How to Stop Overthinking (and Get Out of the Loop Fast)

If you want to know how to stop overthinking, start with one fact. The loop runs on attention, and attention can be moved on purpose. A thought that has circled for forty minutes often drops the moment something louder arrives, like a phone ringing or a sharp taste. The tactics below each give your attention somewhere else to land, and most of them take under a minute.

Why your head keeps replaying the same thought

In 2010, Harvard psychologists Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert built an iPhone app that pinged 2,250 adults at random times and asked what they were doing and what they were thinking about. People's minds were somewhere other than the task 46.9% of their waking hours. The researchers also found people reported lower moods while their minds wandered, and wrote that "a wandering mind is an unhappy mind" (published in Science).

Overthinking is that wandering with a groove worn into it. Psychologists call the repetitive, self-focused version rumination. Asking "why did I say that" for the ninth time produces no new information. It just keeps the thought warm.

The useful part of the research is what breaks the groove. In a 1998 study by Sonja Lyubomirsky, Nicole Caldwell and Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, students in a low mood spent exactly 8 minutes either thinking about themselves or thinking about outside images such as clouds forming in the sky and the shiny surface of a trumpet. The students who ruminated felt more down afterwards. The students who pictured the clouds and the trumpet felt less down.

How to stop overthinking in under a minute

Two inhales through the nose, one long exhale

This is the cyclic sigh. Breathe in through your nose, top it up with a second short inhale, then let it all out slowly through your mouth. In a Stanford study led by Melis Yilmaz Balban and Andrew Huberman (Cell Reports Medicine, January 2023), 108 people practised one of four techniques for 5 minutes a day over 28 days. The cyclic sighing group showed the largest rise in positive mood and the biggest drop in breathing rate, beating mindfulness meditation on both. Three or four rounds at your desk takes about 30 seconds.

The 5-4-3-2-1 technique

NHS Inform, Scotland's national health information service, lists this grounding exercise. Sit down, take one slow breath, then name:

• 5 things you can see
• 4 things you can feel
• 3 things you can hear
• 2 things you can smell
• 1 thing you can taste

Counting forces you to go looking, and you can't search the room for a smell and rehearse an argument at the same time. The last step is usually the hardest, because most of the time your mouth tastes of nothing much.

Give the worry a 30-minute appointment

Some thoughts come back however often you push them away. For those, researchers in the Netherlands tested a method called stimulus control, reported in 2011 in Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics. The 62 patients in the study chose one 30-minute slot each day for worrying and problem-solving, and parked worries that showed up at any other hour until that slot. The group who learned the method before therapy reported larger drops in anxiety and stress than the group on standard treatment alone.

In practice, write the thought on a sticky note, put the note somewhere you'll see it at 5:30 pm, and go back to work. A lot of the notes look smaller by the time the slot comes around.

Pattern interrupt examples you can use today

A pattern interrupt is anything abrupt enough to cut a running thought off mid-sentence. The trick is to make it physical. Telling yourself to stop thinking about something gives your brain the topic again. Changing what your body feels gives it a new one. A few that work at a desk, in a car or before a meeting:

• Cold water on your wrists or the back of your neck
• Standing up and walking to the far end of the room
• Saying the loop out loud in one sentence, which often makes it sound smaller
• Pressing your feet hard into the floor for ten seconds
• A strong, sudden taste in your mouth

How to stop overthinking things that already happened

Replaying a conversation, an email you sent, a mistake from last week. These are the stickiest loops because there is nothing left to do about them. Ask one concrete question ("is there one action I can take today?"). If the answer is yes, do it or schedule it. If the answer is no, the thought goes on the worry-time note and you use one of the interrupts above.

Dragon Breath, a pattern interrupt in your pocket

The last item on that list is the one we make. Dragon Breath is a 50 ml mouth spray of chilcuague (Heliopsis longipes), a golden root from the Sierra Gorda region of Central Mexico. Mexican ethnobotanists (Cilia-López and colleagues) record it chewed and used as a spice, and its main compound, affinin, is measured at 6.9 to 8.5 mg per gram of root. Our guide to the chilcuague root and where it grows covers the plant in full.

Dragon Breath – Chilcuague Extract

50 ml mouth spray. Wild-harvested chilcuague root, dual-extracted. 250+ sprays.

Add to bag

What it does in the mouth is the reason it belongs in a post about overthinking. One spray, and within a second or two a bright electric buzz spreads across your tongue and mouth. It tastes earthy and a little peppery, then the tingle takes over and your mouth floods with saliva. The whole thing takes about 10 seconds, and for those 10 seconds there is no room for the email you're dreading. Your attention lands in your mouth, in the present, and you come out of it in the zone.

The saliva part has a physiological name. Cleveland Clinic describes saliva production as a job of the parasympathetic nervous system, the "rest and digest" side of the body.

Use it as a pre-work ritual. Close the tabs, one spray, wait out the buzz, open the document you've been avoiding. Like meditation for people who can't meditate. If the loop starts up again at 3 pm, the bottle is in your pocket. For more on holding that state through a long day, read our piece on how to stay focused at work.

It comes as a spray for practical reasons. The bottle fits in a pocket and holds 250+ sprays, so a few sprays is all a day takes. The extract stays sealed in Miron violet glass, away from air and light, where loose root or powder sits open to both. The root is wild-harvested from growth zones the Mara team selects with the help of local elders, then dual-extracted in organic solutions. Start with one spray. Once you know the feeling, you can go up to five.

Dragon Breath considerations

If you're pregnant, nursing, taking medication, or allergic to plants in the daisy family, ask your doctor before using it.

Questions people ask

How do I stop overthinking everything at night?

Write the loop on paper before bed and give it a worry-time slot the next day. Then do a few rounds of the cyclic sigh, two inhales through the nose and one long exhale through the mouth.

What is the fastest way to stop overthinking?

A physical interrupt. A strong taste, cold water or standing up and moving all pull attention into the body within seconds, which is quicker than trying to argue with the thought.

How long does one Dragon Breath spray last?

The buzz and the rush of saliva peak in the first 10 seconds or so. A clean, fresh feeling lingers in the mouth afterwards.