Julie Legg and Jel Legg discuss ADHD and overthinking – the loops of thoughts that continuously consume the minds of many with ADHD.
They explore how unresolved thought loops can consume time, heighten stress, and create emotional spirals, often blending past regrets with present concerns. Drawing on their personal experiences, they discuss the reasons behind overthinking, its impacts, and practical strategies to break free from these mental cycles. They share relatable insights and actionable tips to manage overthinking and regain mental clarity.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Overthinking Characteristics: Overthinking in ADHD often involves loops of unresolved thoughts, mixing past events with present concerns. It can consume significant time and lead to stress, anxiety, and lost productivity.
- Negative Impacts: This pattern of thought can lead to emotional spirals, including feelings of regret, self-doubt, or depression. Common scenarios include replaying conflicts and imagining perfect responses that were never given, which can prolong emotional distress.
- Coping Mechanisms: Both Julie and Jel note that they act as mutual reminders to stop overthinking, using their shared ADHD experiences to support one another. Recognizing overthinking patterns early and shifting focus to other tasks can help mitigate its effects.
- Reasons Behind Overthinking: ADHD brains often juggle a high volume of thoughts, making it challenging to pinpoint solutions or focus on key issues. Fear of acting on decisions, and a need for validation or certainty, can prolong indecision.
- Suggested Strategies: Break the loop by accepting resolutions rather than revisiting problems repeatedly. Act on decisions early to avoid unnecessary contemplation and mental fatigue. At times overthinking is necessary to be able to process information. It is not a weakness by default for those with ADHD, it’s just part of our ADHD difference.
LINKS
- Julie is the author of THE MISSING PIECE: A Woman’s Guide to Understanding, Diagnosing and Living with ADHD (Harper Collins, 2024)
TRANSCRIPT
JULIE: I’m Julie Legg, author of The Missing Piece and diagnosed with ADHD at 52.
JEL: And I’m Jel Legg, diagnosed at 55.
JULIE: Welcome to ADHDifference. In this episode we’ll be talking about overthinking. Now overthinking is a normal thing to do but, with ADHD, it can lead to some negative impacts. So, we’ll be talking about overthinking.
JEL: Yes, the negative impacts being spiralling into dark corners and depression, getting stuck in thought loops that you can’t break out of that aren’t doing you any good, don’t have answers.
JULIE: It can also be a bit of a time waster to be honest, spending hours and hours overthinking something that may have happened in the past and then ruminating on that, and building on it in a negative way by bringing in further bad experiences to try and make sense of it all. And just as an example of overthinking, I’ll start Jel. If, you know, in various situations that have happened over my life I’ve been in a situation, say a conflict situation, where I have the choice to fight or flight. At the time I felt that was my only choice and I, to retreat gracefully, I generally retreat. And I don’t really get to have my say, so particularly if I’m feeling I’m being criticized, and I don’t get to counteract that, I can feel a little bit bullied in a way because I never really had my chance. So, I will go through, for days and days, potentially weeks, running through a particular situation in my head. How I could have said it differently, right down to nuances, right down to specific languages – this perfect response that I never got to implement. And so, that overthinking for me can just … it takes up time and it certainly causes worry and a bit of stress. But also yeah, it takes up time where I could be doing something more productive to be fair.
JEL: Yeah, certainly takes up time. It can take up both our time when we have a situation like that. And that can drag on for weeks and sometimes months, when an obvious situation that needed resolving and was obviously going to end up a certain way, could have been solved a long time before we went down that long spiral. So, a lot of time gets wasted. We’re lucky, I guess, being older and perhaps quite experienced in life. We do get stuck in these overthinking loops just like everyone with ADHD does. We don’t tend to go into a sad or depressive space because we’ve just developed coping mechanisms. And I, when we were pre-talking about this, I was thinking perhaps one of those reasons is that because we’re similar, because both have ADHD and we’re both capable of overthinking, we almost act as breaks for each other. So, one of us can say, just say “Look! We’re overthinking this,” or “You’re overthinking this. You really need to think about something else.” And it’s, because it comes from a place of understanding, there’s kindness attached to it. And so the one on the end of that in this relationship can immediately see “Yeah, I am overthinking it.” It doesn’t mean it can stop but you just have to push it to the side and try to let something else come in.
