamese and Arabic. If we don’t speak yours, we book the interpreter, we pay for it, and it costs you nothing. You never have to arrange it yourself. In Fairfield, health services asked for nearly 20,000 free interpreters in six months of 2023, so plenty of people around you are already doing this.

There’s another reason people stay away, and it isn’t language. Ritesh Chimoriya and his team at Western Sydney University surveyed Arabic-speaking migrants and refugees in Greater Western Sydney. In that group, the people carrying the most distress were also the most likely to believe that a person with a mental illness is dangerous or unpredictable. If you hold that belief, asking for help means admitting you’re one of them.

Not going is the ordinary thing to do here. Of the Australians who had a mental health condition in the past year, fewer than half saw any health professional about it.

Twenty minutes instead of two hours

The thoughts don’t stop completely. Anyone who tells you they will is lying to you.

What changes is how long they hold on to you. You fall asleep in twenty minutes instead of two hours. You get through a shift without the knot in your stomach. You sit through a family lunch and you’re actually there for it.

The headaches come less often, because your body has stopped running the alarm all night. Most people notice the sleep first.

One sentence, tonight

Do number four. One sentence, on paper, naming the problem.

We run a program called Side-By-Side. South Western Sydney Primary Health Network pays for it, so it costs you nothing.

It’s for adults 16 and over from multicultural communities across South Western Sydney. Six one-on-one sessions with a psychologist. No referral, no Medicare card, no diagnosis, and no cost at any point. In person at Fairfield or Bankstown, or by phone or video if getting to us is hard.

You can read how it works here, or call reception on (02) 9727 7752. You’ll sometimes see the program written as Side by Side.

If Side-By-Side isn’t the right fit, your GP can write a Mental Health Treatment Plan, which brings Medicare rebates toward sessions with us. We’re a private billing practice, so there’s still money out of your pocket with that pathway, and it’s fair to ask us what it comes to before you book anything. You can also come to us privately without going through anyone.

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