We’ve all heard someone say they are over analysers, always up in their heads, or they think things to death.

More times than not you will also hear these words accompanied by a sentiment that someone can’t enjoy life like they used to, things have somehow lost their flavour.

Emotional experiences and bodily experiences are essentially one and the same, and when people are in the heads all the time they lose some connection with their bodies – this may be preferable if your priority feeling is pain (i.e. a psychological defense), however it deadens the experience of life, much like a blocked nose deadens taste and effects the pleasure of eating food.

The antidote to overthinking and intellectualising experience is not to combat this with more thinking (i.e. cognitive challenging), but to make conscious efforts to connect with your bodily/sensory experiences. This will add a richness to experience which will help to counteract some forms of anxiety and depression.

Some people will need extra help navigating this for various reasons including having missed out on some important caregiver experiences earlier in life, or having suffered traumatic experiences, or due to a holding onto a reef of painful emotional experiences that will have to navigated and processed prior to accessing a more harmonious experience of their embodied life.

Therapy can help someone to recalibrate their experience of reality and develop a more meaningful and enriching way to engage with their life.