Is Overthinking A Sign Of Anxiety

Songs That Perfectly Describe These 9 Symptoms Of Anxiety

Feeling anxious is a common emotion that comes and goes for many, but for those with anxiety disorders, experiencing anxiety doesnt feel as temporary. Anxiety disorders are characterized by cognitive and physical symptoms like:

• Intrusive Thoughts

While music isnt a cure for mental illnesses like anxiety, oftentimes it can be therapeutic. In fact, according to the American Music Therapy Association , health professionals who specialize in music therapy can use music to address the physical, emotional, cognitive and social needs of patients. It can also be useful for folks who struggle to express their feelings in words.

But sometimes, even listening to music by ourselves can relax us and give us natural relief from anxiety. Oftentimes our go-to anxiety songs can perfectly describe what its like to live with anxiety symptoms. To get more specific about how music can describe anxiety, we asked members of our Mighty community to share songs that represent their experience with some classic symptoms. What songs relate to your own journey with anxiety? Let us know in the comments below.

Heres what our community shared with us:

How To Stop Overthinkingand Start Living

Dinsa Sachan

Last year, I started experiencing symptoms such as bloating, gas and loss of appetite. It turned out to be an unusually long bout of sickness for a normally healthy person like me. After reading a dozen articles online about the symptoms, I began to wonder if I had cancer or another disease.

I shared my concerns with my father. He is a doctor who treats people with cancer. He asked me to “eat more fiber.” I was disappointed he didn’t take me seriously. After spending a few days obsessing over cancer and death, I finally saw a doctor specializing in disorders of the digestive system. The doctor, an experienced professional well into his 60s, listened intently to my whining. He quickly diagnosed me with acid reflux, a condition in which a muscle that connects the stomach with the food pipe becomes weak. Consequently, the stomach’s acid flows back into the food pipe. The physician did not sound alarmed and asked me to take some basic precautionsâ”avoid coffee and don’t add too many spices to food.” I took the meds he prescribed, and I was back to feeling healthy in a week.

This wasn’t the first time I had succumbed to the trap of overthinking. Determined to understand the problem, I decided to speak to psychologists and learn why we are prone to thinking too much.

Are You Ready To Overcome Anxiety And Live Your Dream Life

Finally, work to accept that you cannot control everything. This is the aim of your overthinking, and its ultimately holding you back. To grow and develop as a person, you need to willingly move out of your comfort zone into places where the unexpected can happen. You also need to be able to learn from mistakes and see them as opportunities for improvement rather than as failures.

Learn how you can live in the now and rid yourself of anxiety with our free quiz, which identifies what is truly holding you back from a life free of fear. Live your dream life, just click here now.

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Signs You’re Overthinking Everything And How To Stop

Thinking things through is natural, and in some situations, totally warranted. But, sometimes, it can veer into the pattern of overthinking.

This might look like nit-picking certain situations and scenarios, replaying them in your head and being unable to focus on much else. It could also mean reading too much into an interaction, or assuming the worst.

While a little overthinking might not hurt, if it becomes a constant habit, it could be detrimental to your life.

We spoke to a life coach and therapist Rebecca Ore about how overthinking can manifest and what to do about it.

She says three of the symptoms of overthinking are:

• Youre thinking about the same facts over and over and not taking any steps forward.

• You believe you just havent found the solution yet, and if you were to think about it just a little bit more youd solve everything.

• Youre not able to think about anything else. This one thing is consuming all of your brains energy and keeping you from being present in your day to day life.

Overthinking can leave you obsessing over things, says Ore. When our brain identifies something as a problem it will act like a dog with a bone which results in us chasing our tails, going round and round in circles, replaying or re-considering facts, searching for the magical fix or certainty, she says.

Ore adds that overthinking can arise from the brain not being satisfied by the answers it finds to the situations created mentally.

What Exactly Is Overthinking Disorder

After all, everyone might get overwhelmed by obsessive thoughts from time to time. However, when this starts to consume our lives, it could turn into a severe, constant issue and become a condition to pay attention to. Some people are more predisposed to it, especially those who have other anxiety disorders. It turns out that overthinking activates the same parts of the brain that cause fear and anxiety.

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Get Used To The Anxiety

One of the hardest parts for those living with obsessive thoughts is the idea that they should just live with the anxiety. But learning to be okay with the anxiety is actually an effective strategy.

Part of this will come from acceptance, as mentioned above. But a big part of it is simply learning to let yourself worry.

Compulsions have a tendency to provide too quick a solution to the obsessions, causing you to avoid actually dealing with the anxiety. However, the compulsions actually strengthen the obsessive anxiety, because youre depriving yourself of the opportunity to survive the anxiety and prove to yourself that this is possible. But if you fight the compulsions as best you can and let yourself be anxious for a while, you’ll often find that the obsessions cause a bit less fear, because you know first-hand that nothing will come of them.

This often needs to be completed in the presence of a therapist who can teach you the tricks necessary to stop trying to solve your obsessive thoughts and simply let them be obsessive.

Youre Caught In The Worry Cycle

It can be an incredibly frustrating, overwhelming, and even paralyzing experience. My clients who have this problem will often tell me that the anxiety seems untriggered and random or that they are just always anxious about pretty much anything.

While the anxiety youre feeling may seem untriggered and random, there IS a clear trigger: uncertainty.

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Ways Anxiety Causes Overthinking

An effect of any type of anxiety is overthinking everything. There are common themes to the way anxiety causes overthinking. Perhaps this generic list will remind you of specific racing thoughts you experience and help you realize that you’re not alone in overthinking everything because of anxiety.

