By Jonny Lupsha, Wondrium Staff Writer
Analysis is a natural part of our problem-solving brains. However, humans tend to overthink situations to the point of stress, anxiety, and mental exhaustion. A new Wondrium series helps us stop from going too far.
The human brain is a complex thinking machine—a problem-solving supercomputer capable of abstract thought and extrapolating information from incomplete data. However, too much analysis of a problem can lead to anxiety and stress. Overthinking like this can even cause higher blood pressure and sleep loss. Anyone who’s spent time lying in bed at night staring at the ceiling knows the feeling all too well.
Fortunately, there are proven scientific ways to end overthinking, such as practicing gratitude, which counteracts overthinking. Practices like this are the focus of Wondrium’s new series, Overcome Your Overthinking, led by Dr. Heidi Sormaz. In an interview, Matt Laing, senior content developer for Wondrium and content developer on the series, explains why the time is right for this series.
I Overthink Things … Or Do I?
“Anyone who grapples with things like anxiety and feeling insecure in our kind of hectic modern world should be interested in this series,” Laing said. “Overthinking is, I think, a surprisingly common everyday occurrence. Lots of people spend a lot of time analyzing endlessly what people said to them at parties or what their boss has emailed them—not for any good reason.”
Laing said that people have tendencies to get lost in eternal loops of fruitless overanalysis. However, a lot of people don’t know that their overthinking is a symptom of a deeper anxiety issue, nor do they know that there are things they can do to stop themselves from overthinking, or, at least, to mitigate it. It also expends a lot of mental energy.
“Overthinking is just kind of a human thing,” he said. “I think our modern world and even major events might trigger some sort of general sense of anxiety, but I think what overthinking speaks to is a kind of common malady of what humans do. We’re problem-solvers, we’re analyzers, it’s what our brains are set up to do; but in the absence of a problem to solve, we’re kind of good at making problems for ourselves.”
Meet Your Presenter
Laing praised the sequence and organization of the series, which he attributed to presenter Heidi Sormaz, PhD. Dr. Sormaz is the founder, owner, and director of Fresh Yoga, LLC. She earned her doctorate in psychology from Yale University, which is also one of many places she’s taught at.
“Heidi, in each of her lessons, starts a bit theoretically or speaking generally about an aspect of overthinking or the problem,” he said. “But [she] nearly always, very quickly, gets into practical things that you can do, exercises you can undertake—physical, mental—that will help you lessen your overthinking, distract yourself from overthinking, create more useful pathways to solve problems in your own mind.”
Laing said he believes the real strength of the series is in how the team made it as practical and exercise-driven as possible, rather than strictly sticking to theory.
“Heidi is a rare bird,” he said. “She has not only the scientific chops—doctorate in neuroscientific research, she’s spent a lot of years researching, at a very high level, the science behind the way we think—but she has also got decades of experience as a yoga instructor, a meditative instructor, and as a practitioner of relaxation and the kind of techniques she teaches in this course.”
He added that what makes her such an incredible instructor is her ability to blend practical experience with technical expertise to create a strong, concise set of tools that target the specific problems we have with practical solutions.
Overcome Your Overthinking is now available to stream on Wondrium.