JULIE: So … If we could go back to why we overthink, and I think for many of us with ADHD all we know is what we know and we’ve got a million thoughts bouncing around our brains at any one point in time. And so, it’s not necessarily evident that one of those thoughts is the right thought, or will solve the problem necessarily, and so really taking that time to analyze every thought. And then new ones pop in, and so it’s not just thinking about what happened last week, you’ve got what’s happening today and so you combine the past with the present and it gets a bit …it gets a bit messy to be honest and quite overwhelming. So, overthinking: lots of thoughts, lots of looping around without resolution, really.
JEL: That’s probably the key thing I think that can define overthinking is not accepting … we can get to the resolution, and know what needs to be done or said quite quickly, but not accepting it and not acting on it. And then keep dwelling, going through the loops again and again and again. Well sometimes, we sometimes perhaps lack the courage to just act on a thought. There can be the fear that we may react to a situation … let’s take, put some sort of meat on the bones as it were. Say you’re in a job, employment, working for a company. It’s just not working out. You’ve been there a while and you know it’s time to move on and things are just changing and you’re not happy with it. You know, you can recognize that quite early and so a rational thing to do is say “I see it’s happening. I’ve seen this before. I’m out of here. Start looking for alternatives.” If I feel a need to leave quicker then just say “Sorry. Not for me. I’m out of here. Goodbye,” but we will drag that on with the jobs aren’t right, or clients are not happy with, we can drag it on for months, letting us … it eats into us. And we talk and talk about it and all I had to do was just hand in a resignation letter. And I know that’s easy to say if you don’t have a job to go to … well, it’s not easy is it! You need a job to go to. So these are big life changers but we can apply them to the things that aren’t so fundamental that’s going to turn your life upside down. That overthinking gets applied to all sorts of things. That’s a big example.
JULIE: There’s a few overlaps of course I think too with overthinking and problem solving. We’re actually really good at problem solving and sometimes we can just bounce straight to the solution, and that’s quite an easy process but you add too many thoughts into the mix, and you’re looking at every possible solution, every possible way. Maybe even if it’s clear in our mind what the answer is we then are taking on board other people’s thoughts and trying to sort of rectify whether they’re correct or going the wrong way. And, so for me, what overthinking does in a negative way, it takes it takes time. So, for example, I’m studying a philosophy paper at the moment which is great fun and man, it’s stretched my brain and it’s marvellous, and there’s a lot of thinking involved there, but also a lot of overthinking – second guessing myself whether I’m using the right words to explain what’s in my head, trying to really clarify that. And so, a simple email may take an hour or two.
