The Overthinking Trap | Why Evidence Fuels Work Stress

A Human Story About Doubt

0:21 SPEAKER_00: This great story teaches us something about being human. I'm Cheryl Parris and this is Work Stress Anxiety. Together let's borrow a little wisdom from a story to help us navigate a very modern world.

0:42 SPEAKER_01: Hi, Cheryl here. Um before we start, I'm just curious to know have you ever known the answer uh to a question and then talked yourself out, talked yourself out of it. Not because you didn't know, but because you suddenly wondered if you're you've missed something. Well, today I want to begin with someone who thought her biggest problem was overthinking. She had so much anxiety around it, uh, especially that the type of work anxiety where you know you have to perform. But the thing is, I don't think it was, I don't think it was that at all.

1:30 SPEAKER_01: I want to welcome new listeners to work stress anxiety. Um, if you're that new listener from Nebraska, I want to say thank you. I want to thank you for all my returning listeners. I hope you are here because you want honest conversations about what work stress really does to us. So thank you for being here.

Caroline is recently qualified as a pharmacist

1:58 SPEAKER_01: Um, I want you to introduce you to um Caroline.

Meet Caroline The New Pharmacist

2:03 SPEAKER_01: Uh, Caroline is 25 years old, she's recently qualified as a pharmacist. She loves windsurfing though, going to festivals, she loves ice skating, she's bright, she's kind, she's thoughtful, she's so hardworking. She works incredibly hard to earn her qualifications, and she's now in a position where she can walk into work every day and help people you know manage their conditions. She walks into work, she wears the white coat, she's qualified. Everyone now treats her like a professional. The strange thing is she still feels like a student.

3:01 SPEAKER_01: It's almost as if her qualifications arrived before her confidence has fully arrived. Now, let me just walk you through an ordinary situation. She's there at the pharmacy, a prescription arrived, she reads it, she knows the answer, what she needs to do, but she checks, she checks it and she checks it again. Um, she looks around at her colleagues for guidance, looks around again, then asks the colleague, what do you think? The colleague confirms her very first um answer, um, but somehow she's not sure, but she does it anyway, and then another prescription comes in and it happens again.

Careful Checking Turns Into Delay

3:53 SPEAKER_01: She does the same sort of thing, and again, and for me, the worrying part is she isn't making any mistakes, she's delaying decisions. It's almost like she wasn't getting the answer wrong, she was struggling to believe the right answer had arrived, and what was what kept happening because she was doing this, colleagues began to notice this. Um because she was unsafe, but because the hesitation, as you know, often looks like uncertainty, and the more reassurance she got, ironically, the less confident she appeared to be.

4:51 SPEAKER_01: Workplaces have this odd habit, I think, of confusing careful people with uncertain people, and what I would like you to do now is imagine this is this isn't just really about this pharmacist, this is about the manager who constantly rewrites emails, or the teacher who second guesses their lessons, the nurse who checks they've remembered everything, or the team leader apologizing before saying quite reasonable things to the team.

Why Smart People Second Guess

5:31 SPEAKER_01: I mean, does that sound familiar to you? The thing is, I think what it is, um intelligent people are trained oftentimes for years to question, to question things. You know, you have you think you know, you become a surgeon, you have years of exams, years of examination, uh uh not examinations, assessments, years of proving yourself, you know, every tutor checking your work, every assessment you have to show you're working out, every placement, you know, you go through with caution, you know. We spend years rewarding people for checking everything, and then wonder why they don't suddenly trust themselves the day that they become qualified and they have to do the job for real.

6:34 SPEAKER_01: And the thing is, this pattern, I think, this pattern of overthinking can go on for years and years and years unchecked, you know, what if Caroline isn't lacking confidence? What if she simply becomes exceptionally, she's just become, I think, exceptionally good at gathering evidence. Because if anyone can answer the question for of what's happening, it's probably Sherlock Holmes, don't you think? You know, when you think about Sherlock Holmes, right? Well when I think about Sherlock Holmes, I think Sherlock isn't brilliant because he guesses, he's brilliant because he notices, he sees detail like no other person.

Sherlock Holmes And Evidence Gathering

7:38 SPEAKER_01: He sees details that other people miss, he's very observant, he gathers evidence, he keeps an open mind. Um, good detectors don't jump to conclusions, they earn, they earn those conclusions. You know, he observes before he acts, he doesn't panic, he doesn't catastrophize, he just one by one collects the clues, then the next one, then the next one. Everything he does has purpose. And when when I think of one of my favorite um Sherlock Holmes stories, the Hounds of the Baskervilles, and I think of all the clues that he's collecting one by one, that even Dr. Watson doesn't even know what he's doing, what Sherlock is doing.

8:33 SPEAKER_01: Every but the thing is, everything has a purpose, everything builds towards understanding. I mean, does that sound familiar? Because that's exactly what careful people do at work all the time. Caroline is just doing what she does, gathering evidence brilliantly. The difference, I think, is that Sherlock gets to a point where he eventually stops. He reaches a conclusion. The thing is, Caroline, with her overthinking, keeps gathering evidence, gathering evidence, and observation becomes overthinking when there is no finish line.

9:25 SPEAKER_01: You know, university and her studies has taught her one skill, you know, through every assignment, every placement, every exam. Check again, be certain, show your working, question yourself, and that was exactly the right lesson for a student. But when you go out into the real world, you're qualified now.

Overthinking Has No Finish Line

9:55 SPEAKER_01: You won't know everything, nobody does. Your job is not uh, your job is not is no longer to get a hundred percent. Your job is to be the best professional, um, you can make the best professional judgment with the evidence that you have. Passing the exam, that's gone. Learning to trust yourself, that's what's here now. Your nervous system is still thinking that you're being examined, it hasn't realized the examinations are finished, the qualifications are a facts now. The nervous system works on experience, so sometimes it can take it can take a while to catch up.

