Overthinking, ANTs and Anxiety: 7 Ways to Support Your Mind and Reclaim Balance
Overthinking can feel like a constant storm in the mind, relentless, exhausting, and often invisible to those around you. For many, it becomes a default way of thinking that touches every part of life. From work and family to friendships and daily decision making. Left unchecked, overthinking can develop into anxiety, overwhelm, and deep rooted mental fatigue.
In this blog, we will explore seven key points to understand and support overthinking, from both a Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and Clinical Hypnotherapy perspective. We will introduce the concept of ANTs Automatic Negative Thoughts, discuss how they develop, and offer therapeutic strategies to help you manage and eventually reduce their impact. We will also look at how somatic techniques can gently bring you out of your head and into a calmer, embodied state.
The Inner Critic and Overthinking
Many people who overthink also struggle with a harsh inner voice. This inner critic fuels self-doubt and perfectionism, keeping the mind in a loop of “not good enough.” Therapy can help you recognise this voice, understand where it comes from, and begin responding with self-compassion rather than judgment.
The Link Between Trauma and Overthinking
Not all overthinking is rooted in day-to-day stress, sometimes it’s a protective response to past experiences. If your nervous system learned to stay hyper-alert to stay safe, overthinking might have become a survival strategy. Somatic therapy and trauma-informed approaches can help gently rewire this pattern.
When to Seek Professional Support
Overthinking becomes a concern when it:
• Affects your sleep, focus, or relationships
• Leads to chronic anxiety, procrastination, or indecision
• Feels uncontrollable, even when you try to “switch off”
Therapeutic support can offer tools, insight, and a non judgemental space to untangle the overwhelm.
The Overthinking–Overwhelm–Anxiety Cycle
Overthinking rarely exists in isolation. It often sits at the centre of a self-reinforcing cycle involving emotional overwhelm and chronic anxiety.
Here’s how the cycle tends to unfold:
1. A triggering thought or situation e.g., an upcoming decision, a social interaction, or a sense of uncertainty.
2. Overthinking kicks in your mind begins analysing, predicting, and problem-solving in overdrive.
3. Emotional overwhelm as thoughts spiral, you may start to feel increasingly tense, panicked, or stuck.
4. Anxiety heightens your body reacts: shallow breathing, tight chest, racing heart.
5. More overthinking in an attempt to reduce the discomfort, your brain tries to “solve” the anxiety by thinking even more.
This cycle can repeat daily, sometimes hourly, leaving you exhausted, distracted, and disconnected from the present moment.
Therapy aims to interrupt this cycle by working with both the mind and the body. Using tools from CBT, hypnotherapy, and somatic therapy, you can begin to:
• Catch overthinking earlier
• Regulate the body’s stress response
• Develop more spacious, grounded ways of responding
Breaking the cycle doesn’t mean never having anxious thoughts again, it means not letting them run the show.
Why the Cycle Is So Hard to Break
This cycle becomes entrenched because it feels like overthinking is helping. Clients often say things like:
• “If I can just figure this out, I’ll feel better.”
• “I need to go over it one more time to be sure.”
• “If I prepare for every outcome, I won’t be caught off guard.”
But what starts as an attempt to gain control ends up fueling more uncertainty. The nervous system becomes increasingly sensitised, and thinking shifts from problem-solving to rumination.
Over time, this pattern trains the brain to associate thinking with safety, even when it’s making you more anxious.
The Role of the Nervous System
Physiologically, this cycle is reinforced by the fight–flight–freeze response. When your mind perceives a threat (real or imagined), your body reacts. You may:
• Feel a tight chest or racing heart (fight)
• Get restless, agitated, or irritable (flight)
• Freeze up and feel stuck in indecision (freeze)
Overthinking often emerges as a freeze response, a way to mentally “pause” and buy time while you subconsciously try to avoid risk or discomfort.
Understanding this can be a relief: it’s not that you’re flawed, it’s that your nervous system is doing its best to protect you.
How Therapy Helps Disrupt the Cycle
Each layer of the cycle can be supported with targeted approaches:
• CBT interrupts the thought loops by helping you reframe beliefs and develop flexible thinking.
• Breathwork and somatic tools address the physical overwhelm, giving you the capacity to stay grounded when anxiety spikes.
• Hypnotherapy helps access the subconscious patterns driving the cycle, especially when it feels automatic or compulsive.