JEL: But with philosophy you know, you may ask your lecturer something but you’re not going to get a clear answer back. That, in philosophy, there’s no absolute answers. It’s a range of schools of thoughts with different opinions. Look, the thing with the philosophy which is fascinating, because Jules is taking the paper and yet together, we’re having the conversations for couple of hours every day [absolutely] because it’s fascinating. So, I feel like I’m taking the paper too. But yeah, we’re almost what we used to say ‘gluttons for punishment’ in that we will put ourselves into situations where overthinking is required and that’s really good example. A philosophy paper, or any philosophy, doesn’t have an absolute answer and so therefore you can go thinking on forever, the whole of your life around different thoughts and ideas. And you may form a set of answers that you think suit you but they can change over time. So, it’s a classic trap for overthinking but that’s not bad overthinking. [No it’s not.] That’s good overthinking. From my perspective, I’ve always … this is almost egg and chicken situation, all through my life I’ve been interested in boring subjects such as macro-economics and international politics and history, not because individually tiny microcosms are parts of that fascinating, I like the holistic thinking of how the whole lot works together. So, when you see some current events going on in one country, in one situation, I’m immediately drawn to my knowledge of the history of that area, how it connects with other countries, trying to predict what might happen next. So talk about overthinking! It’s thinking about the entire world and everything, but that’s something. So I don’t know if that’s something that I drew, I formed an interest in when I was young because I had ADHD or, you know, I think … but it does sit well with me. The negative side is I can see situations going on and I can get pretty gloomy about what’s about to happen next. Whereas someone else, who doesn’t overthink it, will say “It’ll fizzle out. It’ll be fine. History shows us it’ll be fine,” but my mind goes down the overthinking path. So I see the risk in situations. I see what could go wrong. What drives both of us in that space is imagination and we do have ADHD strong imagination, so it can fuel the overthinking.
JULIE: We also too, an obsessive point, now not obsessive like an OCD, is not necessarily having this obsessive compulsive disorder, but call it hyperfocus on the thinking, call it obsessiveness, it can draw you away as you dive deep into this knowledge to find more information about a certain subject. It can pull you away from everyday life and that includes the mundane chores. Yes. Unpaid work – so it does have an impact.
JEL: Exercise, getting off the computer and doing something. [Absolutely.] Another good example that we’re both shall we say obsessed wit, I’d say? No, that’s not true because we can have breaks from it but when we’re doing this other subject we can get quite obsessed with it. Genealogy. There’s another rabbit hole that has virtually no end because it isn’t just about finding out whose name fits in the puzzle of who was related to whom, it’s we want to know about their lives, and how they lived, and the times lived, and where they lived, and all the back stories. So there’s probably no limit to that knowledge.
JULIE: No, that can take years and years, in our case decades, trying to search for information. You know, hitting brick walls and unable to go forward and then ruminating as to why that’s the case, and what have we missed, and …
JEL: But the dopamine hit’s there because we both probably, together and separately, been involved for at least 20 years in our genealogies of our family and then … families, and then every now and then a little nugget of information will pop up. Someone will come out of the ether with some information and it’s “Oh my word. I’ve been searching for years to find that out and I was right. My guess was right!” So the dopamine hit that is huge but it’s like going fishing for a fish and you’ve got to sit there for 15 years before you can catch the fish and suddenly … Well, most people got the … well, we’re not meant to have the patience for that with ADHD, but there are elements of us that seem to be able to play the long game and I think the overthinking suits that and I … yeah? And that’s a positive use of overthinking because you really do have to overthink. You have to look at a singularity from multiple angles and then you have to try to invent new angles to crack the code and find out what happened.
JULIE: This is more like the problem-solving element so in a way that positive overthinking isn’t necessarily take … it doesn’t necessarily take you down a slippery slope. Yes, it does take up time when you could be doing other things and it’s yeah … however it’s not so negative in the scheme of things. But I did want to talk about rejection sensitive dysphoria and that is those of us with ADHD brains are more likely to be very defensive of anything that could be seen as criticism for ourselves. And we’re likely to think about that in loops. Whether someone looks at us the wrong way or says something that we perceive as a personal insult or criticism that’s unfounded, in our opinion. Now I say perceived because some are accurate, actual, right? So, you know when you’re being criticized, it’s fair. But there are other sly ones that we perceive. As I said it might be a raised eyebrow or body language of someone talking to you and you get the idea that it must be negative. And I think this natural defence system of us with ADHD stems from a lifetime of looking for clues and cues in our surroundings, and you know, with our peers to try and fit in and trying, and trying, to work it all out. [Not fitting in.] And so our defence mechanism, it’s really built in from us. And I did quote this quote before, but it has been said that by the age of 10 those with ADHD are likely to have received more than 20,000 negative or corrective statements. And so, are we on edge? Are we looking you know, for the defence mechanism to try and stop this flood of incoming messages? Yes. It’s kind of built within us.
