Stop Overthinking, and Your Energy Will Bounce Back Immediately
Recently, my friend Lisa shared an insight that completely transformed her life: stop overthinking, and your energy rebounds instantly.
Lisa used to be the undisputed “master of micro-expression and micro-behavior decoding.” A colleague’s absentminded look, a friend’s casual comment, or a boyfriend’s slightly delayed text reply — any of these could set off a storm inside her, triggering endless chains of association. She would ruminate over these things, lie awake all night fabricating countless possibilities, and even drag me into dissecting the “hidden meanings” behind every message…
Gradually, this hyper-interpretation of others’ every word and action became an invisible net, trapping her tightly. She grew hypersensitive. Vast amounts of time and energy were devoured by nonstop internal drama, leaving her no bandwidth for her own feelings and needs.
In truth, overthinking intentions and emotions often stems from a deep gap between one’s intense desire to control external feedback (especially others’ opinions and attitudes) and the fundamental uncontrollability of real life. Unlike ordinary sensitivity or occasional overthinking, this state of deep psychological exhaustion is actually a critical signal: your inner energy is being severely eroded, and your sense of agency is gradually dissolving.
Why is overthinking so depleting? And how can we break this cycle of internal drain, reclaim control of our lives, and restore inner peace? Today, Kelly would like to talk with you about this.
Overthinking: Beware the “Projection Trap”
In psychology — particularly psychoanalytic theory — projection refers to attributing one’s own unacceptable or unacknowledged thoughts, feelings, desires, or traits onto someone else. Simply put: it’s “putting your own problems on someone else’s head.” Because facing these parts directly would trigger inner anxiety or discomfort, the subconscious transfers them outward through projection.
For example:
- A person consumed by jealousy might become convinced that “everyone around me is jealous of me.”
- Someone harboring aggressive impulses might feel that “what TA said/did was hostile toward me.”
By projecting out what they cannot accept within themselves, the individual temporarily maintains a “feeling good about oneself” state.
Overthinking makes projection almost inevitable — because the process is saturated with subjective guesswork rather than objective fact.
My friend Lisa is a textbook example. She grew up in a household marked by constant parental conflict and emotional volatility; her parents were hot and cold toward her. This upbringing made her hypervigilant, forcing her to learn to read the room at an early age. Carrying this trauma into adulthood, the moment her inner sensitivities are triggered — such as sensing a risk of “not being liked” or “being abandoned” — Lisa unconsciously activates the projection mechanism:
- Seeing someone look displeased, she immediately interprets it as “I did something wrong; TA doesn’t like me.”
- When a reply doesn’t come right away, that familiar sense of “being abandoned” floods in.
These intense negative feelings are, in essence, unprocessed and unaccepted old wounds from deep within her, being projected onto the present moment. In that instant, projecting them outward is the only way Lisa feels even slightly better.
Yet analyzing the other person through this projected lens almost always leads far away from the truth. It’s more like Lisa is unconsciously reenacting a childhood script with her parents, casting “the other person” in the role of “the parent”:
“Why is TA smirking? I must have said something wrong!” (replaying her parents’ constant criticism)
— In reality, the “smirk” was the person’s reaction to something discussed earlier, not directed at her at all.
“Why isn’t TA replying? Don’t they love me? Are they going to abandon me?” (replaying her parents’ hot-and-cold treatment)
— In reality, the other person may have just been chewed out by their boss and needed alone time to process.
Clearly, inside the “projection trap,” analyzing others is unlikely to yield any correct conclusion. Instead, you spiral deeper into self-consumption, adding pain to pain.
Overthinking Is Eroding Your “Sense of Agency”
Another serious consequence of overthinking is the gradual loss of your sense of agency. In self psychology, agency refers to a state of being centered on one’s own lived experience. It manifests as an inner conviction about “Who am I,” “Are my feelings real,” and “Are my needs valid,” along with a sense of active self-direction.
For example:
- “I feel good about myself” — even if others disagree, I can still affirm my self-worth.
- “I think this restaurant tastes bad” — I don’t need anyone else’s validation to trust my own sensory experience.
- “This job brings me joy” — even if others think it’s “going nowhere,” I can still affirm its meaning for me.
Many people already have a shaky sense of agency. Overthinking accelerates its collapse. Here’s how:
1. Losing sight of yourself: Self-perception becomes blurred
Projection, at its core, means “throwing” feelings or traits you can’t tolerate onto the outside world — which prevents you from integrating a complete self-image. Someone who projects out their own jealousy may never realize the jealousy within. Like the former Lisa, constantly projecting traumatic feelings onto others made it harder and harder for her to turn inward, face her wounds, and heal. She could only sink deeper. The result: she struggled to form a clear self-concept, and instead became excessively dependent on external feedback to define herself.
Every time Lisa analyzed someone else, what she was really doing — subconsciously — was outsourcing the answers: “Am I really that bad?” “Does TA truly hate me?” “Am I about to be abandoned?”
2. Losing your grip: Surrendering decision-making power
Over-dependence on others’ feedback reinforces an “external locus,” causing you to voluntarily give up your own decision-making power. Lisa’s career struggles illustrate this perfectly.
As an award-winning designer who had won a national prize, Lisa was more than capable of working independently. Yet at her company, a single colleague’s doubt or a leader’s glance would make her scrap a design she actually liked. This overthinking made her seem indecisive and spineless, leaving her supervisors with the impression that she was “lacking ideas, lacking conviction, and unable to take charge” — so much so that in seven years at the company, she was never promoted once.
