How to Stop Overthinking
We all have times when we worry, whether it’s about work, health, family, relationships or a host of other reasons. But is there a point when you may think and worry too much?
Overthinking is an unhealthy habit that typically causes more stress by focusing on the negative instead of coming up with logical solutions. For example, we may start worrying about a specific situation at work, which leads to worrying about money or losing jobs.
But why do we tend to overthink? This is often due to cognitive errors, which are basically errors in logical thinking, such as all-or-nothing thinking and overgeneralisation. Although overthinking is hard to break, Natacha Duke, a registered psychotherapist, outlines strategies that can help.
“Healthy distraction can be useful,” says Duke. Activities like reading and taking a walk can help keep our stress levels down. They can reduce our baseline level of anxiety and make us less likely to overthink.
Duke adds, “Keeping a daily journal can help us actively manage stress before our feelings expand out of control.” As we practise journaling our emotions and thoughts, it becomes easier to identify when we’re starting to worry. Stopping worrying early will ultimately help us feel better and stay focused on what matters most to us.
Some people constantly think about questions like “What if I lose my job?” or “What if I get sick?” While having these thoughts is normal, it becomes a problem when we focus only on the worst-case situation. “For every ‘what if’ worry, change this to an ‘if then’ statement where you come up with ideas to deal with the worry or the worst-case situation,” says Duke. “Focus on having a concrete plan in place.”
So, face the problems, then challenge and reframe them. Finally, we will develop effective ways to cope with overthinking.
1. What is overthinking?2. What causes overthinking?
3. Please decide which part is false in the following statement, then underline it and explain why.
A man can stop overthinking if he changes “what if” questions to “if then” statements, because it helps him focus on the worst-case situation.
4. Besides the suggestions mentioned in the passage, what other advice will you give to a person who is always overthinking?
2 . How much time do you spend doing research before you make a big decision? There are people who go over every detail exhaustively before making a choice, and it is certainly possible to overthink things. But a fair number of individuals are quick to jump to conclusions. Psychologists call the latter a mental bias (偏见). In this case, the error is making a call based on the least of evidence.
A research by Carmen Sanchez, a professor at the University of Illinois, and David Dunning, a professor at the University of Michigan, has found that hasty judgments are often just one part of larger error-prone patterns in behavior and thinking. These patterns have costs. People who tend to make such jumps in their reasoning often choose a bet in which they have low chances of winning instead of one where their chances are much better.
To study jumping, researchers did an experiment to examine decision-making patterns among 600 people from the general population. They applied a thinking game, in which players encountered someone who was fishing from one of two lakes: in one lake, most of the fish were red; in the other, most were gray. The fisher would catch one fish at a time and stop only when players thought they could say which lake was being fished. Some players had to see many fish before making a decision. Others—the jumpers—stopped after only one or two. Participants were also asked questions to learn more about their thought patterns. It was found that the fewer fish a player waited to see, the more errors that individual made in other types of beliefs, reasoning and decisions.
So what is behind jumping? Researchers commonly distinguish between two pathways of thought: automatic, known as system l, which reflects ideas that come to the mind easily, spontaneously and without effort; and controlled, or system 2, consisting of effortful reasoning that is analytic, mindful and intentional. It was found that jumpers and non-jumpers were equally influenced by automatic thoughts. The jumpers, however, did not engage in controlled reasoning to the same degree as non-jumpers. It is system 2 thinking that helps people counterbalance mental biases introduced by system 1. A lack of system 2 thinking is also more broadly connected to their problematic beliefs and faulty reasoning.
In everyday life, the question of whether we should think things through or instead go with our heart is a frequent and important one. Recent studies show that even gathering just a little bit more evidence may help us avoid a major mistake. Sometimes the most important decision we make can be to take some more time before making a choice.
1. What is the main idea of the first two paragraphs?| A．Overthinking things is a mental bias. |
| B．Evidence is a necessity for judgments. |
| C．Jumping results from a wish to win a bet. |
| D．Jumpers have a tendency to a mental mistake. |
| A．Jumpers caught more fish than non-jumpers. |
| B．Non-jumpers gave quicker answers than jumpers. |
| C．Non-jumpers tended to see more fish before naming the lake. |
| D．People who saw fewer fish made fewer mistakes in reasoning. |
| A．After comparing different brands and models, David purchased a car. |
| B．On hearing that the Apollo moon landings were faked, Mia believed it. |
| C．Seeing the dirty windows of a restaurant, Mary decided its food was bad. |
| D．When picking a doctor, Jim merely accepted the recommendation from a friend. |
| A．To reflect on our thought patterns regularly. |
| B．To think twice before we make our decisions. |
| C．To realize the consequences of faulty reasoning. |
| D．To adopt two pathways of thought before acting. |
3 . Earlier this week the online UK supermarket Ocado told its customers that it had “limited ability” to deliver ice ream. Why? Because the price of natural gas has increased greatly, which has hit the supply of CO2 in the UK. And that has led to a cut in the supply of dry ice that supermarkets use to keep food cool in their delivery vans (小型货车). So no ice cream.
This mini crisis has been fairly quickly resolve, for now at least. However, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t worry. This incident serves as a timely reminder of just how reliant we are on fossil fuels. Despite our optimistic enthusiasm for wind and solar power, one way or another oil and gas use is shot through every part of our economic and social lives. That will be the case for many decades to come.
In his recently updated book There is No Planet B, Mike Berners-Lee lays out the challenge. When we talk about shifting from fossil fuels to clean energy of one kind or another, we aren’t discussing taking the amount of energy we use now and producing that amount in a different way. Instead, our target is always on the move. The more energy we can get our hands on, the more we use—even if our use of it becomes more efficient.
Energy usage is going to keep rising, while energy transitions (转变) tend to both take a very long time and never actually end. We just pile new sources on top of old. The world still uses much the same amount of traditional biomass (wood etc) as it did 100 years ago. We are running to stand still. This will change. But not as fast as you might like to think. In 2019, 33 percent of our new power generation needs were met by renewable energy. That’s a start. But 40 percent were met by natural gas.
There’s urgency here of course—which might speed things up. But there is something else that might slow us down. It didn’t take much to move people to fossil fuels—they are relatively easy to extract, relatively easy to transport, hugely energy dense and efficient and, of course, cheap. Until their externalities were understood, who could possibly have objected? Our current transition is different: people and companies will switch not because the new sources are easier to access, cheaper or more energy dense but because regulation mandates that they must.
Either way, the truth is that whether we like it or not our energy transition involves long term reliance on fossil fuels. That means we should stop demolishing them. Instead, we should focus on making their extraction cleaner and more efficient while we wait for the engineering challenges around a renewables-led future to be solved.
If we don’t do this—if we allow ourselves to be beguiled by the idea that solar is so advanced that we no longer need filthy fuels to have ice cream, we, will find the future held back by needlessly expensive energy—and almost certainly ice-cream free.
1. What do the first two paragraphs mainly show?| A．The necessity for traditional fuels. |
| B．Our enthusiasm for clean energy. |
| C．The seriousness of energy crisis. |
| D．UK’s dependence on dry ice. |
| A．we have more types of energy on hand |
| B．the use of energy becomes more efficient |
| C．energy transition is far from being realized |
| D．we are closer to the aim of replacing fossil fuels |
| A．wasting | B．devaluing |
| C．distributing | D．justifying |
| A．Indifferent. | B．Defensive. |
| C．Disapproving. | D．Cautious. |