JEL: So, we can only obviously, in these chats, come from the fact we in our 50s, unmedicated, and only diagnosed in the last roughly 3 years or so, so we’ve lived a life without diagnosis. So we accept any time we, anything we have to say, will not directly necessarily resonate with someone listening out there right now who’s 25, in a completely different space. All we can say is we’ve been through that 25-year-old space. We’ve probably been through very similar situations. Hopefully sometimes some of the things we say in these chats, if you are half our age, might give you just that glimmer of hope that there is a possibility to move forward and deal with some of these things. So what I’m meaning by that is we are still hyper sensitive to criticism and inflections from people that we read in body language, certain ways that mean a great deal. Other people just don’t notice or shrug off. We are hyper sensitive to them but we’ve just developed with age this sort of … I wouldn’t say a thick skin because we do feel these things. We’ve developed coping mechanisms to immediately put that back onto the person and say “Well you own that reaction, it’s not me.” And I’m going to go forward with a more reasonable approach to this. Pick and choose what I’m going to overthink except that we do overthink and so the examples we just given, with my interest in all those big things in the world, and Jules largely driving the genealogy, we can focus a lot of overthinking in that, and other things like creative things being musicians and writers. We can spend lots of time overthinking which is not necessarily negative but if we do get into a negative thing, and we still deal with these situations where we’ve had to break off relationships or we feel we’re being treated badly by people, we do overthink it. We go through the process but we don’t allow ourselves to spiral into negative places. Look, one of the things that is a result of this negative side of overthinking is it can lead to depression, isolation, loneliness and low self-worth. So all of that is absolutely a fact. One of our defence mechanisms I think is that both of us have recognized for most of our adult life we are very good at being on our own. Lucky us. Some people aren’t but we are good, we like our own company. We’ve lived on our own. We’ve travelled on our own. We seem to be okay on our own. Being on your own and being lonely are two different things. So, again that’s something to think about on another, you know, conversation.
JULIE: In saying that, when there is someone to bounce ideas off it’s probably, ahhhh, maybe more helpful because one of us can say “I really … I hear you. We’ve talked around the houses on this but at some point, no. Enough thinking of that. You’ve got to put it aside.” When you’re by yourself there’s not necessarily that hand-break and it can go on for a wee while. So some little tricks is really diversion therapy. It’s tricking yourself to go and do something else. And we know because, well ADHD, we are likely to be distracted by other things. Literally pushing ourselves out the door and, before we know it, we’re in the garden and we’re digging up potatoes, or we’ve found a bird’s nest or we’re, you know, we … just something to get us off that loop. Because that hamster wheel can just keep on going unless you either fall off or sort of leap off, or whatever it may be. So, just being aware of that diversion can work. I also wanted to say, you know, the annoying things that other people say. “Oh, you’re overthinking!” Oh man. Someone telling an ADHDer you’re overthinking! “Just chill out. It’s Friday night. Just relax!” Ahhh, they don’t realize. If only they could step inside our brain for an hour to feel all the emotions and the thoughts zooming around ahead at any one time, they might have a slightly different opinion.
