Overthinking, listening to the voice in your head can be challenging, and sometimes mean.
We all have to deal with it but it doesn't mean is always right. Usually is just fear masked in internal chatter.
The voice is not you, is a narrator that explains to you what happens for you and tries to make sense of it. In some way, it tries to take care of you and avoid putting you in risk. Is the same voice that says stops you when you think:
"what if I jump in front of the train" and talks you out of it.
It's the same voice that talks you out of doing what you want to do but don't have the courage to, the one that gives you excuses of how people will judge you when you make decisions about your life, and exaggerates how your parents or friends will be mad at you for something you've done.
In some cases, there's two voices. The angel and demon in both your shoulders, one optimistic and the pessimistic trying to grab your attention. If you notice the voices, then you creating the space to realise none of them is you. The real you.
You can only observe a building from its outside, the same way you can notice the voice and the thoughts it throws at you as an outsider force once you notice the space in between.
The only way meditation helps people the way it does is because of the space in helps you create between you, the voice and its chatter (thoughts), and observing them without engaging in them is the only way you can see them from the outside.
The everyday life, stimuli and being caught up by thoughts is what makes you be on autopilot, and taking every single thought, from social media comparison to beating yourself up masochistically.
Trapped in a negative thought on loop and into another one, being so immersed in it that you do not realise you actually revoking over a thought that may not even be true!
From the book soundtracks by Jon Acuff (the perfect book for over thinkers) he questions his thoughts, all the time. Is it true? Am I the worst friend ever? And objectively treat the thought as a thought, but not believing it.
Try to swap it for a different thought, a positive one if possible, but the mere act of challenging a negative thought will giver you the space to realise it, and hopefully overcome it.
Nothing is as bad as the voice wants to make you feel.
Mo Gawdat "Solve for Happy" says that somebody named the voice after somebody the did not like in high school so she could understand the meanness of its existence. We should be mean to the voice and kind to ourselves.
Ignore the voice.
Karam Zarkitou