In this article, I look at overthinking (and its cousin, anxiety) from an evolutionary perspective and offer some practical strategies that have helped me deal with them more effectively.
As far as I can tell, overthinking is largely a modern problem. In evolutionary time, it’s only been a blink of an eye since we’ve mastered our environment to the extent that we have. Although there are many people who still face survival-related problems on a daily basis, most of us live in relative comfort compared to our hunter-gatherer ancestors.
One of the many unintended consequences of our massive ecological success as a species is that because it happened so quickly, our brains haven’t had a chance to adapt accordingly. As a result, we’re no longer certain what to worry about.
Our brains are still running the same “survival software” that helped keep us alive for millions of years. That software continues to look for problems, even when there are none…