How to Stop Overthinking

& Break Free From the Exhausting Mental Loop

🧠🔄Overthinking is exhausting. Lying in bed, eyes wide open, replaying that one conversation over and over. Did I say the wrong thing? Should I have spoken up more? Should I have stayed quiet instead? And even when you try to switch your brain off, it just keeps going. You replay past events, imagine future ones, even invent scenarios that torture your mind in endless loops.

I know this feeling all too well because I’ve lived it. The endless spirals, the second-guessing, the heaviness in your chest that never quite lifts. Your body feels tense, your stomach knots, your sleep suffers, and no matter how tired you are, the thoughts keep looping.

And when you finally search the internet for “How to stop overthinking”, you find useless and sometimes even harmful advice like “just think positive thoughts,” “distract yourself,” or even “trick your brain.” None of these tips really work and can even cause more harm because you’re not looking at the root of the problem.

In this post, I’m not going to give you fluff or tricks. I’m going to share real, actionable tips on how to stop overthinking that actually work because they go deeper than your thoughts. They get to the root of why you overthink in the first place, and once you address that, you can finally stop overthinking for good.

The Real Reason You Overthink

🩹Tips to stop overthinking like “just think positive” are like putting a band-aid over a gaping wound. They don’t treat the real issue, which only gets worse if you don’t address it.

The real reason you overthink is because your body doesn’t feel safe. Overthinking is a protection mechanism from the nervous system, trying to guard you from perceived harm.

⚠️If you grew up in a household where you didn’t feel emotionally safe, your nervous system was put on high alert from a young age. This could look like being yelled at for small mistakes, being ignored when you needed comfort, having to “walk on eggshells” around a parent, or feeling like love and approval were conditional. ⚠️

Since most of us were never taught how to process emotions or regulate the nervous system, those experiences became stuck in the body, keeping it on constant alert.

Here’s the truth most advice overlooks: overthinking isn’t a thinking problem, it’s a safety problem. Your nervous system is designed to protect you. When it feels unsafe, whether from criticism, uncertainty, or instability, it stays on guard, scanning for danger even when none is there. Think of it like your body searching for lions that might attack at any moment, even though no lions exist.

Overthinking is your brain’s way of preparing for every outcome, hoping it can keep you safe. But instead of helping, it traps you in endless “what ifs” that lead to exhaustion, self-doubt, and anxiety. 

This is why telling yourself to “think positive” or “just let it go” doesn’t work. The nervous system needs to feel safe first. Once the body feels calm, the brain naturally quiets down.

How to Stop Overthinking: Start With the Body

If you want to stop overthinking, don’t start with your thoughts, start with your body. When your body feels safe, your mind will naturally calm down. Here are four of the most powerful tips on how to stop overthinking that actually work.

1. Slow Deep Breathing to Calm the Nervous System

🌬️Slow deep breathing is the number one most effective way to calm your nervous system and stop the overthinking loop. When you breathe slowly and deeply, you activate your vagus nerve, which sends a message throughout your nervous system that you are safe and it can relax.

As your nervous system calms, it tells your muscles to release tension, your body to soften, and your thoughts to quiet down. The alarms switch off, and your mind no longer feels the need to spiral.

Doing this for 5–10 minutes when you feel anxious or stuck in constant loops can stop overthinking in its tracks.

Practicing daily breathing for even just 5–10 minutes will retrain your nervous system over time to have a calmer baseline. When your baseline is calm, you won’t rise into that frantic overthinking space as easily. Instead, you’ll notice yourself moving through daily life with more clarity, ease, and grounded focus.

2. Movement to Release Stuck Energy

If you’ve been overthinking for a while, maybe even years like I had, your nervous system has likely been stuck in a state of fight or flight for a long time.

Every stressful event, anxious thought, or emotional overwhelm you’ve experienced leaves a trace of energy in your body. But instead of moving through like it’s meant to, that energy gets trapped.

