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You leave a conversation and suddenly your brain becomes a crime scene. Why did I say that? Did they think I was weird? Should I have acted differently? If this sounds familiar to you, you're in the right place. In today's episode, we'll break down why your brain spirals after social situations. And we're going to give you practical, science based tools to stop the overthinking cycle in its tracks. Welcome to your Anxiety toolkit podcast where I bring you all the virtual hugs and practical strategies to help you face your fears and live each day with courage and compassion. I'm Kimberly Quindlen. I'm a licensed therapist and anxiety specialist. And today we're talking all about how to stop overthinking every single social interaction. Whether you're struggling with social anxiety, ocd, panic or perfectionism, this podcast is your space to learn science backed tools to build a life you love, even with fear on board. Welcome, everybody. Okay, so let's talk about why we overthink every social situation. You guys, a lot of this is because we want control. Usually when we overthink, we're trying to find a world where things make sense. We're trying to solve how we could have fixed the problem so we don't have discomfort, so we don't have anxiety, so bad things don't happen. We overthink because we don't like uncertainty, we don't like being judged. We've talked about that in previous episodes. And we overthink because some of us, particularly those with social anxiety, we know based on research, that they tend to have a higher level of sensitivity to emotions like embarrassment and humiliation. They can feel unbearable and they can often have a shame response to these emotions. Some researchers and clinicians actually think of social anxiety as a shame disorder, not an anxiety disorder. And I have had many clients very much resonate with that. Now, there is another reason that we overanalyze and overthink everything. And that is often because in our childhood, often we have people make comments about us. Maybe they said, oh, I noticed such and such about you, or don't be that way, don't say that, don't act that way. They're going to think this if you do. And those messages can actually make us overanalyze small little things that we do when we are out and about. We often do have those messages in our brain. And now in this day and age, social media has made that so much harder and so much more prominent. As we navigate social situations, we can use those experiences and hone in on them. And become very, very, very, very critical. And then when we have that uncertainty, we move back into over analyzing, over ruminating, overthinking, every little social interaction that we had.

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Now I am going to give you.

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A four step process to help step stop overthinking. So let's get started. Number one, we have to recognize when we are in a thought spiral. Awareness is key here. It is so important. If we are someone who tends to do a lot of rumination, we first have to be able to catch it when we're doing it. Now that can take some practice. Awareness is a skill and a tool that we can use. And the more we use it, the better we we get at catching it. And the sooner we can catch it, the more we can lessen the impact. So first of all, you may, number one, use a log and log down every time that you catch yourself. You might find that you do more rumination during certain times of the day or during certain activities. I've had clients when they've logged down when they are ruminating that they've found that they ruminated more in the shower or driving. They've thought more about things they've said as they put their head down on the pillow and that when they've turned the lights out and all of the noise goes away, that's when their brain starts to think, oh, you said this and what did they think about that? In some cases you come up with scenarios that didn't even happen. You start to think you said things that you didn't even think. That's the power of our creation. Creative and imaginative brain. So number one, do practice logging or being more aware of where you're doing this behavior, when you're doing this behavior. Once you do that, then you can start to implement actions during those times if you do it mostly on your way home from work. So you've been at work, you've done your day's work, and as you've driven home, that's when you start to overanalyze. And that might be an important practice to intervene by adding a different action. Whether it be you listen to a podcast, you rehearse things, you learn a language, you listen to an audiobook, you call a family member. You're doing this to intervene so that you don't ruminate, so that you don't just sit and spin on mental compulsions on all the little things you did wrong. Remember, we actually want to be on, we want to practice not solving how you acted because it's in the past, it's Done. There's nothing you can do. There's nothing we can come back with. It's been done. Your job is to stay present or stay in the future. The next step is to refuse the illusion that you will figure this out, that you know what they're thinking, that you can solve this one. Refuse the illusion that you will get anywhere away from the discomfort you feel. What we want to do, instead of finding certainty in how it went or solving it or trying to prevent it from happening in the future, is then to come from a place of compassion and kindness and imperfection. And then that last step is to pivot and redirect your attention to what you do, have control over, to what you want to focus on or to things you value. So let's say, let's play this out. You've been at a work event or a social event. You did the best you could. When you get in the car, if the car is the place that you know you're starting to overthink, or wherever you are, we want to identify. This is where I'm going to start beating myself up. This is where I'm going to start over, analyzing every little thing. We might want to acknowledge that we don't know what they're thinking, that we didn't ever sign a contract with the Earth, that we were going to get it right the first time. We're going to give ourselves permission to be imperfect and we're going to set very strong boundaries with ourselves by saying, I am not engaging in any rumination about the past. Now let's troubleshoot this a little bit. It is completely normal for you to fall back into the trap of overthinking. That is a normal human response here. When you catch yourself going off into overthinking again, that's fine. Just again become aware and bring yourself back to the present or something that you're pivoting towards that's value based. In a few minutes, your brain is going to start overthinking again. Not a problem. We're not going to get frustrated. We're not going to beat ourselves up. We're going to just notice. Of course my brain wants to solve this. And again, be aware, be gentle and redirect back to the present. Now guess what's going to happen. You know, your brain is going to pivot back onto overthinking, but back onto criticism, back onto trying to solve this interaction, right? To review it, to go over everything you said and what they could have thought and what they could you could.