Emotional Hygiene for the Overthinkers

You’re wallowing at your desk, with an empty notebook spread in front of you. You start thinking about a trivial matter that concerned you a few weeks ago. You then start thinking about not thinking about this particular matter. You press the pen on paper and try to start, but the low hum of mental conversation remains. Before you know it, your mind has tricked you into a maze with no escape. 

‘Overthinking’ refers to a process in which too much time is put into thinking or analysing something that is more harmful than helpful . It describes repetitive, unproductive contemplation. As a highly relatable state of mind, there is a certain normalcy that surrounds it, where overthinking has become a norm, something that cannot be curbed. 

But is that so? Must we live with perpetual noise inside our heads 24/7?

When we overthink, we tend to stray away from clarity. It may seem that repetitive ‘thinking’ inherently relates to ‘understanding’, however, to me, crystalline understanding can only come when we stop. What we must strive to do is build the strength to stop. To wrap the endless train of thoughts and package it away. We must build it gently, and have it be something you turn to instinctively. 

But how do you go about this? 

We use hygiene. Hygiene refers to ‘conditions or practices conducive to maintaining health and preventing disease’. Hygiene is frequent, preparatory, and needs a certain degree of discipline. We’ve all, hopefully, mastered external hygiene, but what about internal? The idea of hygiene can be applied to all aspects, including the cleanliness of your mental state of being. This is where emotional hygiene comes into the picture. These are practices conducive to maintaining psychological well being. To all the young readers who choose to google this term, I assure you it's not as ‘adult’ and ‘lame’ as it sounds. 

Emotional hygiene is not a quick fix. It's not something that yields immediate results. Ayushi Takkar in her essay on a guide to emotional hygiene states, ‘emotional hygiene isn’t the glamorous part of wellness. It doesn’t look like a new journal or a five-step system. It’s more like brushing your emotional teeth before your brain starts chewing on the wrong things.’ 

She further elaborates by saying that the practice is the ‘pause before a spiral’, catching yourself before you walk down that ambiguous path of no return. ‘It is recognising the early symptoms of overstimulation and choosing not to intellectualise your way through them. It’s noticing the urge to self-diagnose, to decode, to debrief and instead, gently interrupting the loop. Not to silence it, but to create room around it, so your nervous system has a chance to downshift before your thoughts convince you that you’re unsafe simply because something feels unfinished.’

This is not a ‘cure’. But this could potentially be termed as ‘preparation’. In an age where our lives move as fast as mobile networks travel, our minds have no time to pause in their own constant ruminating, if we cultivate a practice, a habit that slowly tweaks the neural pathways our minds have become accustomed to, we may be able to face the ‘lows’ of life with higher clarity and perseverance. Although we are prone to believing the ‘spirals’ are uncontrollable, we can slowly create and build that control. We can choose to be present. We can choose to be centred. We can choose to be immensely compassionate to ourselves. 

But how can YOU integrate this into daily practice? 

1. Small, consistent rituals 

Build an anchor for yourself. Tether yourself to little rituals throughout the day. Small rituals could be puzzling for a few minutes to start off the day, coffee/tea in the morning, a meal where you do nothing but focus on the textures and aromas. You return to these when your head feels cacophonous. You remind yourself that you are safe and slow. 

2. Have dedicated time for self-reflection 

Dedicated time for self-reflection allows for a space where you can productively build self-awareness. It minimises the incessant rumination that occurs through the day without permission. Stop yourself, and intentionally go about thinking. Make it so that you notice your thoughts through the day, but do not berate yourself or instantly drown in them. 

3. Focus on the physical being

My lovely English teacher (now a friend) used to say to me, ‘To figure out who you are without your thoughts, you must be attuned to the ‘body’. A focus on the ‘body’ does not involve hyperattention to how it ‘looks’, but how it feels. Notice where you feel anxiety, anger, sadness. Is it the abdomen, the chest or the head? Notice the rhythm with which your heart beats, and how it reflects on your breathing. Notice how your body moves to music. Practices like dancing with no structure, focusing on the breath (often termed meditation, but it's quite the eye-rolling term for many) and moving the body with intent brings you back to how you truly exist within this world. 

4. Build a quiet ego

Move away from a ‘loud ego’, which research has shown to be a source of unhappiness due to a constant rumination on the self. A quiet ego is defined as ‘a self-identity that is neither excessively self-focused nor excessively other-focused — ‘an identity that incorporates others without losing the self.’ In Arthur C. Brooks article on The Bliss of a Quieter Ego, he describes the term to contain four essential virtues: Charity, humility, self-awareness and hope. As we cultivate this, our attention moves from excessive and unproductive self-reflection to compassionate internal thinking and a larger outward focus. 

5. Connection with others 

This is how you build ‘external’ focus. The loneliness epidemic, as we know, is detrimental to the collective human species. Additionally, the excessive importance given to ‘alone-time’ (although it is required, in balance) steers us away from conversation and connection. Laughing with others curbs the screaming voices in the head. Thinking about others shifts us away from thinking about only ourselves. Being with others that enrich us brings self-confidence, empathy and pure, simple joy. 

The overarching theme to these practices is ‘presence’. Intimidating terms like ‘mindfulness’, ‘spirituality’, ‘meditation’, ‘emotional hygiene’ become much less daunting once you realise it’s all the little things. And only you can choose to commit yourself to it, and strive to have a ‘cleaner’ headspace. 

To me, emotional hygiene is going for a walk and noticing the foliage. It is observing the little frog hopping over the cracks in the sidewalk. It is breathing deeply when my chest starts to brim with an uncomfortable anxious feeling. It is ending the day by moving my body for five minutes and noticing how I inhale and exhale while performing the movement. It is dancing, feeling the bones in my body respond to the rhythm and have music echo through my ears. It is trying to be a better human every day.

But remember, none of this ensures immunity. This does not make you an unshakable, mentally pristine individual. Cleaning your room will not guarantee a constant, perfectly clean room forever or always. You must clean the room repeatedly. You must give the room, and yourself, a bit of grace as well. After all, we’re all only human. There is only so much we can consciously do. However, let this be something that you strive for and commit to. 

See what happens. 

By Hita Maniar, Grade 12