How to Stop Overthinking: A Plan for Worry and Rumination
How to stop overthinking is really two questions, because overthinking comes in two forms: worry about the future and rumination about the past. Neither stops by telling yourself to stop thinking, which research shows makes the thought louder. What works is changing what you do with the thinking, and this worksheet builds that plan.
Reviewed byMichael Callans, MSWRelated tools & tests
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About this tool
How to stop overthinking is the most common version of a question people bring to therapy, and it contains a trap. Overthinking is not one thing. It splits into worry, which points at the future and sounds like what if, and rumination, which points at the past and sounds like why did I. Both are repetitive, both feel productive while they are happening, and both leave you with no decision and less sleep. The plan that works is different from the plan people try, because the instinctive move is to stop the thoughts, and that is the one move that reliably fails.
Daniel Wegner's thought suppression experiments showed why. Participants told not to think about a white bear went on to think about it more once the suppression period ended than people who had been free to think about it all along. Wegner and colleagues published the finding in 1987 and named the rebound effect. Monitoring for the absence of a thought requires holding the thought in mind, so suppression keeps checking whether the thing you banned has come back. Applied to your own worry at midnight, telling yourself to stop thinking about the email guarantees several more rounds of the email.
So the target changes. Instead of fewer thoughts, you aim for a different relationship to the thinking: let the thought show up, decline the invitation to follow it for an hour, and put your attention on something you chose. Edward Watkins drew the distinction that makes this practical in a 2008 review: repetitive thought is not inherently harmful. It is constructive when it is concrete, specific, and aimed at a situation you can act on, and unconstructive when it is abstract, evaluative, and aimed at your character. The same forty minutes spent on what do I say in the meeting versus why am I like this produce opposite results.
Rumination has the strongest evidence as a risk factor rather than a symptom. Susan Nolen-Hoeksema's response styles research, reviewed with Blair Wisco and Sonja Lyubomirsky in 2008, found that a ruminative response to low mood predicted the onset and the length of depressive episodes rather than simply accompanying them. That is a reason to treat rumination as a habit worth interrupting early. It also means that when rumination arrives with flat mood, low energy, and loss of interest, the intervention that works is usually behavioral rather than cognitive: do the activity first and let the mood follow, which is what Behavioral Activation Planner sets up.
The first practical move is a worry window. Thomas Borkovec and colleagues tested stimulus control for worry in the early 1980s: pick a fixed time and place, postpone worries to it when they arrive during the day, and use the window to worry deliberately. It sounds like it should not work, and it mostly does, because postponement is a different instruction from suppression. You are not banning the thought, you are moving it, which removes the monitoring problem. Twenty minutes at six in the evening, same chair, not the bedroom. The page at Scheduled Worry Time has the full procedure. If what you circle is almost entirely future-facing, How to Stop Worrying runs the same window as a full plan with an uncertainty experiment attached.
The second move is defusion, borrowed from acceptance and commitment therapy. Rather than arguing with a thought or trying to evict it, you change how you hold it: I am having the thought that I ruined the presentation, rather than I ruined the presentation. Saying the thought in a silly voice, writing it on a card, or naming it as old material all do the same job of putting a half step between you and the content. It is not a trick for making thoughts untrue. It is a way of noticing that a thought is an event in your mind rather than a report on reality, and Cognitive Defusion (ACT) gives several versions to try.
The third move sorts worry from problems. Ask of each worry: is there an action, today, that would change this? If yes, the worry is a problem in disguise, and it ends with a written next step and a time. If no, it is a hypothetical, and no amount of thinking resolves it, which is the honest and unsatisfying answer. Most overthinking is the second kind being treated as the first. Writing the action down matters more than it should, because unwritten intentions get re-litigated every time they surface.
A word on what overthinking is not. It is not a diagnosis, and no test measures it as a clinical entity. It is a shared feature of generalized anxiety, depression, obsessive-compulsive patterns, social anxiety, and perfectly ordinary stress about something real. That is why the same label covers very different problems, and why self-help works for some people and barely dents it for others. If the overthinking is about intrusive thoughts you find repellent and feel compelled to neutralize, that pattern is closer to obsessive-compulsive disorder and needs a specific treatment rather than worry time.
The worksheet below is our own design, informed by cognitive behavioral and acceptance-based methods rather than taken from any single manual. Fill in Part 1 while you are calm, run the worry window and one defusion move for a week, then use the review. Expect the window to feel artificial for the first four or five days; that is the normal shape of the practice rather than a sign it is not for you.