JEL: I think that’s absolutely right. I think this concept of overthinking is we don’t generally think we’re overthinking. Other people will observe in us we’re overthinking and we’ve been told that so many times in our lives, but we don’t actually believe we’re overthinking because for us it’s normal. It’s what we do. If I say to myself “I’m over thinking,” it’s generally when I’m trying to solve a problem that has a finite answer and I’ll just get frustrated by myself and say “Jel, you’re overthinking this. Stop. Strip all the rubbish away. Go back to basics.” Go back to the beginning and that’s usually where I find the answer because I’m just trying to see it from too many angles. Yes, so it’s generally other people telling us we overthink and so these days we try to avoid them. They’re probably right sometimes, often right, but we don’t need that criticism. As long as we’re healthy, mentally in ourselves thinking how we think, then we’re okay. And as long as it’s not imparting that on other people. Occasionally I can be guilty of that because something will be happening and I just want have a conversation with someone about it. And luckily, I’ve got a couple of people, as well as Jules in my life, that I can just raise a conversation and I know I’m going to get back a reinforcement of … because they overthink too. Which is great but it … don’t try it as an ADHDer on someone that doesn’t overthink. You’re probably going to get that criticism and rejection which just makes it worse really. Look, another … I think another word I wanted to bring up too which I think the worst thing you can do almost to in the ‘overthinking concept’ to an ADHD person is to ghost them. And, you know, we all have been ghosted at some point in life, whether directly or indirectly. And what I mean by indirectly is perhaps if you write to someone and an email or a letter and you get blank, or a message and it’s just a no reply. You think, have I upset them? Have I said something wrong? And you check it and you go over it a 100 times. It was quite innocent. It was quite with good intention but they just didn’t get back to me and then you don’t want to write again because that’s seen as pushy, you know. They’ve got their, perhaps they’ve got their reasons. And the problem with that overthinking is that’s a loop you can’t get out of because you never find out [no] why. It’s never resolved, is it. Never resolved. And those can stay with you forever. I’m thinking of one in genealogy at the moment where I had the opportunity to find out some answers I’ve been looking for, for years. So I wrote a letter and there’s just nothing back months later. So I will never get those answers. That will never happen. So I now have to live that the rest of my life and that’s really hard. And so I have to manage that because there’s a sense of Injustice there and it’s just wrong, on my part. They’ll have their reasons. What happens then in that void, and the problem with ghosting, is you then start to apply reasons to why you didn’t hear back from the other person or they ignored you. And then you make up all sorts of silly reasons. So you’re going around in loops and then going down rabbit holes and you have to pull yourself back from that.
JULIE: Yeah, yeah. I think overthinking, for me, while it is time consuming and can be negative, I think I almost need to go through that process. I need to look at things from all angles. It’s not enough for someone just to tell me “There, there. It’ll be okay.” I almost need to, well I do, I need to go through that process myself and come to that self-conclusion. [You have to own it.] I do, exactly. So sometimes overthinking for me is just part and parcel of me, and hopefully at the other end I do come out, you know, at least making that decision myself and coming to some sort of conclusion and then being able to move on. But it’s the loop that never ends, that’s the … that’s the bad one.
JEL: And part of that, all through life at various stages, different things fixation on worries. Sometimes they’re financial and that can be any stage of life. Sometimes they’re over the health of your children, or how they’re doing at school, or whether you’re going to lose your job, or your own health, and you … the fixation can always be there. It never goes away. But again, it’s how you deal with it and I don’t think we’ve necessarily dealt with anything in some way where it’s all in a nice little box, it’s got labelled and it’s put at the back of the shelf. Perhaps we put band-aids on things. Perhaps we just push them aside and replace them with other things. Perhaps if we wanted to go back in some kind of regression therapy and look at every failed relationship, or situation in life, or horrible conversation, we would probably just melt and fall apart. It would destroy us. So we … that’s not to say we’re broken, it’s just to say it’s the coping mechanisms going forward and again, I speak as we’re unmedicated, so we’ve all always done it without that sort of … we don’t know what it would like to be medicated. We don’t know if we had a lifetime of medication whether the memories of those events would feel different. Sometimes, and this is just my thoughts, I don’t know if it’s right or not, sometimes I feel like … okay, we know with ADHD brains there’s 100 of thoughts going on at once. That’s how most people with ADHD, one of the most common things we describe, is our brains don’t seem to rest. And we just thought everyone’s brains were like that. But ours are firing off all the time. So we’re really in a danger zone if we get ghosted or have something we can’t explain and need to process, because they’re just triggering all the time. So one way I can sort of take that is to take all that energy in my brain and focus it on a singular task. So, allow it to carry on doing what it’s doing, but not processing a thought I can’t get an answer to. Put it on to something I can get an answer to because when you get an answer to something, solve a problem, achieve something, you’re doing, you’ll get the dopamine hit. But if you are just going around in loops thinking why did that person treat me like that, what’s going on, you can’t get the dopamine hit until you can sit down with them have and the conversation. And that’s when you can put it to bed. And sometimes they don’t give you that opportunity and you can’t do it.
