Overthinking does not have to be a personality trait

Maybe you are/were too in control.
Maybe you are/were too out of control.

I’ve been told by a variety of people that I’ve been both.

I must be really nailing it.

I write these little notes to myself before I write these blogs.
Most of them are forgettable.

Here’s one of them:

“overthinking does not have to be a personality trait”

Maybe it’s not true, but I suppose I’ll spend some words trying to persuade you that it is.

We’re weirdly attached to overthinking as a concept these days. It’s become kind of embedded in the culture. People say “I’m an overthinker” in the same way they say they’re a night owl or bad at texting, like it’s become part of them.

As a pseduo-phsychological term it’s pretty convincing. Now it’s referenced everywhere, I’ve also noticed it’s like this social shorthand for being thoughtful or anxious or intense. Sadly, often negatively.

Anyway, I’m thinking naming it so often makes it more permanent than it is.

When I was 18, at music uni, I got permanent tinnitus, and with it, some serious depression. I was in hell, and the ringing in my ears was a reminder of how truly terrible I was. Amid the brain scans and doctor’s visits, I was visualising every detail of “my life is over” until it became, essentially, quite true.

The comeback was shit. Nights spent forcing in better thoughts over worse ones. It felt fake. It was fake, to some degree. I was still very much attached to who I had been.

But something slowly changed. Life got easier, the music career (sort of) happened. The sound is still there, trying in vain to shout insults. In fact, as much as I want to be gentle with that version of me, he’s dead.

I think difficult times leave stuff behind in us, maybe in our soul (if you like). A new way of seeing things. Before you know it, you’re behaving differently and you can’t really pinpoint when the change happened, and sometimes that happens so slowly you don’t realise how far you’ve gone.

Obviously, that can be good or bad.

I’ve been strugging to nail down this piece for over a year. The Substack version count shows about 150. But I was talking about all this with a mate on the way to a rave (of all things).

Mid-chat, he stopped me and said:

“Constant mild ritualistic habits lead to traumas.”

What a line, a bit academic for this post. The point is, if you do something small and often enough, it compounds. Overthinking, drinking, distraction, none of it feels particularly serious in isolation.

Maybe that’s how you end up being accused of both. Too in control when you’re trying to think your way out of everything, too out of control when you’re trying not to think at all.

Before I forget, distraction doesn’t have to look unhealthy. Training, eating habits, meditation, whatever. Those kind of people say “Oh X is so good, you should try it! I don’t think about anything else. (while I’m doing it)” all the time.

Which, depending on your mood, and how well you know them, is either really healthy or slightly worrying.

I think distraction is seductive for overthinkers because it lets us put our thoughts down for a while and we can just let the moment take over.

But eventually, it doesn’t take much. A quiet room, at a late hour. A stray thought. Suddenly, it’s 3am, and something that sounds like doubt has let itself in.

What if I do that?
What if they don’t?
Why am I like this?
Maybe it’ll be forever?

Sometimes our thoughts can harden into a belief that we can’t change, even if we try.

But that’s not true.

It is a pretty weird way to live when you think about it; intelligent, effective, deep. Yet somehow so tired — and despite the thoughts — still trapped in abstraction.

There’s a numbness that comes with that. It’s a tempting cure.
But we all secretly know when a good chance is passing us by.

One Sunday morning in July, the guitar was handed to me, and a plane flew overhead just as I hit the first chord of Creggan White Hare. Somehow the chord and the plane arrived at exactly the same pitch.

It lasted a second, maybe two.
That was beautiful.

At some point I guess you realise you don’t need fewer thoughts, you might just need to believe less of them.

Anyway, acting despite the thoughts is liberating, I think a lot of artists know that.