How to Stop Overthinking

If you want to know how to stop overthinking, start with a reframe: the goal is not an empty mind. Researchers describe overthinking as repetitive negative thinking, and the techniques with evidence behind them work by changing how you respond to those thoughts, not by forcing them out. Below: the methods with the best support, what each study tested, and honest answers to the questions people ask most.

A caveat: many of these studies are small or short, several tested people already diagnosed with depression, and we read most of them as abstracts. We point out the limits as we go.

This guide is not a substitute for professional help. Persistent overthinking can be a sign of anxiety or depression, so if it is affecting your sleep, work or relationships, please talk to a doctor or a mental health professional. In Thailand, the Department of Mental Health hotline 1323 offers free, confidential support 24 hours a day. If you are in immediate danger, call your local emergency number.

What overthinking actually is

“Occasional anxiety is a normal part of life,” says the US National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). In a 2021 paper in World Psychiatry, Thomas Ehring defines repetitive negative thinking as dwelling on problems or bad experiences (past, present or anticipated) in a way that is repetitive, intrusive, hard to stop, unproductive and that takes up mental capacity. Rumination and worry both fit that label, and what they share predicts depression and anxiety disorders better than what sets them apart.

Why it matters: a 2020 review by Watkins and Roberts in Behaviour Research and Therapy found that rumination magnifies and prolongs low moods, interferes with problem solving, and is a shared risk factor for anxiety, depression and insomnia. It feels like working on a problem, but it often gets in the way of solving one.

What is the root cause of overthinking?

There is no single cause. Watkins and Roberts propose that rumination starts with dwelling on problematic goals and, over time, becomes a learned habit: a tendency to process bad news in abstract terms (for example, “why does this always happen to me?”), made worse by weak mental control and a bias toward the negative. Biological and environmental factors make that habit more likely to form. A 2008 review by Nolen-Hoeksema and colleagues in Perspectives on Psychological Science links rumination not only to depression but also to anxiety, binge eating, binge drinking and self-harm.

The hopeful part: Watkins and Roberts report early trials suggesting that treatments aimed at these mechanisms may be effective.

Do not try to push the thought away

Pushing a thought away tends to backfire. In a 1987 experiment in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Wegner and colleagues asked people not to think of a white bear for five minutes. They could not manage it, and afterward they thought about the bear more than people asked to think about it from the start. In a second experiment, people given one specific thing to think about instead were less preoccupied later.

Distraction is different. Nolen-Hoeksema’s review reports that dozens of experiments show positive distractions relieve a low mood, although correlational studies are less consistent. The practical rule: do not fight the thought; give your attention somewhere specific to go.

Give worry a time and a place

The UK National Health Service (NHS) Every Mind Matters guide on tackling your worries suggests “a short period, say 10 or 15 minutes, every day or so before bed to write things down and try to find solutions.” When a worry turns up during the day, you tell yourself, “I’ll set that aside for my worry time.”

The trials are promising but mixed:

• McGowan and Behar (2013), in Behavior Modification, randomly assigned 53 people with high levels of worry to two weeks of either a daily 30-minute worry period in a fixed place or a control condition. The worry-period group improved more on worry, anxiety, negative mood and insomnia, though not on depression.
• Versluis and colleagues (2016), in the British Journal of Health Psychology, tested it online for six days: of 996 people who signed up, 361 finished, and postponing made no difference to how often or how long they worried. Many found postponing hard.
• McCarrick and colleagues (2025), in Psychology & Health, followed 186 people for 14 days. Adding specific “if-then” plans (for example: if a worry comes up, I write one line and return to it at 6 p.m.) cut daily worry time by about 15 minutes compared with postponement alone. Sleep did not improve.

Our reading: worry time is worth trying, ideally with a concrete plan for when and where.

Turn the loop into a concrete next step

Overthinking tends to stay abstract. In a 2005 study in Emotion, Watkins and Moulds compared 40 people with depression and 40 people who had never been depressed. Among the depressed patients, focusing on their symptoms in a concrete way improved problem solving compared with focusing on them abstractly.

The NHS guide turns this into a “worry tree”: separate problems you can act on from hypothetical worries you cannot. For the first, write down what you will do, how and when, and do what you can now. For the second, accept that it is out of your control and shift your focus.

Action helps too. Behavioral activation, a therapy that uses scheduling to help people reconnect with rewarding activities, beat control conditions for depression in a 2014 meta-analysis of 26 randomized trials (1,524 participants) in PLoS ONE. Most of those studies were of low quality, and they were about depression, not everyday overthinking.

