How to Stop Telling Yourself You’re Overthinking What Someone Said
Clayton Leavitt is an attachment-based coach and counsellor who helps people uncover and transform the emotional patterns shaping their relationships. His work blends attachment theory, IFS, and emotional intelligence to create deeper self-trust and connection.
You replay what they said. You go over the tone, the timing, the wording, trying to figure out what they meant. Eventually, you land on the same conclusion, “I’m probably just overthinking.”
But what if that’s not what’s actually happening? What if the issue isn’t that you’re thinking too much… but that you’re moving away from what you felt?
What people mean when they say they’re overthinking
When someone says they’re overthinking, they’re usually describing a loop: Replaying conversations. Analyzing words. Trying to decode meaning.
It can feel exhausting, and it often leads nowhere. So calling it “overthinking” seems accurate. But that label skips over something important.
It skips over the fact that something in you reacted in the first place.
What happens before the thinking starts
Before the analysis, there’s a moment. Something is said, and something in you responds. It might be subtle.
A tightening in your chest. A shift in your body. A sense that something didn’t fully land. It happens quickly. Just as quickly, it gets overridden.
How you talk yourself out of what you felt
Instead of staying with that initial response, you move away from it. You tell yourself:
“It’s not a big deal.”
“They didn’t mean it like that.”
“I’m reading too much into this.”
You explain it away. You minimize it. You try to get back to feeling “fine” as quickly as possible. From the outside, it looks like overthinking. But underneath it, something else is happening.
You’re not overthinking, you’re dismissing your experience
The thinking isn’t the starting point. It’s what happens after you disconnect from what you felt. Once that happens, the mind tries to make sense of something that’s no longer fully accessible. So it loops. Replaying. Analyzing. Trying to recover clarity.
But the clarity wasn’t in the thinking. It was in the original response.
Why this pattern develops
There’s a reason you move away from what you feel. For many people, staying with certain feelings feels risky. It can bring up the possibility of conflict, the fear of being wrong, the fear of being “too much”, and the fear of pushing someone away.
So a part of you steps in and softens it. Reframes it. Explains it away. Keeps things smooth. In the moment, that works. But over time, it comes with a cost.
The cost of calling it “overthinking”
When you label your experience as overthinking, you don’t just stop the loop. You also train yourself not to trust your own perception. You begin to second-guess the very thing that made you first notice something was off.
You hesitate. You override. You disconnect. In relationships, that can look like holding things in, avoiding conversations, and staying in situations that don’t fully feel right.
Not because you don’t notice, but because you’ve learned not to stay with what you notice.
What to do instead
The next time you catch yourself thinking, “I’m overthinking this,” try something different. Pause. Before analyzing what it means, bring your attention back to the moment it started. Ask yourself, "What did I feel right before I explained this away?"
Not what it means. Not whether it’s justified. Just, what did you feel?
Stay with it long enough to name it
You don’t need to have the perfect word. Just something honest. Tight. Heavy. Unsettled. Angry. Hurt. Disappointed. Or something else.
The goal isn’t to get it “right.” It’s to stay with your experience instead of moving away from it.
Let it be there without turning it against yourself
You don’t need to fix the feeling. You don’t need to explain it. You don’t need to make it make sense right away. You don’t need to make yourself wrong for having it. Just let it be there.
Clarity starts there
When you stay connected to what you felt, something shifts. You’re no longer trying to force an answer. You’re allowing understanding to develop from a place of connection rather than correction. That’s where clarity comes from.
Not from overthinking. But from staying with what you felt, long enough to listen.
Want to go deeper?
If this resonates, I’ve created a guided follow-up where you can slow this down and explore your own experience in real time. You can access it here.
Read more from Clayton Leavitt
Clayton Leavitt, Attachment-Based Relationship Coach and Trained Counsellor
Clayton Leavitt is an attachment-based coach and counsellor who helps people understand and transform the patterns shaping their relationships. His work blends attachment theory, Internal Family Systems (IFS), and emotional intelligence to support deep, lasting change. Through his writing and coaching, he creates a space where people can begin to see themselves more clearly, feel more deeply, and relate with greater authenticity. His work is rooted in the belief that when you understand your patterns, you can transcend them and create something new.
