Opinion piece by Barbara Lee
For a long time, I believed overthinking was simply who I was. I'm the person who re-reads a sent message five times. Who searches for hidden meaning in a single offhand comment. Who spends days replaying a difficult conversation, mentally rewriting every line. Who generates so many possible scenarios before a decision that I eventually lose track of what I was even deciding.
It frustrated me endlessly. I kept telling myself to just stop overthinking — which worked about as well as telling an insomniac to simply fall asleep.
Then, slowly, through therapy, I understood something that changed everything: I don't overthink because I enjoy worrying. I don't do it because I love uncertainty.
I do it because I can't stand uncertainty. My overthinking isn't a flaw or a quirk. It's a search for safety.
When you grow up in an environment marked by unpredictability — emotional instability, tension, or anything that felt out of your control — you learn to read the room. You learn to scan for signals. You learn to anticipate what might happen next, because being caught off guard feels dangerous.
When the nervous system doesn't get the memo
As a child, that kind of hypervigilance is a smart adaptation. The problem is that the body and nervous system don't automatically update when twenty or thirty years have passed.
So as adults, we keep doing the same thing: watching, analyzing, preparing for every possible outcome. There's always one more scenario to think through. One more risk to anticipate. One more disappointment to brace for.
The brain believes this is protection: if I imagine the worst, it can't blindside me. If I think through every possible problem, I won't be left vulnerable. If I prepare enough, I'll be safe.
But there's a fundamental flaw in that logic: life is not an exam. There is no such thing as perfect preparation.
There will always be situations we didn't see coming. People who surprise us. Losses, changes, and turns we couldn't have modeled in advance, no matter how hard we tried.
Overthinking never reaches an ending
And yet, overthinking offers the seductive illusion that if we just think long enough, we can control the future. It's a compelling promise. It's also an exhausting one.
Because thinking has no natural stopping point. There is always one more potential disaster to uncover. Overthinking doesn't actually reduce anxiety — it sustains it.
It's like someone constantly scanning every room for the emergency exits, so focused on escape routes that they never notice they were safe the whole time.
The most important shift for me was realizing that real safety doesn't come from preparing for everything. It comes from trusting myself.
From genuinely believing: whatever happens, I will be able to handle it. That might sound like a small distinction, but it's an entirely different way of moving through the world.
Overthinking says: "Figure out every problem in advance." Self-trust says: "You can't predict every problem — but you'll deal with them when they arrive."
One tries to control the future. The other trusts in your own resilience.
All I was ever looking for was safety
Over the past few years, I've slowly learned that my sense of security doesn't grow from perfect planning. It grows from evidence — from the lived proof that I have already survived an enormous amount.
There were disappointments I dreaded for months. Losses I thought would break me. Periods when I genuinely didn't know how I would get through. And yet, here I am. Somehow, there was always a next step.
Now, when I catch myself chewing on the same problem for hours, I try to ask an honest question: Am I actually looking for a solution — or am I looking for safety?
Because those are not the same thing. And more and more often, I find the answer isn't more thinking.
What I need is a reminder: safety doesn't come from knowing everything in advance. It comes from believing — really believing — that whatever comes, I am capable of facing it.