Over time, you can learn to respond, not react, to pause without spiralling, and to feel discomfort without being consumed by it.
Self-Check: Am I Overthinking or Just Reflecting?
Many clients worry, “But don’t I need to think things through?” Absolutely, reflection is healthy. Overthinking, by contrast, is often:
• Repetitive and circular
• Driven by fear or self-doubt
• Focused on worst-case scenarios
• Unresolved despite hours of mental effort
A helpful question to ask is:
“Is this thought helping me move forward, or is it keeping me stuck?”
This self-awareness is a first step toward stepping out of the loop.
Practical Grounding Tools for Breaking the Cycle
While therapy provides the deeper work, having in-the-moment tools can empower clients between sessions. You could list a few practical, somatic-based techniques such as:
• 5-4-3-2-1 grounding Name 5 things you can see, 4 you can touch, 3 you can hear, 2 you can smell, 1 you can taste
• Orienting Gently turn your head and notice the space around you to signal safety to the brain
• Hand on heart + breath Activates the parasympathetic nervous system and calms overactivity
Including these makes the blog feel more immediately actionable.
A Brief Note on Sleep and Overthinking
Many clients mention that overthinking is worst at night. You could touch on how the brain, without daytime distractions, can become flooded with unresolved thoughts at bedtime. A sentence like:
“If your thoughts tend to race as soon as your head hits the pillow, you’re not alone, this is a common pattern. Therapeutic work can help retrain your brain to associate rest with safety, not threat.”
“Overthinking doesn’t mean you’re broken or weak, it often means you care deeply, want to do things right, or have been through times when things felt out of control. With the right support, you can create more mental spaciousness, self-trust, and peace.”
1. Understanding Overthinking: More Than Just Worry
Overthinking is not simply worrying too much. It is a cognitive pattern that often stems from a need for control, safety or certainty. It can manifest as ruminating on the past, catastrophising about the future, or second-guessing every decision. When left unaddressed, this pattern can lead to:
• Social withdrawal and avoidance
• Strained relationships and difficulty with connection
• Reduced productivity and burnout at work
• Sleep disturbances and physical exhaustion
• Constant self-doubt and low self-worth
Often, this cognitive cycle is deeply ingrained, sometimes even from childhood. Children who grow up in unpredictable environments may develop hyper-vigilant thinking patterns as a way to stay safe. Over time, this “thinking everything through” becomes hardwired, and what once kept them safe now keeps them stuck.
The Link Between Overthinking and Anxiety
Overthinking often stems from underlying anxiety. When your nervous system is in a constant state of hyperarousal, your mind naturally scans for danger, real or imagined. This is where therapy can make a powerful difference. Through personalised support, you can begin to shift from mental overwhelm to clarity and calm.
2. ANTs: Automatic Negative Thoughts
In Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, the term ANTs is used to describe the repetitive, unhelpful thoughts that automatically arise in response to stress or uncertainty.
These might include:
• “Something bad is going to happen”
• “I’m not good enough”
• “They must be angry with me”
• “What if I fail?”
ANTs are not facts, yet they often feel entirely real. When they go unchallenged, they influence emotions, behaviours and physical responses, creating a feedback loop of anxiety and overwhelm.
3. CBT Techniques to Challenge ANTs
CBT teaches us to catch, challenge and change these thought patterns. One key strategy is to ask:
• What is the evidence for this thought?
• What would I say to a friend who had this thought?
• Is there a more balanced way of seeing this situation?
• Is this thought helping or harming me?
Even recognising that a thought is an ANT begins the process of change. Over time, consistent questioning of these patterns weakens their automatic grip on your mind.
4. Clinical Hypnotherapy: Rewiring the Subconscious Mind
Where CBT works at the conscious thought level, Clinical Hypnotherapyaddresses patterns beneath awareness. Phiona, a qualified Clinical Hypnotherapist, helps clients access a relaxed state where the subconscious mind is more open to positive suggestion and healing.
During hypnotherapy sessions, clients often discover the root cause of their overthinking, shift old belief systems, and establish new, healthier mental habits. Clinical hypnotherapy a gentle, client-led and deeply therapeutic process. It can be particularly effective when thoughts feel too fast, too overwhelming, or impossible to control with willpower alone.
