Dana Hayes∙Dec 07

Learn why morbid overthinking is so tempting and detrimental to your spiritual development and practical ways to put an end to it for good.

Morbid overthinking is obsessing over worst-case scenarios and replaying negative past events in your mind. It’s another form of escapism your mind produces to strengthen the ego and detach you from your true self.

By understanding why you engage in this destructive thought process, you can begin to dissolve the behavior once and for all, allowing your mind to stay open to spaciousness, abundance, and joy instead of death, negativity, and destruction.

A daily spiritual practice is the best way to cure your morbid overthinking. Click here to set up a pressure and money-free spiritual guidance call with Dana to receive a customized practice to begin or enhance your spiritual journey, or continue reading to learn a general plan of action you can take to dissolve this destructive behavior and live a life of peace, ease, and security in its place.

Without further ado, here’s a breakdown of today’s article:

1. Are you a morbid overthinker?

2. The reason you jump to doom and gloom

3. The real cost of morbid overthinking

4. How to stop your morbid overthinking for good

01. ARE YOU A MORBID OVERTHINKER?

Imagine you’re driving on autopilot on your way to pick up your kid from school when suddenly you realize that for the past 10 minutes, you’ve been playing out your funeral. 

You were just in the middle of woefully watching your children sob as they lay roses on your casket when you come to and realize you’re crying…right now…in real life.

This is morbid overthinking.

Here’s another scenario: Pretend you attend “Jessica’s” big holiday party. You have a couple of drinks. You find yourself conversing with a group of women you barely know and make an offbeat comment about someone else. You don’t think much of it now, but your mind begins to unravel once you get home. You start to think about your joke. You know, the one that no one probably even remembers because, in reality, it wasn’t a big deal? But in your reality, it is a big deal.

You start to think about what the other women were thinking, particularly about you. You worry that you’ve offended them and ostracized yourself from the group. You then start to worry that they’ll talk about you and your stupid joke to others. “God! Why did you make that joke!?” said no one…except your head. And that’s the reality of the situation. While you sit there and obsess over the negative, there’s a great chance no one else is thinking about it.

This is morbid overthinking.

You don’t always have to jump down the rabbit hole of physical death each time a family member or yourself gets sick (although that is morbid, and that is a super standard thought process for morbid overthinkers); it just means that you obsess over the negative instead of being able to be present, accept life on life terms and move on with peace no matter what. 

Almost anyone I’ve ever worked with has told me they overthink and can easily travel down rabbit holes of worst-case scenarios. Trust me, I’ve manifested a car accident by constantly obsessing over car crashes, so I know firsthand how natural and detrimental this pattern of thinking can be.

The good news is, there’s a way to put an end to the cycle of morbid overthinking…but first, I think it’s important to understand why you do it and why it’s such a common affliction for so many so you’re able to see it for what it is in the future and put an end to it for good.

02. THE REASON YOU JUMP TO DOOM AND GLOOM

You know mindfulness is becoming aware of your thoughts and reactions. But do you know about the practice of mindlessness? Mindlessness is something most of us don’t have any trouble doing. It’s mentally spacing out, numbing, and running away from yourself by actively practicing not being present. Worrying, overthinking, watching TV, playing video games, and fantasizing are all ways to cultivate this lack of presence.

The more you practice not being present, the less present you become. The less present you are, the more automatic the mindlessness practice of morbid overthinking becomes and the less control you have to catch and dismantle it when it pops up.

Any practice of mindlessness is a form of self-aggression produced by your ego. You use all sorts of mental activity to run from yourself, giving your ego another boost of false reality. Your finite ego wants to feel real despite having no inner substance. To give the illusion that it is real, it uses your mind to focus on escaping the present moment and your true self to induce a false sense of security.

The only way you will feel genuinely secure with yourself is by accepting who you are, in the moment, as an infinite being that needs no protection. But until that shift occurs, cultivating tendencies of escapism from reality using practices like morbid overthinking remains highly tempting.

03. THE REAL COST OF MORBID OVERTHINKING

Like meditation is a mindfulness practice, morbid overthinking is a practice of mindlessness. The more time and energy you put into this behavior, the less you’ll feel at peace and one with yourself. 

