Lying awake while your brain replays old conversations and runs tomorrow’s to-do list? In this episode of Self Full, Wilson Huang explains why overthinking gets worse when you’re tired (it’s your nervous system, not a flaw) and shares three tools: slow your exhale to calm the body, do a two-minute brain dump to offload the loop, and swap “I am” for “I notice I am” to step outside it.
Frequently asked questions
How do I stop overthinking at night?
Don’t try to think your way out, calm the body first. Slow your exhale (out-breath longer than in-breath, three times), then do a two-minute brain dump of every looping thought, then observe the loop by saying “I notice I’m doing the thing” instead of fighting it.
Why does overthinking get worse when I’m tired?
When you’re exhausted, the part of your brain that says “we’ve processed enough, stop” runs out of resources, so the same thoughts loop without resolution. Lying down also removes the external input your brain was tracking, turning its attention inward to everything unresolved.
Why does telling myself to stop thinking make it worse?
Suppression backfires. To “not think about X,” your brain has to hold X in mind to check, so “stop thinking” puts the thought right back on top. Observing it (“I notice I’m spiraling”) loosens its grip without the rebound.
What is a brain dump and why does it help with rumination?
A brain dump is writing every looping thought into a notes app or paper for two minutes, with no solving. Your brain keeps cycling because it doesn’t trust itself to remember; once the thought is written down, it can let go. This is the Zeigarnik effect at work.Read the full transcript
You know the feeling when you’re super, super tired, like you’re completely done for the day. You’re so tired that your whole body feels like it’s sinking halfway into the mattress already. And you’ve turned off the light 20 minutes ago, but your mind is wide awake. It’s not focusing on anything important or solving any pressing problems.
Instead, it keeps replaying something you said in a meeting three weeks ago, mentally preparing for an argument that hasn’t even happened yet. And suddenly it’s digging into something someone mentioned years ago that you thought you’d had completely put behind you. You tried to shut it all down, and it only gets louder. You remind yourself to just relax, but then it starts ticking off everything on your to-do list for tomorrow.
You attempt to zero in on your breathing, but your brain quickly circles back to the conversation it had been playing on a loop before. And eventually just lying there, worn out, listening to a mind that just won’t take a hint. You start to wonder, “Is there something genuinely wrong with me?” “Why can’t I just fall asleep like everyone else?”
If you ever found yourself in this situation before, this episode is for you. Welcome to Self Full, a show that dives deep into the real issues that swirls around in your head, and how to tackle them. My name is Wilson. I’m not a therapist, or a sleep expert.
I’m simply someone who has spent countless nights wrestling with my own thoughts, and eventually stumbled upon some helpful strategies. And today, we’re focusing on overthinking. SSpecifically, the exhausting version where your body is ready to sleep, but your brain hasn’t gotten the memo. I’m not talking about anxiety, where your heart starts to race.
Rather, I’m talking about the quiet, nagging type, the loop that keeps running whether you wanted to or not. We’ll explore what’s actually happening when this kicks in. Why your instincts about fixing it might be counterproductive, and three concrete strategies that built upon each other and actually works. The last one will transform how you handle the mental loop.
Not just tonight, but every time it rears its head. Stick around, because this one is truly valuable. Before we dive in, I like to clarify what I mean by overthinking. It’s important to me that we’re on the same page regarding the specific issue you’re dealing with.
I’m not talking about the anxious, heart-pounding feeling that comes with panic. Instead, I’m referring to a subtle sensation, One where you’re feeling genuinely drained and physically worn out, yet your mind just won’t switch off. It keeps circling back to past events, planning future scenarios, and revisiting topics you thought you had already resolved. The frustrating part is that the more tired you feel, the worse the overthinking often gets.
Here’s my perspective: Your brain operates mainly in two modes, when you’re actively engaging in something, whether you’re working, conversing, or watching, you’re in “Task Mode,” fully focused on what’s right in front of you. However, when you step away from external stimuli, like trying to fall asleep, taking a shower, or simply sitting in silence, your brain shift into what I like to call “Screensaver Mode.” This mode isn’t restful. Instead, it acts like your brain’s default narrator, going over the day’s event, replaying conversations, and highlighting every unresolved issue on your mental checklist.
The key things to understand about Screensaver Mode is that unlike task mode, there is no built-in off switch. It just keeps running, often leading to more frustration. And this is the challenge we’ll tackle today. By the end of this episode, you’ll be armed with strategies to help you better understand your brain, and have the tools to shift gear when you find yourself stuck in a mental loop.
Alright, let’s get started.
Point 1: The Loop Isn’t Just in Your Head — It’s in Your Nervous System
Let’s start by getting a clear picture of what’s really going on. Once you understand the mechanism, everything else will fall into place. The loop that plays your mind serves a specific purpose. Your brain’s default narrator runs automatically without any conscious efforts.
Its roles is to do what brain have always done: Review, flag, and store information. It reflects on your day, identifies on resolved issues, rehearse its future scenarios to prepare you, and processes experiences that didn’t quite settle before. This isn’t a glitch, it’s your brain doing its job. The problem arises because this process doesn’t naturally come to halt.
It tends to ramp up when external distractions are taken away. When you lie down and eliminate the external stimuli your brain was busy tracking, its attention turns inward. Everything it has been quietly keeping on the back burner: The awkward conversation you had, the promise you haven’t fulfilled, or the unresolved situation, they all start to bubble up. Here’s something important that many people may not realize: The more tired you are, the harder it becomes for your brain to manage this process.
