You're Asking for Too Much When You're Overthinking

Therapists, me included, fall into a particular trap. A patient will say something like “I’m the common denominator” or ask, “What am I doing wrong?” On the surface, these seem insightful, indicating a high degree of responsibility, which is what, generally, clinicians hope for; we want our patients to hold themselves accountable. Additionally, since most of us are people-pleasers, caring deeply about living up to our high standards for the profession, we provide personal interpretations that may not even adequately or even usefully explain much of anything.

So, for example, a patient struggling romantically may find comfort in the interpretation that they’ve been pursuing emotionally unavailable partners. Or, someone struggling with maintaining friendships may feel invigorated by “discovering” that their neediness makes others feel uneasy and pressured. For the individual who tends to personalize, taking on too much responsibility for the outcomes of their life, these simple explanations become the foundation for a plan and a desire for self-improvement. If they’re also perfectionistic, they then use that feedback to obsess over becoming the best version of themselves, to become the perfect friend or perfect romantic prospect, or to become more vigilant about the sort of people they date or become friends with.

Self-improvement is obviously, for the most part, positive. Yet, it’s a mistake to believe that self-awareness and self-improvement, defined strictly as gaining insight into your mistaken, rigid judgments that lead to inflexible and self-defeating patterns in order to be better, is therapy’s only or even main goal. Many of us need to learn how to think and do less, essentially not try so hard. Obsessive-compulsive tendencies lead to a search for root causes and definitive answers; they prevent us from moving on without closure. The perfectionist, who’s preoccupied with self-improvement, frequently refers events back to themself, asking, “What should I have done differently?” or “What does this mean about me?” So, the therapist may easily oblige, especially because that’s most often deemed to be the point of treatment. And if the patient applies these insights and we’re wrong, then they return to the same questions or worse, and start to blame a tainted essence: “It must just be that I’m unlovable.”

While all of us want answers, obsessing prevents us from living without them. The difference between mental health and illness, here, is between want and need: Can you make a meaningful choice without having to definitively know why something happened or even what will happen after? For some, everything needs to make complete sense, fitting some coherent understanding of the world and one’s place in it. As a result, incongruent data, rather than being an anomaly or even implying some minor adjustment (if not just random), can feel destabilizing. The only tolerable options seem to be: 1) The rejection or failure is completely impersonal. 2. It’s personal, but I can improve. For some, uncertainty can feel so intolerable that proving the existence of their tainted essence is preferred because, at least then, they’ll have been proven right.

This sort of obsessing is frequently present in limerence, or the preoccupation with whether or not our object of affection feels the same way about us, which makes it so enticing. But it can be ubiquitous, especially if our waking hours are spent cowering from the prospect of discovering how fundamentally awful we really are. As you’re probably already getting, none of this makes sense, or at least feels viable—one searches for concrete proof of particular beliefs (e.g., that a friend doesn’t dislike you) as a way to disprove their global and innate badness.

However, this is where the thinking and analyzing would need to stop (patients may even tell themselves, “That’s an OCD thought”). And the burden of proof would need to be placed instead on one’s core belief. So, if we can’t prove, and I mean definitively (not by just listing our perceived negative qualities), that badness to ourselves, we would need to move on. The mind is going to continue to harp on the failure or rejection and convince itself that its reasons remain unclear, so we should keep searching. Whether they truly are or aren’t, at some point, may even be irrelevant. Therapy’s overarching goal is to help cultivate the ability to make big and small decisions while enduring distress. It isn’t to resolve that distress before one attempts to make these decisions. You may ask yourself: “Am I asking for too much?”

Therapists may demand too much of themselves when they obsess over providing helpful and personalized explanations. Patients may demand too much when they clamor for answers or even too much attention from others in order to soothe themselves. Here, taking responsibility may mean doing less, not more, while asking for less, too. When the burden of proof is shifted onto those negative core beliefs, we may become more grateful when life provides some sort of evidence about ourselves, as we may no longer consider ourselves solely responsible for discovering who we “really” are.

And we may also discontinue feeling that we need to. When we move on from rejection, we usually do so out of pride, which stems from being able to accept epistemic limits (i.e., how much we can know, especially about others) and not needing closure from elsewhere. Many don’t even fully know why they do what they do, so articulation becomes impossible. Our perfectionistic patients unfairly weigh their negative core beliefs (believing them without much evidence) while easily dismissing contrary evidence. Perfectionism is a bottomless pit, so those who tend to dislike themselves would need to accept that thinking can easily become merely existing, which is the enemy of living (and working on oneself can be another form of avoidance, especially when pursuing apparently lost causes). Sometimes, we may even need to take it on faith that others will approve and even admire us. And, sometimes, as therapists, we’re allowed to say, “I can’t prove to you that you aren’t those things you believe you are, but you can still decide to believe me anyway.”

To find a therapist, visit the Psychology Today Therapy Directory.