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How to stop overthinking, the Stoic way

Overthinking is the mind turning the same thought over and over: replaying a conversation, rehearsing a disaster, weighing a decision it has already weighed. It feels like work, but it rarely produces an answer. It produces more of the same thought.

The Stoics did not use that word, but they described the habit precisely and offered ways to loosen it. None of them promised an empty mind. They offered a method for deciding which thoughts deserve your attention, and for returning to the one thing you can do now.

What the Stoics noticed

Epictetus told his students to treat a troubling thought as an impression and not as the fact itself, and to test it first with one question: is it about something that is up to me, or not? A thought about your own next action can be acted on. A thought about what someone else will think of you, or how things will turn out, cannot be settled by thinking.

Marcus Aurelius saw how the mind inflates a single moment into a whole future. His remedy was to shrink the thought back to what is actually present.

“Do not disturb thyself by thinking of the whole of thy life. Let not thy thoughts at once embrace all the various troubles which thou mayest expect to befall thee: but on every occasion ask thyself, What is there in this which is intolerable and past bearing?”

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 8.36 (George Long translation)

Four exercises for tonight

1. Name the loop. Write the thought down once, in one sentence. Then add: "I have already thought this." Seeing it on paper makes a loop look like a loop and not like fresh news.
2. Ask the Epictetus question. Is this about something that is up to me? If yes, write the smallest next action and a time to do it. If no, write "not mine to settle tonight" and put the paper away.
3. Shrink the horizon. Marcus Aurelius suggests asking what is intolerable in this moment, not in the whole of your life. Usually the honest answer, right now, is nothing: you are sitting in a chair with a thought.
4. Close the day with a short review. Seneca describes a habit of the philosopher Sextius, who ended each day by asking himself what fault he had resisted and in what way he was better, and then slept soundly. Seneca does something similar himself (On Anger 3.36). Ask two questions, answer each in a line, and stop.

Decisions that will not close

Some overthinking is a decision that will not finish. A practical move in the Stoic spirit is to decide what would count as good enough, set a time to choose, and then choose. A settled choice, even an imperfect one, frees attention for the work that follows.

When it is more than a habit

Stoic exercises can loosen a habit of overthinking. They are not a treatment. If racing thoughts keep you from sleeping, working or living normally, or if they come with low mood or panic, please speak to a doctor or a qualified therapist as well.

In their own words

“Take away thy opinion, and then there is taken away the complaint, "I have been harmed."”

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.7 (George Long translation)

Frequently asked questions

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