The Tyranny of the Second-Guess—A Response to Overthinking

Let me confess first, before we begin in earnest. I too am a member of the Sacred Order of Second-Guessers, devoted servants of the patron saint of Endless Internal Rehearsal. Maybe you know him. He’s the one whispering in the car after every conversation: “You should have said that differently.” He visits in the grocery aisle: “Are you sure you got the right milk?” He even tithes ten percent of your prayer time by asking whether you meant your prayer sincerely enough. Hands clasped, head bowed—and in strolls Doubt with his clipboard.

Overthinking, in its lived form, is a sort of mental treadmill operated by pride and fear in equal measure. We call it “responsibility” because that sounds noble, but let’s be honest—it’s usually a desperate attempt to control what can’t be controlled: the future, other people’s reactions, our own reputations. Overthinking is a counterfeit virtue that polishes anxiety until it gleams like prudence. It’s trying to run Providence through a spreadsheet. It’s the mind building little Babel towers out of what-ifs. You can tell it’s overthinking when your thoughts don’t serve love anymore, only survival.

The French Jesuit Jean-Pierre de Caussade once wrote that “sanctity consists in fidelity to the duties of the present moment.” Such a line sounds manageable until you realize how allergic we are to the present. We prefer the theoretical world, the one full of future contingencies and past clarifications. De Caussade says God is right here, but we are too busy previewing next Tuesday’s imagined disaster to notice Him.

We overthink, I suspect, because we can’t quite stand that we are not God. If we can predict every outcome, no harm will surprise us; if we can analyze every fault, no one can indict us before we’ve done it ourselves. Theologians write about “original sin,” but perhaps the daily sin most of us practice is original micromanagement.

Fr. Jacques Philippe, in his lovely little book Searching for and Maintaining Peace, insists that interior turmoil is not holiness. Anxiety sometimes dresses up as prudence or zeal, but it’s often the symptom of self-trust gone feral. Peace, Philippe says, is not the reward for getting everything under control; it’s the proof that you’ve handed the controls back to God.

And our old Cistercian friend Dom Chautard, grimly cheerful in his monkish way, warned that even doing good works can be poisoned by mental activism. A person can save souls outwardly and yet spin endlessly inwardly, disconnected from the quiet pulse of Christ’s love. Overthinking, then, is not merely intellectual strain but spiritual short-circuiting. It’s mistaking the buzz of one’s own thoughts for the voice of grace.

Overthinking is a practice. Which means it can be unpracticed, too. A few gestures may help…small, humble, and laughably human ones.

1. Name the loop aloud. When your mind begins scripting an argument that hasn’t happened, say it plainly: “I’m rehearsing again.” Temptation loves to hide in the abstract; speaking it aloud makes it small enough to step over.

2. Make the present-moment vow. Twenty-four hours only. “I will act faithfully on what is mine to do today; I will not mentally live in tomorrow.” De Caussade grins somewhere in heaven each time you try this, even badly.

3. Treat peace as your decision-point. Before you plan or fix, notice: Have I lost peace? If so, return to prayer before returning to planning. It’s astonishing how many disasters dissolve when peace returns first.

4. Use St. Ignatius’s rule of stability. In emotional fog or spiritual desolation, don’t rewrite your life. Don’t make new vows, new diagnoses, new revenge speeches. Keep what was decided in light; breathe; do the next simple thing.

5. Draw two columns in a notebook. Label them “Mine to do” and “God’s to do.” Fill the first with your actual tasks—make the call, send the note, take the walk—and the second with everything you have no power over. See how short the first list is? See how long the second? That’s reality, merciful and humbling.

6. Schedule a Sabbath from mental labor. Take one hour…no solving, no planning, no diagnosing. Walk, pray, stir soup, whistle, waste time with your children. Let the world wobble without your constant commentary. It’ll survive.

Sometimes I add a small “return prayer,” especially when the loops start tightening: Jesus, I trust You. Teach me what is mine to do. Give me peace to leave the rest with You. I mutter it like a fool’s password, and the door to sanity clicks open just enough.

Overthinking feels intelligent, but it’s mostly busy pride in a necktie. It mistakes control for care. True intellectual life…especially for a Catholic…includes consent to mystery. You’re allowed to not know. In fact, it’s commanded. The cross of Christ is the great unraveling of every human equation. St. Thérèse of Lisieux once wrote that trust makes saints faster than effort ever could. Trust is thinking’s rightful king.

Maybe holiness, then, looks less like perfect analysis and more like delighted bewilderment. Maybe what God wanted all along was not a clean report from your inner management committee, but your laughter and your willingness to show up anyhow.

My friend once said that heaven might feel like that rare evening when you finally stop rehearsing the day and notice the sound of dishes being washed, the quiet hum of domestic love, the slowness of breath after prayer. That moment, small and tender, may be what de Caussade meant all along, the sacrament of this moment, not the next, not the last. Just this.

So tonight, dear companion in the noble fraternity of second-guesser saints, let’s sign a truce. Let’s live these few hours faithfully, not perfectly. Let’s rest in the staggering, healing thought that God’s peace is not something we earn by solving, but something we receive by surrender.

And if tomorrow the brain winds up again like an anxious clock, well then: name it, laugh, pray, and turn once more toward the One who thinks of you without overthinking you at all.