The Exhaustion of Trying to Think Three Steps Ahead
You aren't just thinking about what you're doing right now. You're already thinking about what needs to happen after this, what could interfere with that, and what you'll do if it does.
You're making dinner while mentally working out tomorrow morning. You're sitting in a meeting already anticipating the questions people will ask at the end. Someone suggests plans for the weekend and, before you've answered, you've considered the drive, everyone's schedules, what needs to happen before you leave and how tired you'll be when you get home.
By the time other people start thinking about something, you've often been thinking about it for days.
There's an obvious advantage to this. You're prepared. You catch things early. You're rarely the person standing there saying, "I didn't think about that."
But I've started to wonder whether being three steps ahead is always about being prepared.
Sometimes it's about making sure you never have to find out what would happen if you weren't.
If you're beginning to recognize how much energy your mind spends anticipating what comes next, Burnout Recovery for Women in the Bay Area explores the larger subconscious patterns that can contribute to burnout even when you're handling life remarkably well.
You're Doing More Than the Thing You're Doing
Two women can be making the same dinner and carrying completely different mental loads.
One is making pasta.
The other is making pasta while remembering there's almost no milk for breakfast, wondering whether the permission slip made it into the backpack, calculating what time she needs to leave tomorrow and realizing she should move the laundry before bedtime.
From the outside, she's making dinner. In her mind, she's already living Tuesday.
That's what makes this kind of exhaustion difficult to see. Other people see everything you accomplish. They don't see how many future moments you've been carrying while accomplishing it.
Being Prepared Can Become a Form of Protection
There are plenty of good reasons to plan ahead, but sometimes preparation carries an emotional job as well.
If you've already considered what could happen, you won't be caught completely off guard. If you've thought through the alternatives, you'll know what to do if the original plan falls apart. If you've anticipated what someone might need, you can respond before there's a problem.
That can create an enormous sense of competence.
It can also quietly create a belief that you're okay because you were prepared.
Your subconscious starts connecting the two: I can handle things when I've had enough time to think about them first.
Which leaves another possibility underneath it that we don't talk about very often.
What if something happens that I haven't prepared for?
This is where Overthinking Burnout can become much deeper than simply having a busy mind.
Maybe It's Not Control You're Looking For
We often describe overthinking as a need for control, but I think that explanation can stop too soon.
What does control give you?
It gives you the feeling that you'll know what to do.
If you've spent years relying on anticipation, you may have developed tremendous confidence in your ability to prepare without developing the same confidence in your ability to respond.
Those are different things.
One says, I'll be okay because I've thought this through.
The other says, I'll be okay even if I haven't.
That second kind of confidence requires something overthinking never allows you to practice: meeting a moment you didn't prepare for and discovering that you can handle it.
You Don't Have to Live Tomorrow to Trust Yourself With It
The future will always contain something you didn't anticipate.
A meeting will go in a direction you didn't expect. Someone will change their mind. Your carefully organized day will get interrupted. Something you couldn't possibly have planned for will eventually happen.
Thinking harder today can't eliminate that.
What can change is how much you trust the woman who will be standing there when it does.
When your subconscious no longer believes preparation is what keeps you safe, planning becomes a tool again instead of a requirement. You can think ahead when it genuinely helps and stop when you've done enough.
Tomorrow doesn't need today's energy simply because you don't know exactly what it will bring.
The Work Beneath the Overthinking
Through Trauma-Release Hypnotherapy and the Regressive Release Method (RRM), we work with the experiences that taught your subconscious it needed to anticipate, prepare or stay ahead in order to feel secure.
The goal isn't to make you less capable. It's to help you stop measuring your ability to handle life by how successfully you predicted it.
You already know how to prepare.
The deeper shift may be discovering that you can trust yourself even when you can't.
If you'd like to explore this work more deeply, join me for my workshop, Why You Can't Think Your Way Out of Burnout.
If you're curious about what's underneath your own overthinking, schedule a complimentary consultation.Continue Reading
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Ready to Go Deeper?
Join the workshop Why You Can't Think Your Way Out of Burnout., or schedule a complimentary consultation.