10:51 SPEAKER_01: You know, can you imagine passing your driving tests but then still feeling nervous every time you drove anywhere, or becoming, you know, the senior partner but still feeling like or still acting like the junior, or becoming uh a parent but wondering if you were qualified enough.

From Student Rules To Real Work

11:16 SPEAKER_01: The thing is, your certificates arrived, but the thing is it's almost like your nervous system doesn't quite believe it, and that's why it's really important that regardless of what you are, not just a pharmacist, a manager, a teacher, a solicitor, a surgeon, anyone who carries responsibility. Responsibility naturally makes careful people check. The problem begins when checking quietly turns into doubting.

Most of us have some sort of committee meeting going on inside our heads

11:50 SPEAKER_01: So, what I want us to do is slow down for a minute. Maybe your overthinking isn't evidence that you don't know enough. Maybe it's evidence that you've become exceptionally good at gathering evidence. The problem isn't your investigation, the problem is that no one has actually taught you when to close the case, when to pause, when to let it sit.

12:23 SPEAKER_01: So, why is it so difficult to stop investigating? Why do we keep replaying the same thoughts again and again, even when the evidence is already sitting right in front of us? And I think it's because most of us, most of us are still having some sort of committee meeting going on inside our heads. That's what I think it is. I think you know, good detectives don't jump to conclusions, they earn them. Observations become overthinking when there isn't a finish line.

When Checking Quietly Becomes Doubting

13:08 SPEAKER_01: So, what does that mean? I think what it means is you you have to allow that committee meeting to come to an end. And just imagine for a minute, you're you're in a boardroom, you're around a table, and around the table there's they're sitting all the different versions of you, not different personalities, but different protective voices. You know, one's one of you wants certainty, one of you wants approval, one of you doesn't want to be embarrassed, one of you wants another opinion, one of you wants to make absolutely certain nothing goes wrong, one of you keeps whispering, what if, what if you've ever overthought a decision, you've probably um decided not to chair that meeting.

The Committee Meeting In Your Head

14:15 SPEAKER_01: What my point is there needs to be a shift, yeah. Though all these different versions of you are trying to protect you. The perfectionist wants to protect quality, the planner wants to protect the future, the warrior wants to keep you safe, the people pleaser inside you wants to protect the relationships, the critic thinks it's protecting you from failure. The problem is all these different versions of you, right, around this committee. The problem isn't the committee, the problem is that everyone thinks that they are the chair.

15:00 SPEAKER_01: So, what does that mean? What that means is the ones in our heads.

15:15 SPEAKER_01: Someone needs to make a decision, someone needs to take charge. Remember, Sherlock would listen carefully in any of his stories, gather the evidence, notice the detail, and then he'd stand up and say, We've got we've got enough, I know exactly what I need to do. And that's confidence. That's not knowing everything, that's knowing when you've gathered enough evidence to take the next responsible step. So, what I invite for you is to think of a new definition of confidence. Most people think confidence means never doubting yourself.

A New Definition Of Confidence

16:05 SPEAKER_01: I don't think that's true at all. To me, confidence isn't a silent mind, confidence is knowing which voice gets that casting vote. Which voice gets the casting vote? So, what I'd like to do is try this practical exercise. I want you to take a bit of paper and ask yourself three questions. Maybe you can even mark out three columns. What when you're in a situation, what do I know? What are the facts? What am I assuming? So, what am I, what stories am I telling myself? What am I predicting? What am I mind reading?

16:55 SPEAKER_01: What am I catastrophizing? And number three, what does my experience tell me? My experience, not fear, experience.

Three Questions To Make Decisions

17:09 SPEAKER_01: Because to me, this is the chairperson chairing the meeting, answering those three questions explicitly. What do you understand now to yourself when you imagine answering those questions? Because the thing is, you're not broken, your mind has been trying to protect you. You can stop blaming yourself for caring and checking and wanting to be a do a good job and feeling responsible. Those aren't character flaws, but what you can do is try that the next time you feel yourself asking for a reassurance, pausing and completing those three questions, either in your mind or writing it out on a piece of paper, and then deciding whether you genuinely need another opinion.

18:14 SPEAKER_01: Caroline looked like someone who lacks confidence. Now we can see something very different, can't we? She's observant, she's conscientious, she's responsible, she notices detail. Those qualities will probably make her an excellent pharmacist for months for the months and years to come. She simply has one more skill to learn: not to gather evidence, but to close the case.

18:54 SPEAKER_01: Maybe your your overthinking isn't evidence that you don't know enough. Maybe it's evidence that you've been spending years becoming exceptionally good at gathering evidence. Okay, now I hope you've enjoyed this episode. I want you to remember that it's it's knowledge that has become quiet enough to stop shouting.

Close The Case And Wrap Up

19:26 SPEAKER_01: That's your confidence. So just remember to apply that those three those three questions even inside your own head. Just remember that that's what confidence is, not having all the answers, but being able to make a decision.

Every step you take is a step towards a brighter, more balanced future

19:45 SPEAKER_01: Okay, so if you've enjoyed this episode, please follow the podcast at follow thepodcast.com forward slash work stressanxiety. And what I really want you to remember as you go about your day is that every step you take, no matter how small, is a step towards a brighter, more balanced future. Remember to trust in your journey.

20:18 SPEAKER_01: I hope today's episode gave you something useful to carry into your week. Now finish your coffee, take a breath, and remember progress is progress no matter the pace. Until next time, bye for now.