Ruminating / Overthinking

One in a possible sporadic series of Pessimistic Tidbits.

Overthinking is a form of self-medication, similar to alcohol and drug use, excessive exercise, continual social media immersion, chocolate, etc. It often is kick-started in adolescence, when unhealed childhood pain and injustice must be escaped, moved on from. People escape from feeling by falling upward into their head. It will feel better to think questions and options than to drown in helpless feeling. Like other self-medications, what starts off being helpful or even life-saving will eventually become a major encumbrance. Depth therapy says that returning – regressing – to the original pain and expelling it in its raw form will undermine the need to escape into ruminating and racing thoughts. (New York Times comment, https://www.nytimes.com/shared/comment/44or4o?rsrc=cshare&smid=url-share)