JULIE: Yeah, so overthinking also can affect decision making because you just can’t make a decision based, you know, you haven’t completed that processing. [Procrastination is the way we’re looking for]. Absolutely and so that can impact a range of things including at work. Making quite big decisions, or even small decisions I guess, in the workplace.
JEL: Oh a very good example there is, so procrastination … well the indecision I remember when you need to leave one job that was not working for you, it took at least six possibly 9 months to make that decision. And we must have spent hundreds of hours having the same loop conversations, yet not long before that, we managed to buy two houses on the spot within an hour of seeing them. So it’s not you live one way over everything. They’re almost two extremes, aren’t they? One’s impulsive … [Overthinking and under-thinking.] We just didn’t … we should have stopped and got some builder’s reports. It worked out fine but wow! And they weren’t grand houses. [They weren’t grand.] They were small houses and we thought oh they’re little it’s not a problem, but actually looking back now we almost shiver with horror. The risk we took. Yes, I know. But that’s a whole different conversation, that’s that. It is, yeah.
JULIE: The other thing too I think, when we can be reasonable and rational, which isn’t necessarily out default, but when we can be to think about our worries and our overthinking and just, you know, give ourselves a bit of a pinch really and say, is what we’re worrying about within our control? Because sometimes we just worry about things that we have no control over, whatsoever. And if we bring it down to that hopefully it can wash away many situations where you say, well you’re not in control of someone else’s response. You’re not in control of someone else’s predicament. Yes, there might be steps that you can help to make it more positive for the other person but ultimately it is what it is – which isn’t giving up. It’s just what can you control, what can’t you, and you can be more in control of your own … your own world.
JEL: We’ve sort of, there’s a word I’m going to use now that we’ve not used any of these podcasts, but we frequently we’ll say around here, sometimes we just take this sort of Zen approach you know. We, whether it’s … it’s not the result of years of Buddhist thinking or mindfulness really, it’s just, it’s just: switch off. I can’t think like that. I’m not interested in that anymore. I’m going to find something else. So, then we say: I’m taking a … I’m quite Zen about that. It’ll happen when it’s due, when it’s meant to happen, or something.
JULIE: I read once and I think I’ve put it into practice a couple of times, you’re worrying about something, go: this is enough. This is ridiculous. I’ve been worrying all day and I haven’t made any progress and literally tell yourself “Right you’ve got one hour. Just worry. Worry insanely and then give it a rest,” and you tell yourself to it, go “Oh okay,” and you do. And actually, at the end of it going, “Well I’m just going around in loops. I’ve covered every single possibility and we’re not going forward so, what’s the point? And, you know?
JEL: Look, I do have a really strange trick I’m happy to share is, okay … we all know, all you guys listening to this, we all know our brains are firing off all the time and given half a chance we don’t know when to zip it. We’ll …. we’ll talk all the time. So, one of the ways I actually diffuse myself, this is a strange one, is if I have a thought “So what should I do about that? Should I buy that or should I sell that?” I actually can go to the mirror and within 30 seconds I’ve got the answer because I talk to myself in the mirror. And after 30 seconds it’s like, “I’m bored. Why are you keep talking about this?” I bore myself in the mirror. It works. I literally use all sorts of tricks. I can go to the mirror and say “Why are you grumpy about this? Cheer up. Yeah, cheer up. Yeah, alright then, okay.” It’s like my best friend in the mirror! Now that is a form of cathartic sort of externalizing of something but it works. You may think I’m a little odd but it works. Well it … It’s a farcical situation because I’m laughing at myself. And who talks to themself in the mirror? Well, I do because I make that situation, I diffuse that situation, by making it farcical. I usually giggle after 30 seconds, walk away and now thinking about something else.