• Obsessing over what we should say/should have said/did say/didn’t say
• Worrying incessantly about who we are and how we are measuring up to the world
• Creating fearful what-if scenarios about things that could go wrong for ourselves, loved ones, and the world
• Wild, imagined results of our own wild, imagined faults and incompetencies
• Fear of having a panic attack in public and possibly thinking that you can’t leave home because of it
• Worrying about a multitude of obsessive thoughts, sometimes scary ones and thinking about them constantly
• Thinking — overthinking — a tumbling chain of worries, vague thoughts, and specific thoughts

Keep The Focus On Problem

Dwelling on your problems isn’t helpful–but looking for solutions is. If it’s something you have some control over, consider how you can prevent the problem or challenge yourself to identify five potential solutions.

If it’s something you have no control over–like a natural disaster–think about the strategies you can use to cope with it. Focus on the things you can control, like your attitude and effort.

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So To Resolve The Uncertainty Your Brain Switches To Analysis Mode

This analysis can take many different forms. You might try to predict possible outcomes in your mind. You could try to reassure yourself why the thing youre worried about will not happen. You could try to think more logically or positively about it to take a seemingly more rational view. You may spend hours doing online research. Or you may seek reassurance from friends and family members that everything will be okay.

You Let Your Anxiety Hold You Back

You really know that overthinking is holding you back when anxiety prevents you from doing things or moving forward in your life. Usually this involves thoughts about What if? and then thoughts about all the things that could possibly go wrong.

In cognitive therapy we call this type of negative thought pattern catastrophizing. You go to all sorts of worse- case scenario and that can make you very stuck and scared. I always think a good way to challenge this is to ask yourself What is the worst thing that can happen?. Catastrophizing thoughts are attached to very strong emotions as fear whips up our adrenaline system. However, if you breathe you can rationally challenge your thoughts and find that the worse things probably isnt nearly as bad as your emotions suggest and that you could cope with them.

To overcome this pattern, take a problem-solving approach. Identify what is holding you back and what small steps you can take to overcome the problem. Rather than just going around and around thinking about it, take action in a way that is not too much outside of your comfort zone.

When clients first come in to see me, the main concerns that come up again and again are:

I hope that you will find it helpful too.

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Help Im Alive By Metric

This song often transports me back to when I first experienced anxiety and intrusive thoughts at only 11 years old. It was an extremely scary time I was only a child and l was already feeling that something was trying to eat me alive from within Its still a uphill battle, even in my 30s, but hearing songs lyrics like these reassure me that I am far from alone. Alihanra G.

What would you add?

You Gain Clarity When You Set Your Worries Aside

Let me break it up to you: overthinking makes it harder for you to focus on your goals.

When your mind is occupied with worries, doubts, and unnecessary thoughts, you tend to focus more on what has gone wrong and what could go wrong. This hinders you from seeing the bigger picture.

As a result, this keeps you from setting clear goals and reaching them.

When you take control over extreme overthinking and anxiety, you empower your mind to develop a clear vision of what you want, what you need, and what you need to do to reach success.

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Get Out Of Your Own Head And Start Taking Action

• Shape

While everyone overthinks situations once in a while, some people are plagued with a constant barrage of thoughts all the time. Chronic overthinkers rehash conversations they had yesterday, second-guess every decision they make, and imagine disastrous outcomes all day every day.

Thinking too much about something often involves more than words–overthinkers conjure up disastrous images too. Their minds resemble a movie where they imagine their car going off the road or they replay distressing events over and over again.

Thinking too much prevents them from getting anything done. And it wreaks havoc on their mood.

Signs Youre An Overthinker

Is overthinking a mental disorder? The first step towards healing is through awareness then acknowledgement. You have be more aware of your tendency to overthink things. When you do this, you can slowly take steps to change this unproductive thought process of yours. But again, you need to recognize first the fact that overthinking is not helpful at all. Sometimes there are people who think that by overthinking or worrying will somehow prevent unfavorable things from happening. They usually just end up more anxious or worried than they should. They tend to focus more on the problems and because of this they just see all the problems.

Some signs that yourean overthinker includes the following:

• You relieveembarrassing moments in your head like a broken record
• If you have troublesleeping or even develop insomnia because your brain wont shut off
• You always ask a lotof what if questions
• If You think too muchabout the meaning behind what people say
• You rehashconversations and think about what you had or had not said
• If you constantlyrelive your failures
• When someone acts in away you dont want
• You worry too muchabout the past or future both of which you cant control
• You spend timegenerally worrying about things you cant control

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Why Does My Brain Do This

A fair question. It is an incredibly frustrating, complex set of evolutionary mechanisms that has served your ancestors very well! 100,000 years ago something moving in the grass was, to your ancestors, likely a life and death scenario. The best thing to do would have been to run away, sit in a tree, and worry about it all night long. Was it tall and big with claws? Or small and venomous? It makes sense really, planning other routes, and piecing together how that threat moved, hid and attacked was what allowed your ancestors to survive and thrive.

Fast Forward to the 21st century, and the chances are low you wont be mauled by a tiger hiding in the long grass. Yet this pesky overwhelming survival mechanism is alive and well. Nowadays instead of that scary animal, its a public speaking event or text message.

Demons By Imagine Dragons

To me this song is about not letting people get too close or not letting people in because of my illness and because of not wanting to bring people down with me. I feel like my illnesses have caused so many problems for me and others. Even after years of living with my anxiety and depression, I still find it difficult to let people in and to be open about how I am feeling or what might be bothering me. Victoria M.

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