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overthinking

asparagus

About a year ago I think I posted a question about Overthinking and whether it is a trait of autism and you all responded as yes.

A year or so on, I can now text one support I have with the statement, Please tell me I am overthinking this...

Sometimes as off this afternoon I have mentally spent the whole afternoon churning over one small part of a friendly chat at around midday....

"I had sent an email to someone two weeks ago as was having trouble dealing with overwhelmed and my usual support is on holiday though the second contact is as good but he was involved and that makes it harder, adding to the overwhelmedness. So sent an email to a person. Only they had not replied back. the two I let off steam/send email and texts to, don't reply back every time. I don't expect them to. Anything I need extra I follow up in due course as it becomes obvious to me etc... anyway cutting this explanation all short, today when was chatting to the 'second support' he mentioned in the chatting, he had spoken to the person.  In my head all afternoon I had been churning over and over; was it about the situation 2 weeks ago. 4pm I managed to be brave enough to send a text to the second support and his reply was  may be I am overthinking.....

Anyway, this isn't about the situation I am overthinking.

But people seem to think we select our mutism and in my brief spells of it I found it don't work in terms of selective... I don't choose to. I am just unable to come up with the words to express. The words are there, too many of them in one go and struggle to force one into a verbal word....

Does anyone find they can choose to overthink something?  Can you overthink something good?  I don't mean to turn it into something bad. Just overthink a good thing?

Interested....

Parents

  • The thing is that Aspies are very good at worrying and that's not my personal opinion - it's something Dr. Tony Attwood has said -  and he's one of the world's leading psychologists concerning autism.

    So 'overthinking' is probably just another word for worrying too much which I suppose is driven by the very powerful emotions Aspies experience.

    I know that I can't leave things alone, despite telling myself there's really little to worry about. For example, I have a dentist's appointment tomorrow for a routine checkup. Now, I have had many such checkups in the past and usually there's nothing, or at least not much, that needs doing, however, today I have felt pretty depressed and anxious about something that objectively I know is nothing to get worked up about. Why?

    I think part of it may be because this visit is going to upset my routine (which is pretty rigid, I have to admit) and as we know, Aspies like to stick to their routines and any interuptions can cause them a good deal of anxiety. In other words, change seems to be the culprit here.

    So, maybe it's a combination of 'catastrophizing' and change that causes the problem.

Reply

  • The thing is that Aspies are very good at worrying and that's not my personal opinion - it's something Dr. Tony Attwood has said -  and he's one of the world's leading psychologists concerning autism.

    So 'overthinking' is probably just another word for worrying too much which I suppose is driven by the very powerful emotions Aspies experience.

    I know that I can't leave things alone, despite telling myself there's really little to worry about. For example, I have a dentist's appointment tomorrow for a routine checkup. Now, I have had many such checkups in the past and usually there's nothing, or at least not much, that needs doing, however, today I have felt pretty depressed and anxious about something that objectively I know is nothing to get worked up about. Why?

    I think part of it may be because this visit is going to upset my routine (which is pretty rigid, I have to admit) and as we know, Aspies like to stick to their routines and any interuptions can cause them a good deal of anxiety. In other words, change seems to be the culprit here.

    So, maybe it's a combination of 'catastrophizing' and change that causes the problem.

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