Don't Let Your Brain Scratch That Overthinking Itch

Mosquito bites are itchy and we tend to scratch itchy things. The scratching feels good in the short term but tends to hasten and exacerbate swelling and inflammation. This leads to more scratching and breaking of the skin and scabbing. If we can resist the urge to scratch the itch, the feeling will pass with only a minor skin blemish. Here's the thing—overthinking is just like scratchy skin.

Thinking About Thin Skin

All of our physiological systems function in balance to keep us healthy and well. When this homeostasis is challenged by threat, impending injury, or actual damage mechanisms within our physiology are activated to protect us and return to a state of balance. Except part of this balancing process typically involves overreaction to the initial stimulus. The sensing mechanisms that detect minor damage and inconvenience are also the ones that would be activated if we faced impending doom and devastation (but to a much larger extent).

Because of this, any additional add-on that occurs during an initial physiological response sustains and triggers further reaction. But now the additional reaction is aided by our response. Going back to the mosquito bite, it triggers the release of histamine and an immune response of minor swelling from increased blood flow. But the itch that occurs makes us start scratching and thereby causing mechanical release of more histamine and other cytokines. We thus help make the inflammatory response worse by our actions.

Ditch the Urge to Scratch Your Brain Itch

We can think about overthinking using the mosquito metaphor. Instead of histamine release due to a bite leading to mechanical scratching, we often find ourselves in a state of mind of rehashing, second guessing, and ruminating about things said, done or implied. This cycle is self-reinforcing and strengthened by use.

This can be considered as a kind of strengthening of an encoded memory which is made more robust by "replay". It used to be thought that most memory strengthening and consolidation occurred during sleep but in recent times evidence suggests real time replay, according to Anna Gillespie at the University of Washington in Seattle.

While this opinion piece was not about rumination specifically, the idea of memory consolidation in the awake state and thus immediately adjacent to the sequences being eventually remembered highlights the importance of dealing with stimuli for overthinking when they present.

Although so far evidence is reported for mice only, other work by Gillespie, Daniela Maya, Eric Denovellis, Sachi Desse, and Loren Frank at the University of Washington and the University of California at San Francisco, shows that neurofeedback training can alter such memory replay. This suggests that we may be able to alter the strength of persistence of any potentially problematic rumination by immediately addressing their manifestation. But what can we actually do?

Keep Your Brain Busy With Something Else

If we consider rumination as a kind of manifestation of an inflammatory memory consolidation the answer may well be to deliberately do things that interfere with memory. The most effective thing is to stop thinking about events. This on its own is obviously very difficult, especially in times of heightened background stress like that over holidays and large social events. The best way forward is to do something else and thereby reduce the initial strengthening that would have occurred.

In this way, physiological inflammatory responses are related to rumination as psychological scratching. This leads to persistence and strengthening; instead of inflaming, breathe through it and let it go while you do something else even as simple as taking a walk. But do try to avoid the mosquitoes.

(c) E. Paul Zehr (2024)