Just as she once handed decision-making power to her parents as a child, she was now unconsciously handing it over to an imagined “audience of others’ judgments,” further blurring her sense of agency.
3. Losing your center: Emotional sovereignty is gone
Overthinking also means handing the remote control of your emotions to someone else.
Look at Lisa’s old pattern: one comment, one look, one delayed text from someone else would immediately trigger an intense emotional reaction — acute anxiety → frantic analysis and guessing → the more she analyzed, the more anxious she became → if she got clarification or comfort from the other person → her mood would instantly lift.
Her emotions were completely at the mercy of others’ reactions. She couldn’t self-regulate or stabilize her inner state. This constant emotional tug-of-war — set off by someone else’s slightest move — is exactly what drains psychological energy the most.
4. Losing yourself: Falling into “self-objectification”
Self-objectification means treating yourself as an “object” or “thing” to be observed and judged by others, rather than as a subject with autonomous consciousness and intrinsic worth.
The three points above — relying on the outside world to define yourself, letting others steer your direction, and being emotionally jerked around by external forces — are all classic signs of self-objectification. Overthinking is, in effect, voluntarily locking yourself inside the cage of self-objectification. We examine and define ourselves through other people’s eyes, leaking energy outward, fixing our attention on the external — and ultimately, our sense of agency collapses, leaving us hollow and lost.
3 Methods to Pull You Out of the Overthinking Swamp
If you, like the former Lisa, are trapped in the mire of overthinking others — feeling exhausted and losing yourself — the following three methods may help you reclaim your power:
1. Stay aware: Recognize and reclaim your projections
The psychologist Carl Jung once said: “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
If you frequently find yourself spiraling into anxiety and suspicion from over-guessing others’ motives, hit pause immediately and ask yourself:
“Is this an objective fact, or is it my own projection at work?”
This awareness draws a critical line between reality and imagination. And once you can “see” a projection happening, its power begins to weaken.
You can then go a step further: “Where does this feeling — the one I’m so eager to ‘throw’ onto someone else — actually come from?”
As in Lisa’s case, those intense feelings of “fear of loss” are rooted in unhealed childhood wounds. Try to look inward and see your own projection clearly. If you can’t yet identify or process it, you can gently hold yourself and say to that wounded inner child:
“I see you. Don’t be afraid. I’m here.”
Bringing your energy back to yourself through self-soothing is a crucial step in healing.
2. Use wisdom: Practice the Stoic “Dichotomy of Control”
The Stoic philosopher Epictetus offered a core teaching: “Some things are up to us, and some things are not up to us. This is the foundation of our inner peace.”
The essence of the Dichotomy of Control is a clear division:
| What YOU can control | What you CANNOT control |
|---|---|
| Your thoughts | Others’ thoughts |
| Your attitude | Others’ feelings |
| Your actions | Others’ words and actions |
| Your goals | Others’ judgments |
| How you respond | The external environment and outcomes |
Overthinking others is essentially an attempt to make the uncontrollable controllable — a doomed and painful endeavor. Once you learn this dichotomy, you realize: how others see me and how they react is not in my control — and I need to accept that. How I interpret, how I feel, and how I adjust my mindset — those are fully within my control, and that’s where my energy belongs.
Even if you face doubt or misunderstanding, that’s the other person’s business — not yours to manage. What you can do is hold steady at the emotional steering wheel and not let external storms throw you off course.
3. Build your foundation: Create a “multi-point” self-support system
The more “points of support” you have in life, the more stable your core becomes. Beyond work and daily routines, you can cultivate a variety of interests — hiking, reading, flower arranging, going to concerts, watching movies, cooking yourself a great meal, or learning a new skill…
When your sense of worth, joy, and security are no longer pinned on a single person or thing — but spread across multiple solid anchors — you develop powerful resilience. You might even find yourself thinking:
“My world is so rich and full — why would I waste my energy second-guessing others?”
Lisa’s later transformation proved exactly this point. When the same situation arose again (her boyfriend didn’t reply right away), she simply put her phone down, called a close friend to chat about her recent interests, and the two of them enjoyed a wonderful meal together. Later, her boyfriend explained that he’d been busy with work and couldn’t reply immediately.
Through these nourishing “support points,” Lisa reclaimed her strength and joy. Her powerful sense of agency returned. And a person with a stable core, focused on themselves, becomes a source of energy and light — radiating an irreplaceable kind of magnetism.
Final Thoughts
Psychologist Jonathan Haidt, in The Happiness Hypothesis, describes our emotional side as an elephant — powerful but easily driven by feeling — and our rational side as the rider, trying to steer the direction.
Overthinking is the rider trying to forcefully control everything, yanking the reins, attempting to steer someone else’s elephant — a beast that is entirely beyond our control. How could that ever succeed? Not only does it fail to tame the outside elephant, but it also drives our own inner elephant into chaos.
True strength lies in letting go of the obsession with others’ opinions and turning inward with gentleness:
- Allow others to be others — don’t carry their burdens, don’t take on their consequences.
- Allow yourself to be yourself — focus on your own feelings and needs, and have the courage to be disliked.
May you, in the days ahead, always shine with your own light and walk your path with steady steps.
The world and I are here for you. 🌿