Book a conversation with a therapist if overthinking has you awake most nights, if it is making decisions impossible, if it keeps returning to self-criticism or to a loss you cannot put down, or if months of self-help have produced no movement. The Overthinking Test on this site is a reflection tool rather than a diagnosis, and Rumination explains the past-focused form in more depth. The Psychology.com therapist directory is free to search.
References
- Wegner DM, Schneider DJ, Carter SR, White TL. Paradoxical effects of thought suppression. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 1987;53(1):5-13.
- Watkins ER. Constructive and unconstructive repetitive thought. Psychological Bulletin. 2008;134(2):163-206.
- Nolen-Hoeksema S, Wisco BE, Lyubomirsky S. Rethinking rumination. Perspectives on Psychological Science. 2008;3(5):400-424.
- Borkovec TD, Wilkinson L, Folensbee R, Lerman C. Stimulus control applications to the treatment of worry. Behav Res Ther. 1983;21(3):247-251.
- Hayes SC, Strosahl KD, Wilson KG. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: The Process and Practice of Mindful Change. 2nd ed. Guilford Press; 2012.
- Borkovec TD, Robinson E, Pruzinsky T, DePree JA. Preliminary exploration of worry: some characteristics and processes. Behav Res Ther. 1983;21(1):9-16.
Cite this source
Psychology.com. (2026, November 6). How to Stop Overthinking. Psychology.com. https://psychology.com/tools/how-to-stop-overthinking
How to Stop Overthinking FAQ
How do I stop overthinking at night?
Overthinking at night is usually postponed thinking catching up with you, because the day gave it nowhere to go. Two things help most. Move the thinking earlier with a fixed twenty minute window before dinner, held somewhere other than the bedroom, so the material has already had its turn. Then keep a notepad by the bed for one-word entries, so the mind stops rehearsing items to make sure they survive until morning. If you are awake more than twenty minutes, get up, sit somewhere dim, and go back when sleepy.
Why can I not stop overthinking even when I know it is pointless?
Because knowing a thought is pointless and stopping it are different operations, and the second one does not run on instruction. Worry is maintained by a payoff you may not notice: it feels like preparing, it delays a decision, and it occasionally does catch something real. Rumination is maintained by the sense that one more pass will produce an answer. Add the rebound effect, where suppressing a thought makes it return more often, and willpower aimed directly at thinking tends to lose. Changing what you do with the thought works better than fighting the thought.
What is the difference between overthinking and anxiety?
Overthinking is a behavior, anxiety is a state, and no test diagnoses overthinking as a condition on its own. Repetitive thinking shows up across generalized anxiety, depression, social anxiety, obsessive-compulsive patterns, and ordinary stress about something genuinely uncertain. That is worth knowing because the treatment follows the underlying pattern rather than the label. Future-focused worry with physical tension points one way, past-focused rumination with flat mood points another, and intrusive thoughts you feel compelled to neutralize point somewhere else again.
Does scheduled worry time really work?
It works better than it sounds like it should. Borkovec and colleagues tested the approach in the early 1980s as stimulus control: you pick a fixed time and place, postpone worries to it as they arrive, and worry deliberately during the window. The key is that postponing is not suppressing. You are agreeing to think about it, just later, which removes the monitoring that makes suppression backfire. Give it two weeks before judging it, and expect the window itself to feel forced and slightly pointless for the first few days.
Is overthinking a sign of intelligence?
There is no good evidence for the flattering version of this idea, and the research that gets cited for it is thin. What is clear is that repetitive negative thinking tracks distress rather than ability, and that it predicts low mood over time rather than better decisions. Careful, concrete analysis of a real problem is useful thinking and looks nothing like overthinking in practice: it is specific, it finishes, and it produces a next step. The abstract, evaluative version produces neither a decision nor relief.
How long does it take to stop overthinking?
People who run a worry window consistently tend to notice fewer hours lost before they notice fewer thoughts arriving, and a habit that has been in place for years takes weeks rather than days before the new response feels automatic, and it comes back under stress, lack of sleep, or a genuinely uncertain situation. Judge progress by how quickly you disengage rather than by whether the thoughts stopped showing up, because they will keep showing up.
Is anything I type here saved?
No. Everything you enter stays in your browser on your own device. Nothing is uploaded, nothing is stored on our servers, and the PDF is built locally when you download it. That means you can name the actual situation and the actual person without anyone else reading it. It also means closing the tab loses the page, so download the PDF when you are done, especially the worry window details, which only help if you can see them during the week.