💢This stuck energy often shows up physically alongside overthinking. Let me guess, you probably deal with one or more of these: stiff joints, tight muscles, neck or back pain, headaches, fatigue, digestive problems, even shallow breathing or chest tightness. All of these are linked to your nervous system holding onto old stress.

🚶‍♀️The good news is, you can start releasing this energy through movement. It doesn’t have to be a gym session or a tough workout. Go for a daily walk, dance in your living room, stretch, or simply shake your body out. Jump around, swing your arms, or wiggle your whole body for a few minutes — this practice is actually called “somatic shaking,” and it’s a well-known technique to release stored stress.

It may look silly, but it’s incredibly effective. When the body releases stuck energy, the nervous system resets, your body feels safe again, and the overthinking naturally begins to ease.

3. Journaling to Clear Mental Loops

✍️Journaling is one of the most powerful tools for breaking the cycle of overthinking. When you write, you’re not just “venting on paper” — you’re giving your mind a release valve. Overthinking keeps energy and emotions stuck in your body, and journaling moves that energy out.

Through journaling, you can explore the real reasons you overthink: past experiences, situations where you felt unsafe, or fears that are still running in the background. When you see those thoughts on paper, you understand them differently and that understanding is what helps you let go.

You can also use journaling as a symbolic release. Write down your thoughts, then rip up, burn (safely), or throw away the paper as a ritual of letting go. It sends a powerful message to your body and mind that you no longer need to hold onto what was weighing you down.

💡 If this resonates with you, my Mental Health Reset Guide goes much deeper. It includes 220 powerful journal prompts across 22 categories, each designed to take you on a journey from self-discovery to release and back into calm.

It also includes many of the most effective healing techniques I’ve personally used to reset my own mental health. The guide isn’t available yet, but you can join the waitlist to be the first to know when it’s ready.

4. Ground Yourself in the Present

When your mind spirals, your body thinks danger is coming. Grounding techniques bring you back into the present moment and show your nervous system it’s safe.

🌱One of the simplest ways to ground is by placing your bare feet on the floor and imagining roots growing down into the earth, anchoring you.

You can also connect with your five senses: notice the textures and colors around you, pay attention to the sounds you can hear, the scents in the air, even the feeling of your breath moving in and out.

These small actions may not seem powerful, but they immediately shift you back into your body and out of the whirlwind in your mind. They remind your nervous system that you are safe right here, right now and the overthinking begins to quiet.

Why Most “How to Stop Overthinking Tips” Fail

Most ‘how to stop overthinking’ tips you’ll find online will tell you to “think positive,” “distract yourself,” or use some other surface-level trick. And while these might give you a momentary break, they’re like putting a band-aid over a deep wound. They don’t treat the root, so the problem always comes back.

In fact, the longer you rely on these quick fixes, the harder it feels when the overthinking returns  and it always does. That’s because you can’t out-think a nervous system that doesn’t feel safe.

The real way to stop overthinking for good is by healing the root cause: calming your nervous system and releasing stuck energy by using practices like journaling that go deeper than your thoughts.

Putting It All Together: Your Path Out of Overthinking

Overthinking is not a flaw in who you are, it’s a safety mechanism set in motion by a nervous system that has been stuck in fight or flight for too long.

The good news is, your nervous system is adaptable, you can begin to retrain it at any time. You are not stuck this way.

With simple daily practices like deep breathing, and deeper healing techniques like journaling, you start showing your body it’s safe again. Over time, those signals of safety add up, and in just a few months you can feel calmer, clearer, and more like the version of yourself you’ve been longing to be.

When you calm your nervous system, your brain no longer feels the need to run every scenario or protect you from invisible threats. You’ll start to notice more space between your thoughts, more peace in your body, and more clarity in your decisions.

Overthinking doesn’t have to run your life. You can break free from the exhausting mental loop and finally feel calm again.

Don’t forget to join the waitlist for The Mental Health Reset Guide, its going to be absolutely transformational.