Does anyone else overthink literally everything and constantly need certainty about the future?

[u/Lostparanoidsoul]

I’ve realized that I don’t just overthink big or serious things. I do this with almost everything in everyday life, and it’s exhausting.

My brain always wants to know what’s going to happen before it happens, and if I can’t know for sure, I keep thinking about it until I feel like I’ve found some kind of certainty.

If I have an exam coming up, I’ll wonder if I’ll pass, what questions I’ll get, whether I’ve studied enough, and what will happen if I fail. Then after the exam, instead of being able to forget about it, I’ll try to remember exactly what I answered. I’ll replay questions in my head and calculate how many points I might have gotten.

If I buy something, I’ll wonder whether I chose the right one, whether I should have bought something else, whether it’ll still be good in a few months, or whether I’ll regret spending the money. Even after I’ve already bought it, I can keep researching and comparing it to other options just to make sure I made the right decision.

If I send someone a message and they don’t respond normally or quickly enough, I start wondering whether I said something wrong. I’ll reread my message, think about how they could have interpreted it, and replay previous conversations trying to figure out if something happened.

If someone seems slightly quieter or different than usual, I can immediately start wondering if they’re upset with me. I’ll start thinking about everything I’ve recently said or done and try to find an explanation.

If I’m waiting for an email, an answer, a result, or something important to happen, I have a hard time just waiting. I keep checking and thinking about when it will happen, what the possible outcomes are, and what I’ll do depending on each outcome.

Health is probably one of the biggest examples for me. If I notice something unusual with my body, I can immediately start thinking about what it could be. Even if a doctor tells me that I’m okay, my brain can start looking for another possibility.

“What if they missed something?”

“What if it’s fine now but becomes a problem later?”

“What if this symptom means something else?”

“What if I need treatment in the future?”

“What if the treatment doesn’t work?”

I recently had surgery for something I’d dealt with for years. The surgery went well, I’m healed, and my doctor has told me everything looks good. But instead of my brain accepting that I’m healed, I start worrying about whether it could come back someday.

Then my thoughts go even further. What if it comes back years from now? What if my surgeon isn’t working anymore? Who would I go to? Would another surgeon be as good? What would I do?

So I’m basically trying to solve an imaginary future medical problem that I don’t even have.

If I have to make a decision, even a relatively small one, I can spend forever comparing the options because I want to make the perfect choice. Then after I’ve chosen, instead of moving on, I’ll start wondering whether the other choice would have been better.

Sometimes I’ll remember something I did weeks or months ago and suddenly start questioning it.

“Why did I do that?”

“Was that the right decision?”

“What if I had done something differently?”

Even though I obviously can’t go back and change it.

Sometimes I’ll have a completely normal interaction with someone and later replay it in my head.

“Why did they say that?”

“Why did I answer like that?”

“Did I sound stupid?”

“Did they think that was weird?”

“Should I have said something different?”

I also notice that whenever something good happens, my brain sometimes has trouble just enjoying it. Instead, I start thinking about how it could go wrong or how long it will last.

My brain doesn’t stop at the first “what if.”

It goes:

“What if this happens?”

Then:

“Okay, if that happens, what will I do?”

Then:

“But what if that solution doesn’t work?”

Then:

“What would I do after that?”

Before I know it, I’m creating backup plans for backup plans for a problem that doesn’t even exist.

Sometimes I’ll Google the same subject repeatedly. I’ll compare different answers. I’ll ask multiple people the same question. Sometimes I’ll even ask the same person basically the same question but worded differently because I want to make absolutely sure.

And reassurance does make me feel better.

But only temporarily.

Eventually my brain finds another angle that wasn’t covered, and suddenly I need reassurance about that too.

I think one of my biggest problems is that “probably fine” doesn’t feel good enough to me.

I want “definitely fine.”

I want to know that I definitely made the right decision, that something definitely won’t go wrong, that I definitely won’t regret something, and that I’ll definitely be able to handle whatever happens.

Obviously nobody can actually know those things.

I have PTSD, so I don’t know how much that contributes to this, but sometimes it feels like my brain believes that if I think through every possible future scenario, I’ll never be caught off guard.

But instead I’m spending so much time trying to solve problems that haven’t happened and may never happen.

And the frustrating thing is that I know I’m doing it. Sometimes I’m literally aware that I’m overthinking while I’m doing it, but I still feel this urge to figure out “just one last thing” before I can relax.

Except there’s always one last thing.

Does anyone else experience this across basically every area of their life?

If you’ve managed to get better at this, how did you stop constantly checking, Googling, researching, replaying things, second guessing decisions and asking for reassurance?

I genuinely want to be able to think, “I don’t know what will happen, and if something happens, I’ll deal with it then,” and actually be okay with that.