Check the thought before you believe it

For generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), NIMH says cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) “has been well studied and is the ‘gold standard’ choice for psychotherapy.” It teaches you to notice automatic, inaccurate thoughts, question them and change the behaviors that keep worry going. The NHS says CBT is usually done with a therapist, but you “can practise many of the same ideas on your own.”

Its catch it, check it, change it method is a good start:

1. Catch it. Learn the usual suspects: always expecting the worst, focusing only on the bad side, black-and-white thinking, and blaming yourself for everything that goes wrong.
2. Check it. How likely is the outcome you fear? Is there good evidence for it? Are there other explanations? What would you say to a friend thinking this way?
3. Change it. Replace it with a more balanced thought. If you cannot, that is fine; the NHS says changing the thought is not the only way the exercise helps.

Talk to yourself by name

A small change in language creates distance. In seven studies with 585 people in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (2014), Ethan Kross and colleagues had people reflect on stressful situations using either “I” or their own name and “you”. The second group showed less distress, performed better on first impressions and public speaking as rated by observers, dwelt less on it afterward, and saw upcoming stressors more as challenges than threats. The results did not depend on how socially anxious people were.

For example: “Maya, you have handled harder meetings than this. What do you need to prepare?”

Notice thoughts without arguing with them

Some approaches teach you to step back from thoughts instead of changing them:

• Mindfulness. A 2013 review of 19 studies in Clinical Psychology Review concluded that mindfulness-based and CBT interventions may reduce both rumination and worry. A 2017 meta-analysis of 11 studies in the International Journal of Clinical and Health Psychology found that mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) moderately reduced rumination in people with depression compared with usual care, with no significant difference from other active treatments in the three studies that compared them.
• Acceptance. NIMH lists acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) as another treatment option for GAD: it encourages “nonjudgmental acceptance of thoughts and behaviors” and uses mindfulness and goal setting.
• Metacognitive therapy (MCT). It targets what its developers call mental control processes. In a 2020 trial of 174 adults with major depression in Scientific Reports, Callesen and colleagues found no difference from CBT on a clinician-rated scale, but on a self-report scale 74% recovered after MCT versus 52% after CBT. The authors list the limits: two therapists, one of whom treated 69% of patients, and a chief investigator who created MCT.

How to stop overthinking at night

Overthinking and poor sleep feed each other: Watkins and Roberts list insomnia among the problems rumination makes more likely, and the NHS lists stress, anxiety and depression among the most common causes of insomnia.

One five-minute habit has direct evidence. In a 2018 study in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Scullin and colleagues had 57 healthy adults aged 18 to 30 write for five minutes before sleeping in a sleep laboratory. Those who wrote a to-do list for the coming days fell asleep significantly faster than those who wrote about tasks already done, and the more specific the list, the faster they fell asleep. It was one night with young, healthy sleepers: a promising habit, not a cure.

The NHS also advises going to bed only when sleepy, waking at the same time every day, and no alcohol, tea or coffee in the six hours before bed. If poor sleep continues, a doctor may offer CBT, face to face or through an online program, to change the thoughts and behaviors that keep you awake.

How to calm anxiety and overthinking in the moment

When a spiral is already running, you need something short. The NHS suggests calming breathing exercises, and grounding exercises give your attention a specific place to land, which fits Wegner’s finding about specific distracters.

What is the 3-3-3 rule for anxiety?

Cleveland Clinic describes the 3-3-3 technique as focusing on three things you can see, hear and touch, noticing colors, textures and details. A longer version is 5-4-3-2-1: five things you see, four you touch, three you hear, two you smell and one you taste. We searched research databases on October 6, 2026 and found no study testing the 3-3-3 rule itself. Use it to interrupt a loop, not as a treatment.

Habits that make anxiety and overthinking worse

What is the #1 worst habit for anxiety?

No study ranks a single worst habit. The NHS guidance on generalized anxiety disorder lists the ones to avoid: avoiding situations that make you anxious (build up time in them gradually instead), focusing on things you cannot change, drinking lots of caffeine, and using alcohol, cigarettes, gambling or drugs to cope. Add the one from the white bear experiment: trying to force thoughts out of your head.

What drinks can help with anxiety?

We found no clinical guidance naming a drink that treats anxiety. The guidance says what to cut instead: the NHS warns that the caffeine in coffee, tea, cola and energy drinks “can disrupt your sleep and make it harder to control your anxiety,” and NIMH reports that cutting caffeine and sleeping enough can reduce symptoms alongside standard care.