Besides further distancing yourself from who you are, you also distance yourself from others. Morbid overthinking allows you to experience detachment from life itself, meaning you become detached from experiencing compassion for others, tolerance, and understanding. Ultimately, you’re practicing that lack of compassion on yourself through the numbing out of morbid overthinking. Therefore, you will naturally project that experience onto those around you.

Not to mention, you are thinking in a dis-eased way, which is an incredibly efficient way to put your body into a state of imbalance and quite literally give yourself a physical disease. All because you chose to practice a state of disease, and the law of attraction is always fair. You will get what you attend to and focus on most. So, if you’re focused on the negative, the negative will come. Even if you’re focused on not wanting the negative, you’re still focusing on the negative, and sure enough, the negative will come.

So, how do you pull yourself out of this self-destructive state of mind? It’s simple, and I’ve laid it all out for you in the next section. Just know I speak from experience as someone who used to live in her head, constantly dwelling on what I could have done better, how if someone in my family died, I’d die, and so on. If I can overcome morbid overthinking or any other destructive form of thinking, so can you!

04. HOW TO STOP YOUR MORBID OVERTHINKING FOR GOOD

Follow this process each time you want to jump down the rabbit hole of morbid thoughts, and you’ll eventually rewire your brain to lose interest in this destructive state of mind.

1. First, become aware of your body. Feel into the negativity. How do you feel? Does it feel good? Does it feel bad? Make a decision. Is this healthy thinking or not? If not, trust yourself and take the steps outlined here to dismantle this thinking until it happens less and less, and one day, you realize it hasn’t happened in years. It’s just not something you do anymore.
   
   

2. Second, acknowledge that you’re more than your mind tells you you are. Recognize that your mind is finite; it’s a limited part of your body that will someday die. That’s reality, and it’s okay. The other thing to remember is that who and what you are will not die. The essence of you is your Soul. Made of energy, which can neither be created nor destroyed, your Soul will live on for infinity after your body has perished. Your suffering is most often produced in these moments, not because someone is dying but because you’re afraid of death. Make friends with this inevitable and beautiful phase of life by understanding it as a passage or entryway, not an end to your existence.

   
   

3. Next, counteract the mindlessness with a few moments of mindfulness. Sit quietly. Let your thoughts come and go without judgment. Know that you’re going to have thoughts pop up, and each time one does, see it, thank it and let it go. Being intentional about practicing mindfulness can bring spaciousness into your experience. As you engage with this counter practice to mindlessness and experience more space within, you’ll feel less need to distract yourself and create problems through mindlessness or morbid overthinking. It won't be necessary. Because as you practice mindfulness, more and more you will become present. And the more you become comfortable with this presence, the more you get comfortable with yourself, and the less you’ll want to push it away with unnecessary worry or reflection of the past.

   
   

4. Lastly, focus your attention on helping someone else. You don’t necessarily need to take action; the thought of helping others alone can pull you out of your self-centeredness and egoism and place you back on solid ground to feel safer than ever. But if you do want to take it a step further and make the process that much more effective, call your grandmother. Call your sister. Pick up the phone, call someone, and sincerely ask them how they’re doing without any other agenda. Maybe they’re having a great day, or perhaps, like many others, they’re struggling with something. Be that listening ear if that’s the way the conversation goes. Either way, the intention of calling someone to check in the pure spirit of listening and helpfulness is selfless enough to reframe your thinking at the moment and, eventually, your entire state of mind.

Just like any other destructive pattern of thought, morbid overthinking is best counteracted using the actionable tools of the spiritual path. 

If you want to learn more about spiritual healing tools and how to begin your spiritual journey, please click here to book a free 20-minute Zoom call with me (Dana). I’ll customize a personal daily spiritual practice for you (for free!) so you can free yourself from destructive thinking and fully connect to your authentic self ASAP. 

Click here to book the call; pick a day and time that work best for you, and we’ll get you feeling like the most elevated, healed version of yourself in no time!

Thanks for reading, and happy thinking!!

Xo,

Dana