Overthinking again

Amy22

this probs sounds silly actually but my brain wants me to overthink it all again. like it reminded me of the time when i was in art class eventhough that was years ago and we had to draw from our imagination and i was given the name of a place to draw. However i didnt know how to draw it from my imgaination so i googled it eventhough i shouldent have. I should have said to my tutor but I didn't. I did the art class back in 2020/2021 so it is in the past. but I keep feeling this dread inside for some reason. I just needed somewhere to vent on here. That was in the past and I have done a different course in film now which I completed. Why do I worry so much. I find that I overthink and I have keep telling myself to be in the present.

yana

first of all that doesn't sound silly at all. I do the exact same thing way too often and it feels really really silly but it isn't. well done for reminding yourself to stay in the present, I guess that's just what we have to do: keep reminding ourselves. if talking about it helps then yk we're always here but yeah dwelling on the past for too long is just not great. you're in 2023 Amy!!!

Amy22

Aw thank you so much @Xee I appreciate it sometimes I find myself dwelling off into the past and my past self who wasn't well the best person lets just say. But I feel like I want to redeem myself really I guess and I think reminding myself of the past helps me I guess.

Azziman

Hey @Amy22, it's natural to remember old or random memories out of the blue. Sometimes there isn't any reason they pop into our heads, and often we didn't even know that we still had it in our memory bank!

In this case, it sounds like it was over something that you don't feel you should have done. There's a balance - it's okay to reflect on past events to learn how to move forwards, but it's also important to place things in perspective. It's probably unlikely that that event is enough to worry about now, so it's okay to accept the mistake (we're human after all!) and let yourself move on

It sounds like you have the right approach - overthinking can often stray into dwelling on past actions or future possibilities, and bringing ourselves back to the present is a useful exercise to doing that. If you catching yourself drifting into overthinking territory, it's helpful to practice some mindfulness to bring yourself back to the present.

Amy22

Aw thank you so much @Xee and @Azziman I feel much better now I think I was having one of my moments again like I normally do.

AislingDM

I'm so right there with you @Amy22 , it's honestly so exhausting and awful to confront the (somewhat random) things that our minds are desperate for us to either feel bad about or overthink to the point where we distort what actually happened. I think it can also be tough because you can 'know' rationally that this is not literally the end of the world, but this fact does very very little to actually alleviate the relentless thoughts that are forcing you to wonder if you are a bad person for making a small decision that many many others would/do.

Regardless, it sounds very draining for you, I do hope you feel a little better after the responses from others! Huge hugs xxx

Amy22

@AislingDM Aw thank you so much I really appreciate it, it can be a little bit overwhelming when they come, I wish like I had a button where I could just turn off my thoughts sometimes as it would make life easier tbf

Maisy

Overthinking can be a really difficult thing to deal with. When this happens to me, and I realise I am overthinking a perceived mistake of mine, I try to get to a point where I realise that what has happened is in the past, I can't change the past but I can learn from it.

For example, in your situation, I understand that it can be difficult to draw something if you struggle to imagine it (I have a similar issue myself). So you googled rather than telling the teacher. Now, a few years later, this memory comes back to you and you feel anxious and overwhelmed. You can't change the past but what can you learn from this situation? Perhaps it might help you to learn to ask for help or voice your concerns in the future? For example, if you had said you couldn't imagine the place, maybe (hopefully) the teacher would've allowed you to look it up or provided you with a picture just for reference, so you wouldn't have had to secretly google and later feel anxious. Either way, you didn't do anything wrong- not being able to imagine/visualise things is a difficulty for some but that doesn't mean that it can't be accommodated for.

It's also worth thinking about what brought this memory up for you. Sometimes it just happens to pop into your head, but other times it may be that you came across something which triggered the memory to come back. If that's the case, it might help to either avoid the trigger, or just remind yourself that what happened was in the past and you can learn from it and move on. Then try to take your mind off it