Introduction
What is Overthinking?
The mind is our more precious tool. But what happens when our thoughts start to get out of control? Humans are gifted with a superior thinking capacity that sets us apart from other living beings on this planet. The human brain can create great things like buildings, literature, movies, novels, and thousands of other inventions that have enhanced our way of life throughout history. It is remarkable what we can do when we  put our minds to it.
Thinking allows us to excel in school, go to college, plan for the future, get a job. No doubt, our mind is our biggest asset, but what happens when the mind stops being your ally and starts becoming your enemy?  What if your mind starts to get out of control and starts eating away at your happiness? What would happen if your mind started producing destructive thoughts that threaten to hold you back in life and ruin the  relationships you’ve worked so hard to build? 
Overthinking Explained
Thinking too much. That is exactly what it means to overthink. When you spend too much time thinking instead of taking action, when you analyze and repeat the same thoughts in your mind but do very little about  it, you’re overthinking.
Or how about another, more relatable example of overthinking happening in a relationship. You send a text to your crush whom you’ve recently started dating. You wait eagerly for their reply, but an hour passes.  Two hours.Three hours. Still nothing from them. Your mind starts to go into overdrive.Why aren’t they texting me back? Are they busy? Have they lost interest in me? Was it something I said? Maybe they’re  annoyed that I’m texting them first. Maybe they want to break up with me. Could they be ghosting me? Is it me? Why does this always happen to me? 
The Reason Behind It
To be trapped by the thoughts in your mind is torture. Being locked in and unable to escape the negativity is mental torture. The brain is tricky in that way. Telling it not think about something rarely ever works. We  naturally want certainty. We want control. We want to know what’s happening. We want concrete answers to the questions we have. When we don’t get what we need to satisfy that urge, the brain goes into  overdrive, coming up with scenarios of its own.
Why does overthinking happen? Well, along with the ability to think, humans have another special ability called intuition. Intuition is defined as the ability to immediately understand something without any need for conscious reasoning. Have you ever been told to “go with your gut” when you were stuck on a decision that had to be made? “Gut” in this context refers to your intuition, and it does highlight the fact that your  intuitive thoughts are not coming from your conscious mind. Instead, they stem from your subconscious mind. If you’ve ever experienced those moments when it feels like your brain is arguing with itself, this is the  reason why.
Your subconscious mind sometimes tries to give you answers to the problems you’re facing. You need to make decisions every day. What makes it scary for a lot of people is how those decisions determine the direction your life is going and what you’re going to experience next. This can be an overwhelming notion for many and why overthinking is such a problem. We’re afraid of regret, and since time continues to  move forward instead of backward, it feels like every decision that is going to impact our life matters. Once a decision has been made, you cannot go back in time and change the moment. You can’t alter the  choice you’ve made most of the time, and you must live with the consequences of your decisions. The last thing we want is to make a decision that we come to regret. We don’t want to live with the possibility that  we could have experienced something better if only we had made a different decision. See why overthinking is a big problem?
Ask anyone you meet, and they’ll tell you that they don’t want to look back on their life with regret when they’re old one day, wishing they had done certain things differently. To complicate matters more, we never  know what the guaranteed outcome is going to be for most of the decisions we make. Overthinking happens because the mind is constantly wrestling with the many possibilities it is faced with. The uncertainty of  not knowing which decision is going to be the best decision only makes it harder to figure out the right choices to make.

Ultimately, the root cause of overthinking is fear. The seeds that it sows in your mind will prey upon your thoughts to the point they become out of control. None of us came into this world being afraid. The fear we  experience today is what we’ve developed out of trauma or life experiences.Even when the traumatic experience has passed, remnants of that fear remain, and we continue to carry that fear around with us for the  rest of our lives. Fear is the poison that latches unto our mind and, if left unchecked, triggers a lot of the overthinking that happens. These destructive thought patterns become an inescapable habit once it starts.  The more we overthink, the more fear we invite in. The more fear we invite in, the more unsettled our thoughts are. It takes considerable effort to break out of this cycle and without the right support and tools to do  it, it can feel nearly impossible to do.

The Causes
There is always a reason or a cause behind everything that happens. This includes the thoughts you have. Very rarely do thoughts randomly spring to mind for no apparent reason. When you catch yourself  overthinking, there is always going to be a reason behind it. Something that sparked that train of thought. It is now up to you to identify what those triggers are. Now, this may be something you’re reluctant or  hesitant to do at first, but it needs to be done nonetheless. It is important to identify your causes. Only when you know the root cause of any problem can you then begin to fix it. You’re not alone. Excessive  thoughts are something a lot of people struggle with each day. We’ve all had those moments where the brain seems to go a mile a minute, and it seems impossible to quiet all that noise that it’s making. Telling your  brain to slow down and stop is not easy, especially when the brain seems to come up with more problems faster than it can produce the solution. Let’s look at some of the common excessive thinking triggers: