Mind4Youth

Author: Kaushik Setty

Introduction
Naegleria fowleri – the brain-eating amoebae. Slowly crawling through the mucous membranes of a human being, these sly parasites invade the brain and consume it till the person’s last breath. We humans fear such parasites, but why be afraid of them when we produce them in our minds? The youth, particularly late adolescents from 25-35, undergo overthinking almost regularly, as 73% of them had confessed to overthinking at least once in their life, according to researcher Susan Nolen-Hoeksema. Thus, overthinking is analyzed with references to mental disorders, although it might be regarded as a universal tendency that affects mental health. This article discusses overthinking in the three phases of adolescence: early adolescence, mid-adolescence, and late adolescence while diving into their causes, consequences, and implications. In this way, to talk about overthinking as a mental parasite, this paper attempts to move away from the clinical disease-centered approach and consider its developmental and psychological factors.

Parasite image (Tick – Parasite | An illustration of a common tick Want to u… | Flick)

Behind the Scenes

Overthinking, done through relentless rumination, is the process of repetitively thinking about something, whether it’s real or fanciful. Most adolescents are vulnerable due to societal pressures and developmental alterations in themselves/the people around them. If you look behind the curtains, there are deeper impetuses of how overthinking can become a ramification of an event. Like a classic cause-and-effect situation, overthinking ends up also becoming a mental consequence rather than just a mental issue.  For instance, such leading causes include overthinking, especially now that the COVID-19 (coronavirus) outbreak affected Pakistan. The main reason for this isolation is that it takes time at home due to the pandemic. Having contracted the coronavirus, many individuals got sick and some of them passed away. This logically results in anxiety and rumination that can further worsen the state of mental illness. Another aspect that is affected negatively by this is public health. COVID-19 was identified in China in December of 2019, and it in that respect has the potential to rapidly change over 200 world nations. This viral illness did not only affect normal routines, but it brought huge challenges to everyone around the globe. Besides, causing several psychological impacts on people’s mental health, this widespread viral epidemic has posed several societal and economic challenges. The destiny of Pakistan and numerous others across the globe that hold “coronaphobia” is unfavorably affected.

Overthinking guy (Brain Overthinking Free Stock Photo – Public Domain Pictures)

A Tween’s Transition (Early Adolescents)

Ranging from 10-14 years, the early adolescent stage is the most developmental stage with a notable increase in physical, emotional, and cognitive development. Most commonly formed by academic pressures, social comparisons, and personal insecurities within one’s outlook. Diving deeper into these forms of overthinking in the early adolescence stage, we can see a lot of them in our daily lives or another teen’s daily life:

• Educational Constraints:

The transition to middle school with more academic expectations will require the child to think more than before. Students may experience anxiety as a result of academic performance, their scores, and their future occupations.

• Social Comparisons: 

Early adolescents pay more attention to peer relationships, which explains why social comparisons occur frequently. Peer pressure may foster anxiety and self-doubt since adolescents tend to overthink issues such as their position in the social structure, appearance, and manners in other people’s eyes.

• Personal Insecurities/Inferiority:

Physical changes and the process of obtaining one’s self-identity construct an individual’s apprehensions. They presented that overthinking their figure, character, and acceptance by other people can cause feelings of inferiority, which makes teens feel like they have faults they must hide away from the rest of society.

A “Mid-teen Crisis” (Mid-adolescents)

Next, in the scope of 15 – 17 years, mid-adolescence is characterized by intensified identity search and increasingly significant importance of peers. Stress to conform and academic achievement stress increases, which interferes with the management of overthinking. The youth may constantly overthink social interactions, think about their future, and ponder over academic and adversative activities leading to increased anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem. This is quite common/expected since in this stage, they worry about their future and hope to eliminate the uncertainty of their dreams. Structuring oneself is relevant during this time, and this ongoing “teen shedding” is the brink between their teen life and their adulthood. However, don’t get this mixed up with the transition from late adolescence to adulthood; that’s a segment I will touch up on later. To delve deeper, these forms can be seen as so:

• Peer/Friend Relationships: 

The need for acceptance, recognition, and fear of rejection is felt more, and the demonstrations of the same are observed better. Some of the common specific symptoms include over-sensitized interpreting of social cues in interpersonal relationships popular; concern with popularity and worrying about maintaining long-term friendship/romantic relationships.

• Future Professions: 

They endlessly worry about college and career choices, so they may feel lots of pressure in school, clubs, organizations, and career plans for the future. This can cause major stress and anxiety due to higher expectations that must be met back home.

• Identity Navigation:

Considered the most significant stage of neural and mental development, this age is an imperative period when adolescents often give much thought to the matters of beliefs, values, and life paths, and therefore they may overthink the matter of their identity.

A Teen’s Terminal (Late Adolescents)

The final phase is in the age range of 18 to 21 years, and during this period, teens begin to take on more responsibilities when compared to the preceding phase. Excess rumination in this period is usually about big things in life including the choice of a career, a partner, or a goal in life. This instability and demand to make the right decisions becomes rather a stress factor that brings much mental tension. Nonetheless, careful and fair cognitive engagement will enhance critical thinking skills and even better prudent problem-solving ability.  Acting as a hurdle, managing personal goals/relationships, independence within oneself, and milestone life decisions can be difficult, so we can take some time and learn about them:

• Relationships and Personal Objectives: Many people spend time thinking about love affairs, friends, and their plans for the future. The desire to perform to the expectation of society and oneself can be quite stressful. Hoping to be another copy of puzzle pieces in the entire set, late adolescents tend to join and adhere to trends firmly.
• Sovereignty and Responsibility: At this stage of their development, late adolescents may expect that they will have to assume more roles of responsibility, ranging from financial, and residential, to health duties.
• Milestone Life Decisions: Adulthood can be described as the period of life characterized by major developmental decisions concerning education, career, and lifestyle. Teenagers might become too keen on choices and consequences that come with them, positive or negative.

To fathom the unfathomable detrimental ramifications of overthinking on teen mental health in the late adolescent years, here is a graph from the Ballard Brief Research Library:

Claiming that depression and anxiety among incoming adults is a convoluting topic, the rising factors that feed into these high levels are “academic stress, economic stress, and social media engagement.” Sound familiar? This is also the trend we see from early and mid-adolescents. A misconception of overthinking is that the primary factors of overthinking are ever changing but can remain static in some ways (Ballard Brief Research Library).

The Scars and Supplements of Teen Mental Health

Unfavorable Effects

• Anxiety and Depression: 

Cognitive rumination has deleterious effects on one’s mental health, raising the likelihood of a person experiencing anxiety and depression. The issues of constant worrying and thinking can lead to forming a kind of chain where a person focuses on various concerns and, as a result, becomes stressed and develops various mental disorders. Scientific analysis of adolescents’ thinking and behavior suggests that rumination is linked with an elevation of overall depressed mood and negative personal memories in adolescents diagnosed with major depressive disorder (Park et al., 2004).

• Detrimental Decision-Making: 

Thinking too much likely causes analysis paralysis, this is a point where individuals can spend lots of their time analyzing every option to the extent that they will barely make decisions. This can lead to the missing of opportunities and the subsequent deviation of stress.

• Social Isolation:

When teens over analyze social communication, they can avoid different situations because they fear being laughed at or rejected. Such factors increase feelings of loneliness and increase depression, and this isolation can add to it.

Favorable Effects:

• Evaluative Thinking and Problem-Solving: 

Thus, it can be affirmed that if regulated appropriately, overthinking can have a positive impact on the individual as it strengthens their ability to perform critical thinking as well as solve problems. Therefore, as much as possible, analyzing situations permits teenagers to understand the world better and thereby make the right decisions. Critical thinking skills are important life skills to acquire that enable individuals to interpret data and make proper decisions, especially in the 21st century.

• Self-Reflection and Personal Development: 

Overthinking also has its benefits that include self-reflection which in turn results in personal development, through such an action that focuses on experience and thought processes, youths can analyze and understand their actions and desires, leading to self-growth.

• Empathetic Thinking:

Most of the time, the reason why teens overthink at a young age is so they can satisfy the other person. This burning thought to assist another person and understand the situation from another person’s POV widens a teen’s POV, helping the youth resonate with others. When the young place themselves in a person’s shoes, they not only experience their potential joy but also potential pain and attempt to mitigate that to streamline their relationships.

Mental health (Growing Mental Health | Free SVG)

Face the Problem to Erase the Problem

In order to manage the difficulties that stem from overthinking, certain interventions for school- and family-oriented approaches have been suggested (Deep, 2015). Members of the teaching profession and Caregivers have a very relevant role to play in the eradication of unhealthy thought processes and maladaptive coping strategies among adolescents.

Strategies for Managing Overthinking

• Encouraging Balanced Thinking: 

When adolescents are guided on how to counterbalance their thoughts by weighing the possibility of something positive as well as the possibility of something negative it helps to reduce the cases of excessive worries.

• Promoting Mindfulness and Relaxation Techniques: 

Meditation techniques and deep breathing exercises enable teens to avoid stress and overthink several issues. Some techniques such as distraction techniques together with mindfulness techniques have been found to help in reducing state rumination in youths. (Hilt & Pollak, 2012).

• Building Resilience:

One should be able to develop a coping mechanism in the minds of the youths to reduce the extent of overthinking and its negative effects. Resilience and overthinking had a negative correlation among the teens and as a result, several strategies to enhance resilience should be encouraged among the youths. (Situmorang & Widodo, 2024).

• Providing Supportive Environments: 

Attaining understanding and supportive environments at home and school will help adolescents avoid pressure, which slows down the traffic of overthinking.

• Using Metacognitive Tools: 

One of the potential dangers of the present analysis is the overemphasis on cognition and the overthinking of different processes by artists and students – metacognitive tools such as thinking about one’s thinking (Hussain, 2021). Thus, according to an Islamic view, there is an intervention known as “tahajjud prayer therapy” that can be suggested as a way to eliminate overthinking. (Rofi’atin et al., 2021).

Problem and solution (Free Images : question, mark, answer, solution, hand, help …)

The Lost Key to a Found Door

In the recently published experiment, the participants were 76 youths with a history of depression, in which they were allowed to engage in any traditional treatment of their choice while 10-14 sessions of RF-CBT were randomly assigned to the subjects. If teens got RF-CBT, they said they ruminate much, much less. More intriguing is that fMRI showed alterations in the connectivity which signified the existence of neuroplasticity (UNIVERSITY OF UTAH HEALTH).

For Teens

• Practice Mindfulness: 

Practical coping techniques include practicing mindfulness activities that enable you to stop thinking too much such as meditation, deep breathing, and yoga.

• Suppress Social Media Use:

Do take care of the quantity and frequency of your access to social media. Still, people should try not to spend much time on platforms that cause negativity and ensure only false and unattainable images.

• Find Support: 

If one’s thoughts seem to become more than one can handle, it is always possible to discuss this with friends or family and go see a doctor. Often it is enough to banter about things you are concerned and distressed about with someone who has the ears to listen.

• Indulge in Hobbies: 

Get jobs that can let you focus and invest time such as games, arts, books, or any other thing that interests you. Such extracurricular activities or part-time hobbies are enough to decentralize yourself away from old overthinking habits.

For Parents

• Foster Open Communication: 

It is also important to motivate the other party, for example, the teen to express themselves in terms of feelings and thoughts without prejudice. Sometimes, all it takes is being a good listener as this can go a long way.

• Model Healthy Behaviors: 

Explain how you can practice stress and overthinking management in your own life. Teenagers work by emulating their parent’s conduct and thus will copy them.

• Provide a Structured Environment:

Support your teen in developing a constructive day schedule that will enable him or her to study, rest, and engage in other activities. The structure can also give some feelings of safety and decrease the level of stress in self and or clients.

• Encourage Professional Help: 

If overly thinking is severely damaging the well-being of your teenager then it is advisable to seek a professional’s opinion. Psy-therapy can help to identify useful tips regarding thoughts or emotions.

For Educators

• Create a Supportive Classroom Environment:

It is customary to form an environment within the classroom that would enable the students to speak out about what they have in mind or any issue that may affect them. Relatives’ words of support and acceptance of illness can help to lower the level of anxiety.

• Teach Mindfulness Practices: 

Exercise the teacher and students to practice mindfulness in school. It is an important and evident fact that everyday stress control and concentration enhancement may be achieved through quite simple means.

• Provide Resources and Referrals: 

You should know when to refer those with mental health problems to other facilities within your health facility or in the community. Schools can act as a critical pathway to getting mental health assistance for children and young adults.

• Encourage Critical Thinking: 

Promoting interpretative thinking, appealing to students’ teaching feelings by making them advance critical thinking skills by coming up with critical questions on the information being analyzed. There are times when introspection can become a strength as in the case of overthinking if the practice is curbed successfully.

Key (House Key Vector Clipart image – Free stock photo – Public Domain …)

Conclusion

Overthinking is a multifaceted issue that should not be underestimated because it has severe consequences for teenagers’ psychological well-being. Although this could result in anxiety, poor decision-making, and social exclusion, it equally promotes critical thinking, reflection, and development in the right manner. Familiarity with the intricacies of overthinking and appropriate interventions can reduce its impact on young people’s mental health and contribute to normal psychological growth and differentiation. Overthinking could be the very parasite eating your friend’s mind away. Often an anticipated stage in a teen’s life, we can only stifle overthinking if we can bring it to light, globalize the issue, and call more eyes to the matter. By invigorating our network and connections with the people around us, we can cultivate a stringent bond within ourselves and others, minimalizing opportunities for misunderstanding and misinformation. 

We fight overthinking by talking. We fight overthinking by conversing. We fight overthinking together.

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