We’re all thinking way too much
An addiction like any other.
After turning in my manuscript last year, I became convinced of many things. That I had gotten some sort of historically essential detail catastrophically wrong. The kind of mistake that would get my ass cancelled. I was sure that nobody who formerly loved me had remained a fan. And I just knew that it was some sort of impossible to diagnose but probably life threatening disease that was causing my newfound anxiety (not the thousands of hours of screen time).
I responded like anyone with a human brain would: I fact checked my book obsessively, I scrutinized loving texts and interactions for signs of betrayal, and I insisted my doctor run every possible test in their toolbox. Gathering as much information as possible made sense in the moment — the fixation felt like doing something. Still, this level of rumination came with a hefty price tag. Example: my dearest ones would tell me something on a walk, they’d pause appropriately for my input, and I would have no idea what they’d been yapping about.
The overthinking muscle tends to really hypertrophy while reporting a book, especially one that drags you through agricultural history, climate collapse, cultural nuance, and the bizarre politics of industrialized vegetables. It’s the kind of work that requires a near-pathological level of mental watchfulness and actually rewards you for opening thirty-seven tabs about a Himalayan cucumber shaped like a football. But here is the paradox: All that examining of yourself — Is this correct? Does it make sense? Does this sound corny? Will people like it? — eventually usurps what the self was supposed to be examining.
I am surely (surely?) not alone in this propensity toward over-analysis. Books and academia aside, modern life increasingly reframes existential safety not as the ability to outrun a tiger, but as the result of relentless self-scrutiny. The shower is a place to rehearse forthcoming difficult conversations as much as it is one for routine hair-washing. We obsessively construct online identities for faceless audiences. The morally superior social posture is to remain informed about world events at all times, lest you find yourself unprepared for an oddly contemporaneous trivia night.
What these think-y behaviors share, of course, is the fantasy of control. In the Deep Fix newsletter, Alex Olshonsky argues that all this cogitation functions mechanistically like any other addiction. We experience some sort of discomfort in our bodies (say, feeling lost and vulnerable after a big career milestone); administer a temporarily soothing hit of something (in my case, a delicious dose of hypervigilance); feel worse about/because of the compulsive behavior of choice; and land right back at discomfort. As he writes:
“The object shifts from opiates to Instagram to productivity, but the move is always the same: escape the feeling and reach for the next thing that promises relief. Thinking is just a higher-status version of this.”
What our culture brands as brainy, ethical, or ambitious, Olshonsky argues, is so often just avoidance in a virtuous outfit. An immediate downside to being addicted to overthinking is that it tends to render the narratives we tell ourselves more vivid, more real, than the real life events happening in front of us. It means we’re asleep at the wheel for much of this one precious life. I felt a lot of shame in this realization; how much time have I lost? But, like any other addiction, thinking is a protective misfire out of our freaky little control centers. Over to Olshonsky:
“For many of us, staying in our heads was the safest place to be, especially early on. The nervous system learned that if you can think your way through something, you don’t have to feel it. Thinking became your protector. At the time, it was a smart strategy.”
Undoing all of this, he argues, comes not from waging war against our obdurate biological wirings but through something far more somatic and Burning Man-adjacent: learning to retrain focus on an experience over the relentless surveillance of that experience. He spells out his own process in clear, repeatable detail here. But I’ve found this sort of meditative, from-the-neck-down style of contemplation to be akin to asking a toddler (I am the toddler) to please sit still through an evening of abstract spoken word. Maybe you’ll do better!
In the meantime, until embodiment becomes my operational default, I have decided to give myself no option but to be where my feet are: I plunge into water so cold it seems to freeze my brain. I balance 200 cookies precariously on a sheet pan at work, forcing myself to zero-in on nothing but their safe passage to the freezer. I zoom around the park on rollerblades, despite having no clue how to stop — a fact my partner lovingly pointed out recently after I nearly ate shit in the middle of a road — which makes me keenly aware of any obstacles lurking in my direct surroundings. All of them situations far too urgent to think about.
Anyway! Three feel-y prompts for you:
Which parts of your life are narrated, rather than really lived?
What activities bring you back to the soft animal of your body?
If your internal monologue shut off for a few minutes, what sensations might you notice?
