Thinking excessively: consequences of mental overweight and how to solve it

Thinking too much can be harmful to our brain, according to several studies. Let’s try to train our attention without getting carried away by those mental branches through which the opportunity to be happy often escapes us.

If you feel that your body is constantly tired, stiff or sore, you may be overweight. Now, we are not referring to an increase in physical volume, nor to an increase in your cranial perimeter, but rather to mental overweight. Still excess of negative, inert and unproductive thoughts.

During the day, we imagine, understand, reflect, create, calculate, make decisions… In short, we live thinking. But Not all thoughts are valid or useful, in fact sometimes we think too much in a useless way. and we become overwhelmed with useless thoughts.

If we bring up ideas that do not give us anything, nor take us anywhere, In the end the mind ends up exhausting itself. It becomes heavy, corrodes, blocks and stops exercising other enhancing processes.

“The wise man does not say everything he thinks, but he always thinks everything he says.”

-Aristotle-

Thoughts are the basic unit of the mind

As we see, Thinking is part of human nature. In fact, it is one of the processes that differentiate us from other living beings. Now, our thinking, contrary to what is usually considered, is mostly not conscious. Rather the complete opposite.

Let’s think of an iceberg. The tip of it or what is exposed on the surface would be conscious thought. Meanwhile, the ice that is submerged, which is the majority, constitutes the unconscious part.

According to Dr. Michael Shadlen, principal investigator at the Mortimer B. Zuckerman Behavioral Brain Institute in Columbia, United States, “The vast majority of thoughts circulating in our brain occur below the radar of conscious awareness, which means that even though our brain is processing them, we are not conscious.”

Therefore, The quality of our thoughts determines our daily life. Depending on the conscious and unconscious ideas that cross our minds, this will be the result of our development.

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Junk thoughts make our mind fat

Stephen Fleming, a professor at University College London (UCL), conducted an interesting study in 2010. He discovered that People who thought more about their decisions, who overanalyzed things without reaching clear conclusions, had more cells in the prefrontal cortex.

Now, what we may initially consider as “positive” is actually not so. Because what there is is an excess of cells that do not fulfill clear functions. In fact, when comparing electroencephalograms with people with schizophrenia or autism, the same phenomenon was seen.

The conclusion they reached was the following: Thinking is good, but not in excess and even less so if what we do is fall into meaningless loops.

“Junk” thoughts

Junk thoughts are those whose recurrence exhausts us because they do not provide us with any type of benefit.. Are reasoning empty and even toxic. And they originate in our conscious mind. That is, mental overweight is not the result of repressed mental processes, impulses or desires; but the result of deliberate elaboration.

They are superfluous and unnecessary, so instead of providing us with greater self-knowledge and cognitive advantages, They wear us down energetically and slow down the rest of our conscious processing..

They prevent us from being creative, understanding or learning new skills. They block us and paralyze other virtues.

Therefore, when we are mentally overweight, our thoughts act like junk food. and provoke physical consequences that may even be analogous to those of obesity. Among them, physical exhaustion, which causes difficulty walking or making physical efforts.

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Also problems breathing normally, increased sweating, general pain in the joints or even skin disorders such as acne.

Causes of mental overweight

There are many types of toxic thoughts, but some that we resort to most frequently are the following:

The criticism: When we reproach, judge or condemn another person, we are actually vetoing ourselves. A devaluation of our self-esteem occurs and all our powerlessness is projected onto the other.The pity: Victimhood is one of the obstacles that our mind places on us so that we cannot progress. The change involves getting out of that self-felt sadness and not getting involved in harmful, negative, frustrating or impotent thoughts.The assumptions: The only job that assumptions have is to wear us down. Conjectures, riddles or imaginings only harm and generate mental overweight almost automatically. How do we expect to find out what someone thinks of us, if many times we are not even able to know it ourselves?The conditionals: “if I had done this, now…”, “maybe I should have gone…”. If you didn’t do it at the time, don’t torment yourself. What done is done. Now you can only learn from it. Those thoughts only judge you and end up self-destructing.

How to lose weight in your mind?

To prevent mental toxicity from attacking us thoughts should not be allowed to dominate us. That is, it is necessary to learn to control them. And to do this you can put the following tips into practice:

Rest your mind: Meditation is a fantastic exercise to try to attract only positive ideas. However, let’s not dedicate more than half an hour or an hour a day to this task. Dr Tracy Alloway, from the University of Stirling, points out that excessive meditation can also be negative. Other artistic practices, such as painting, can help release tension and replace junk thoughts with more productive ones. Reading, movies or attending workshops and seminars also make us rest mentally.Eliminates social toxins: Identify social relationships that may be harming you. For example, if you surround yourself with people who are overly gossipy and critical, you will end up doing the same thing. Look for a more enriching environment that transmits strength, energy and positivity.Thought stop: put a stop to that toxic recurrence. As paradoxical as it may seem, focus as much as possible on those negative ideas. And after a few minutes dedicated entirely to them, cut them radically and abruptly. Empty the mind.

If negative thoughts are had from time to time, their physical impact is practically negligible. But if we keep them constantly present, they can inhibit our abilities and reduce our quality of life.

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People who are mentally overweight seek to distance themselves from their own reality and overlap their inner emptiness with the personal wealth of others.. They are individuals who need to download their unproductive thoughts and free themselves from all the unpleasant emotions that they produce in them. Let’s not let them contaminate us.

If we take care of the quality of our thoughts, we will be taking care of the quality of our life. Let’s not forget it.