Journaling prompt - Typical patterns of overthinking

I find journaling a comfortable way to reflect on my day and to connect with my feelings and emotions. On the day-to-day, we may express our happiness or frustrations, but often times, addressing the event may not mean addressing the emotions associated with it.

Journaling can be a great way to give more space for ourselves and write thoughts and feelings out. Believe it or not, for many introverts writing is just a really good way to express themselves.

Earlier we explored the different overthinking patterns:

• Time: focus on the past or future, not the present moment

• Standards: spiraling when believing we couldn't meet an internal (set by ourselves) or external (imagined to have been set by others) expectation

• Decision: unable to define next steps or even if decisions are made they remain unstable.

Journaling prompt - Typical patterns of overthinking

A combination of these patterns likely defines your overthinking style. By exploring your patterns you can notice when the spiral starts and intervene in a more adaptive way. Here are some journaling prompts to learn about your overthinking patterns:

• What are the typical situations you start spiraling about? Recall a few recent occasions.

• Are you ruminating (focus on past) or worrying (focus on future)?

• What would it take you to shift from the past/future to the present moment?

• Where those standards that you're trying to meet come from? Are they set by you or do you feel you need to meet them for others?

• Pinpoint what those standards are (e.g. I have to appear smart otherwise I'm worth nothing). How set and valid are these standards? (e.g. Being smart is not an unchangeable trait, I can learn and improve. Also, not knowing something doesn't mean I'm not good enough, just that I need to learn a little more.)

• What is one action you can take right here right now?

• What's the worst thing that could happen if you took that action? And what is the best thing that could happen? What is the consequence if you don't take any action?

I hope exploring your overthinking patterns helped you to better understand your typical thought processes and by now, I hope you started to see that there may be other, more helpful steps you can take instead of getting caught in a thought spiral.