5. Somatic Interventions: Coming Out of the Head and Into the Body
Overthinking is a head-based experience, one that often disconnects us from our bodies. Somatic therapy offers a powerful route back to grounding. These practices might include:
• Breathwork and guided relaxation
• Gentle body awareness techniques
• Mindful movement or grounding exercises
• Touch and sensory integration tools
By learning to feel safe in the body, clients can move from mental hypervigilance to embodied calm. Somatic work is particularly helpful for those who’ve found traditional talk therapy overwhelming or ineffective.
6. The Real-Life Impact of Overthinking
Overthinking does not exist in isolation, it affects every part of life:
Workplace: Constantly doubting performance, difficulty making decisions, fear of being judged or failing, leading to burnout.
Family: Struggles with setting boundaries, interpreting others’ actions negatively, feeling mentally ‘absent’ even when present.
Friendships: Overanalysing conversations, fear of rejection, avoiding plans due to fear of “saying something wrong.”
Daily life: Struggling to relax, sleep, or complete simple tasks without internal pressure.
These challenges often create a cycle of anxiety, where overthinking leads to withdrawal, which leads to more overthinking, and so on.
7. Breaking the Cycle: A Holistic Approach to Mental Health
To truly support someone experiencing overthinking, anxiety and overwhelm, it’s essential to address mind, body and belief. Phiona offers a holistic approach combining:
• HCBT strategies for conscious awareness and thought correction
• Clinical hypnotherapy to address subconscious beliefs and emotional triggers
• Somatic therapy to ground, regulate and restore calm
• EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) to release stored emotional tension
• A supportive, compassionate space online or in person, tailored to each client
Clients are gently guided out of spirals of mental overwhelm and back into presence, safety and empowerment.
The Role of Breathwork in Calming Overthinking
When thoughts are racing, the breath is often shallow, tight, or even held without us realising. Breathwork offers a direct line to the nervous system, helping shift the body out of “fight or flight” and into a state of calm and clarity.
By consciously slowing and deepening the breath, you send a signal to the brain that you’re safe. This reduces the physiological symptoms of anxiety and allows space between thoughts. For clients who feel consumed by mental noise, breathwork becomes a practical, empowering tool they can use anytime, whether in the middle of a sleepless night or before a challenging conversation.
Therapeutically, we explore techniques like:
• Box breathing: A simple, structured breath that creates a sense of stability
• Coherent breathing: Slowing the breath to around five breaths per minute to soothe the nervous system
• Body-led breathing: Tuning into where tension is held and allowing the breath to gently release it
Over time, regular breathwork can help retrain the mind to pause, respond, and reset, rather than spiral.
Support, Community and Further Help
Overthinking and anxiety are incredibly common and deserve compassionate, skilled support. You do not have to live in a cycle of fear, overwhelm or disconnection.
Supportive Resources
• The Happiness Trap by Dr Russ Harris , A practical guide based on ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy)
• Apps like Insight Timer, Breathwrk, or Calm for somatic and mindfulness-based practices
If you or someone you love is struggling, you can reach out to:
• Mind UK – Mental health support, resources and helplines
• Anxiety UK – Information and therapies for anxiety-related conditions
• YoungMinds – Mental health support for children, young people and parents
And of course, you can work directly with Phiona, who specialises in supporting clients experiencing anxiety, overthinking, and emotional overwhelm. Whether in-person or online, she offers a safe, non-judgemental space for deep therapeutic healing.
Begin Your Journey Back to Calm
Overthinking is not a life sentence, it’s a pattern that can be understood, softened and eventually transformed. With the right tools and support, you can reclaim your energy, your peace of mind and your life.
To explore how Phiona can support you, visit Phiona’s website and book a free consultation. Support is available. You are not alone.
Phiona is a qualified Clinical Hypnotherapist and Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) practitioner, supporting clients through anxiety, stress, trauma and emotional overwhelm. She works with clients of all ages, online and face-to-face.
Whether you're dealing with stress, anxiety, trauma, bereavement or looking to break habits, reframe fears, or phobias. Phiona can help you develop approaches to overcome these barriers that prevent you from living life to the fullest. Helping you navigate life’s challenges and take the next step towards a brighter, calmer future.
If you feel you would like support, and you feel therapy may be the answer. I offer 15 minute complimentary consultations, for you to have the chance to discover how therapy might support you. Visit my website for more information.
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