Overthinking: Journey of a Child

All living beings need to eat, drink, and sleep regularly to sustain their lives and most also rely on some form of a survival instinct intrinsic to their nature so that they can ensure the survival of their species, but they do not rely on thinking to further their species, not like humans do. Humans have lots of distinguishing capabilities that separate them from other living beings, but they owe all their achievements whether it be the laws they set, the familial bonds they form, or the spaceships they build, to their ability to think; because thinking leads to introspection, empathy, understanding, and communication if and when combined with action. However, if one cannot combine thinking with acting, they often find themselves lost in thought. When one gets lost in thought, they tend to spend more and more of their time alone, thinking without any outlet, and eventually, this starts consuming the individual from the inside and leads them to a darker path since thinking without balancing it with action pushes the individual away from reality. Such people are called “overthinkers” and their way of thinking is called “overthinking”.

Think of a child in their primary school years. This child has had some form of a stomachache for the longest time, and it always appeared during school hours, only to vanish after a night’s rest. Initially, he thought nothing of it and tried to live with the ache, but when it persisted, he decided to ask for help from their parents. Parents thought nothing of the ache at first and ensured it would pass eventually. This way passed the days, and the ache kept going away after a good night’s rest, only to return during school hours and disturb the child until he went to bed. Finally, seeing the ache persist, the parents decided to take their child to a doctor to figure out what was wrong with him. The first doctor could not find anything that would cause the stomach ache, so the family visited a second one and then a third as well as a fourth one, but none of the doctors could find anything, physiological in nature at least. Finally, the last doctor they visited suggested they see a therapist as the child’s issue might be psychological.  Having nothing else to do, the parents took the child to see a therapist. Thankfully, after examining and talking to the kid, the therapist offered a passable theory. They told the family that the kid’s stomachache was a phantom one and it probably resulted from something they lived through at school daily since the ache came at school and went away at night, and to test this theory out, they suggested the child ask for help from his homeroom teacher as she interacted closely with the kid all day every school day.

Equipped with this knowledge, the child went to his teacher and asked for her help in finding the source of this phantom ache and rooting it out of his system. The teacher devised a plan and as the first step asked the pros and cons list about his life at school so that they could focus on the cons because the teacher believed the source of the child’s problem would be among the cons. The child was sceptical at first because he did not think just making a list would solve his problem. Yet, funnily enough, he immediately figured out the root cause of his ache when he sat in front of the paper to write the list with his teacher. This was supposed to be a huge relief, but it was not because the root cause turned out to be his teacher and her behaviour towards his fellow classmates. The child has been with the same classmates from the start of middle school and he was quite fond of them, but his teacher behaved quite harshly and aggressively towards his classmates; yelling regularly and even resorting to physical punishment on occasion. Even though he was yet to be at the receiving end of one of her shouts or blows because he was a silent and obedient student, he could not help but wait for the other shoe to drop constantly. Thus, he kept thinking and thinking about how his teacher kept hurting his friends, physically and mentally, as well as when she would do the same to him. His persistent way of thinking turned into overthinking with time as the teacher did not change her ways since there was no action taken towards her, and finally overthinking showcased itself as a phantom stomachache. Eventually, the child managed to get rid of the ache because he told his findings to his parents. After talking with the other parents in the child’s class and realizing that their child was not the only one, they all confronted the teacher, made her see the error in her ways, and guided her to change her behaviour towards the children.

This all could have been prevented if the child had managed to find the balance between thinking and acting, but instead, he turned into an overthinker through overthinking because he was not equipped with the tools to tackle the challenge in front of him. This was not the child’s fault, he was just an empath who took the pains of his classmates and projected them onto himself. Still, even in the depths of overthinking, he knew to ask for help. He broke the wheel of overthinking and strove to find balance through it, and eventually succeeded thanks to good parenting as well as the help of some doctors.

Now, consider what would have happened if the child did not ask for help or even if he did he was ignored by his parents. He would be left alone to fend for himself, and since he did not possess the tools to tackle the challenge, he would sink deeper and deeper within himself and get lost in the darker path that overthinking led him; resulting in him thinking that he was weak and his thoughts and emotions were what made him weak. This would then force him to push and bury his feelings deep within himself and turn him into a robotic person who never showcases outward emotion; changing his entire future. People around him would start perceiving him as an eternally sad or unhappy person even though he was not; pushing him to sink deeper and deeper within himself and bolstering his overthinking. In due course, his life would become nothing but an endless cycle of overthinking and getting pushed away from society because of it or getting pushed away from society and as a result overthinking. Thankfully, none of this had to happen because the child found the balance between thinking and acting when he asked his parents for help, and from now on he can keep feeling and thinking without misjudging them to be weaknesses.