How to not worry about work

A routine built from the techniques above:

1. During the day, write each work worry in one line and park it for a set worry time, with an if-then plan.
2. In worry time, sort each item with the worry tree: a concrete next action for solvable ones, acceptance for the rest.
3. When a loop starts before a meeting, check the thought (how likely, what evidence) and talk to yourself by name.
4. Before bed, spend five minutes on a specific to-do list for the next few days, then close it.

When overthinking needs more than self-help

NIMH says GAD is diagnosed when worry is difficult to control on most days for at least six months, along with at least three symptoms such as restlessness, fatigue or sleep problems. Its advice: if anxiety starts to cause problems at work, at school or with friends and family, seek professional help. In the UK, the NHS says a doctor will usually suggest a talking therapy, most often CBT, before medicine.

If you are struggling, please talk to a doctor or a mental health professional. In Thailand, you can call the 1323 hotline.

Books that go deeper

Each of these has a BookBits audio summary, and together they take about two hours. Four are by psychologists or a psychiatrist.

• Live More Think Less by Pia Callesen, first author of the MCT trial above, introduces metacognitive therapy to break the cycle of rumination.
• Chatter by Ethan Kross, the University of Michigan psychologist behind the self-talk studies, shows how to turn your inner critic into a coach.
• The Worry Trick by clinical psychologist David Carbonell explains why the usual efforts to stop worrying backfire.
• Retrain Your Brain by licensed psychologist Seth Gillihan sets out CBT as a seven-week program.
• Unwinding Anxiety by psychiatrist and neuroscientist Judson Brewer, for readers who recognize their overthinking as a habit they keep repeating.
• End the Insomnia Struggle by Colleen Ehrnstrom applies CBT for insomnia, for readers whose overthinking peaks at bedtime.
• Soundtracks by Jon Acuff is the lightest of the set: spot the negative thoughts you replay and swap them for better ones.

To go further, the Reduce Anxiety goal has reading paths such as Quiet the Mind, Heal the Self and Rewire from the Inside Out, which include several of these books. The Practice Mindfulness goal includes Your First Step Into Stillness, our list of the best mindfulness books runs from first steps to deeper practice, and for nights there is Break the Insomnia Cycle. For a wider view, see the best mental health books.

Studies and sources cited

• Callesen, P., et al. (2020). Metacognitive Therapy versus Cognitive Behaviour Therapy in Adults with Major Depression. Scientific Reports, 10, 7878.
• Ehring, T. (2021). Thinking too much: rumination and psychopathology. World Psychiatry, 20(3), 441.
• Ekers, D., et al. (2014). Behavioural activation for depression. PLoS ONE, 9(6), e100100.
• Kross, E., et al. (2014). Self-talk as a regulatory mechanism: how you do it matters. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 106(2), 304-324.
• McCarrick, D., et al. (2025). Effects of worry postponement on daily worry and sleep. Psychology & Health.
• McGowan, S. K., & Behar, E. (2013). A preliminary investigation of stimulus control training for worry. Behavior Modification, 37(1), 90-112.
• Nolen-Hoeksema, S., et al. (2008). Rethinking Rumination. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 3(5), 400-424.
• Perestelo-Perez, L., et al. (2017). Mindfulness-based interventions for the treatment of depressive rumination. International Journal of Clinical and Health Psychology, 17(3), 282-295.
• Querstret, D., & Cropley, M. (2013). Assessing treatments used to reduce rumination and/or worry. Clinical Psychology Review, 33(8), 996-1009.
• Scullin, M. K., et al. (2018). The effects of bedtime writing on difficulty falling asleep. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 147(1), 139-146.
• Versluis, A., et al. (2016). Reducing worry and subjective health complaints. British Journal of Health Psychology, 21(2), 318-335.
• Watkins, E., & Moulds, M. (2005). Distinct modes of ruminative self-focus. Emotion, 5(3), 319-328.
• Watkins, E. R., & Roberts, H. (2020). Reflecting on rumination. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 127, 103573.
• Wegner, D. M., et al. (1987). Paradoxical effects of thought suppression. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53(1), 5-13.

How BookBits fits

A 15-minute summary will not stop a thought loop, but it is a quick way to find which approach suits you before committing to a whole book. Previews are free, with no account: play one on any book page above. Members hear the full summary in the app, and full listening requires the iOS or Android app. Pricing explains the plan and the 7-day free trial.