JULIE: I can see that as being very cathartic because it’s … you’re literally seeing your reflection of yourself and you can say “Oh my gosh, you look pathetic … you look a bit pathetic. This is silly. Oh my gosh, your eyes are swollen from crying for days and days. Pull yourself together.” And, you know, maybe we just need that. Yeah, maybe we need that to pull ourselves out of some things.
JEL: Well, joking aside it really has worked. I rarely do it, but if I do need to do it, and it’s often for me done with humour. I end up just laughing at myself because … that’s not to say every situation in life can be laughed at but the overthinking is something you need to have that pressure valve, and that works for me.
JULIE: Yeah. Another little example is that we all know, know and love and hate, all at the same time, Dr Google, and if we have a pain in our side, we’ll Google it and we “Oh my gosh, we’ve only got a matter of days to live because it’s something really horrendous,” and we can really worry about that or we can do something about that. We can go “This is ridiculous, let’s talk to a professional and go and book a doctor’s appointment as soon as possible,” or, you know what I mean? It’s sort of like ahhhhh, don’t just keep sitting on things without resolve. At least try and look for some resolve, anyway.
JEL: The one word I see … we always have some little notes here to jog our memory, diversion … diversion therapy. I love diversion therapy and, not to go dwell on my mirror theory, but that’s a form of diversion therapy. You know how if you’ve had a young child, they fall over and they graze their knee and they’re crying and it’s the end of the world and it’s not a big cut or anything, and you kiss it better or rub it better and “There there, that’s better.” *Thank you* Off they go again. Well yeah, it works because any slight pain in that knee, you’re now rubbing your hand on their knee and so that sensation overrides the other sensation. So, this diversion therapy is for anything I think, is really useful for ADHD. When the brain’s firing off in one way stuck in loops, divert it with something else. It maybe go and grab your PlayStation, have a game or something and attack it with some vigour. “I’m going to blimin’ get this bandit this time,” or whatever. There’s all sorts of things you can do.
JULIE: We’re talking about self-help here but also recognize within yourself. If it’s major, if it’s really … if it impacts you going to work, your relationship. If you can’t get out of this overthinking cycle see someone, you know. And that’s what ADHD counsellors are probably really good to help you with that, just to get a different perspective and another way of thinking. So, you know, there is help out there. Don’t feel that if none of our little tricks and tips work, which we imagine they probably wouldn’t because all strategies are quite individualistic or individualized, but there is help out there for sure.
JEL: So going around in loops, endless thinking, overthinking, also I like to say overthinking is generally how you get described by someone else so don’t always take that one on the chin. Sometimes it’s not, you’re not overthinking, you’re just thinking hard and that can be a good thing sometimes it can be a bad thing but it is definitely part of the ADHD world. That’s sort of a fact.
JULIE: It can be positive overthinking when you’re processing something good, knowing that there will be ramifications and it might be time wasting, or less productive time, and it could stop with some decision making. Or, it can be … it can be really negative but it’s being able to identify the situation and that’s the big thing, without you know sort of feeling like you’re swimming in a rip and going nowhere.
JEL: Perhaps for me, the way to identify good and bad overthinking? Good overthinking is when there is an answer at the end of that thinking and you need or want to find that answer. That’s good overthinking. Bad overthinking when you know, there’s no absolute answer. You’re just continually going around in loops because there is no answer at the end and so you’re not actually going to achieve anything at the end of that.
JULIE: Well, there you go. Well, that’s overthinking for you.
JEL: How many times have you said thinking, do you think?