When you’re running low on energy, the part of your brain that usually says: “Okay, we’ve processed enough, let’s wrap this up,” doesn’t have the resources to intervene. Consequently, the same thoughts keep looping endlessly without resolution. However, what many often overlook is that this loop isn’t just a mental issue, it also connects to your nervous system. When you find yourself awake with racing thoughts, your body is in a mild state of alertness.
Not panicking, but certainly not at rest. This is why the common instinct to think your way out of it, trying to logically work through your thoughts often falls flat. You’re essentially asking an exhausted cognitive system to do even more work. The harder you try, the more intense your thoughts can become.
So the first step isn’t about battling your thoughts themselves, but do this instead: Slow down your exhale. Make your out-breath longer than your in-breath. You don’t need a complicated method, just breathe in naturally, then let your exhale flow out, slowly extending it longer than it wants to stop. Aim for something like a 4 count inhale and a 6 to 8 count exhale.
Alternatively, just take a normal breath in and then a slow breath out. Repeat this three times. Here’s why this works: Extending your exhale activates the vagus nerve. The primary mechanism your body uses to calm the stress response.
This sends a signal to your nervous system that you are safe. And when your body receives this signal, it starts to ease up, regardless of what thoughts are swirling around your head. The loop can continue, but instead of trying to force it to stop, you are changing the physical state in which it operates. And as a result, those same thoughts will feel different when your body is not tensed up.
This isn’t exactly meditation, you don’t need to clear your mind or anything. You simply need to exhale slowly, and do it three times. Here’s what that looks like in practice: Say it’s past midnight, and you’ll find yourself caught in a mental loop for the past half hour. As your frustration builds, it adds another layer to the recurring thoughts swirling in your mind.
But instead of getting tangled up in those thoughts, you consciously redirect your focus on your breath. You inhale deeply and then exhale slowly, letting it all out. You repeat this three times, although the thoughts remain, there’s a subtle shift in your body, an unexpected release of tension you didn’t even know that you were holding. This shift doesn’t come from resolving the issue at hand, but rather, it signals your nervous system that relief is possible, that you are safe.
And with this newfound calmness in your body, the intensity of the loop will feel a bit more manageable. It took me a long time before I stumbled upon this strategy. Before my instinct was always to try harder. Whenever the mental loop started kicking at night for me, my response was always to buckle down and put in more effort.
I would try to analyze my thoughts, trying to work through them, and searching for solution, Yet, no matter how much I pushed, those late night worries couldn’t be resolved in the moment. And still, I kept trying because it felt like I was taking action. The first time I intentionally slowed my breath, and focused on lengthening my exhales, I really didn’t expect much. Because it seemed too simple.
But nevertheless, I was surprised to find that I had released a lot of tensions I didn’t even know I was carrying on my shoulders and jaw. The racing thoughts in my head were still there, but my body felt a bit more relaxed. And from this calmer physical state, the urgent matters that had felt so pressing in my head just a moment before, now seemed like they could wait until morning. While the loop remained, the state in which it was operating had changed, making it feel less overwhelming.
So that’s the first step, but just simply calming your nervous system doesn’t really resolve the driving force behind the loop. Your brain still keeps those thoughts alive because it fears losing track of them if it lets go. And that is where the next step comes into play, which brings us to the next point.
Point 2: Trying to Stop the Loop Only Keeps It Going
So physically you start to feel a bit calmer now, but that mental loop is still running in your head, and instinctively, you might think: “I’ve got to make it stop,” but here’s something that might surprise you: The harder you push against the loop, the louder it gets. This isn’t just a figure of speech. In fact, I’ll prove it to you. Try this: Do your best not to think about a red door.
Whatever you do, don’t let a red door pop into your mind. Chances are, you’re thinking about a red door right now. This isn’t a trick, it illustrates how suppression really works. When you’re bringing hears: “Don’t think about a red door,” it has to keep the red door in mind just to check whether you’re thinking about it or not.
By trying to suppress a thought, you unconsciously bring it to the forefront. Every time you tell yourself: “Stop thinking about that,” you’re actually placing that thought right back at the top of your mind. So every time when you’re lying in bed and kept telling yourself: “Stop, just stop, go to sleep, quit thinking,” you are, with the best of intention, keeping that loop very much alive. But there’s another angle to consider: The loop continues because your brain truly believes it has something important to hold on to.
That conversation running on repeat, your brain hasn’t packed it away yet. It keeps it active because it think it still matters, like leaving a browser tab open when you haven’t finished whatever that you’re working on. The loop isn’t broken, it’s simply doing its job, albeit at the wrong time and in the wrong place, lacking the right tools to wrap things up. Every time you try to slam that tab shut without giving your brain a proper place to put it, your brain is likely to reopen it again.
So what’s the alternative? Try this instead: Write it down. No need for a detailed essay. Just get whatever is looping in your mind out onto something external.
Take two minutes, grab a scrap of paper, or put it on a note app or anything handy. Jot down the thought swirling around, whether it be a conversation, a task for tomorrow, or anything else on your mind. You don’t need to analyze or solve anything right now, you’re only doing this to free your brain from holding onto them. Here’s why this works: The loop exists partly because your brain doesn’t trust itself to remember these things if it stopped cycling through them.
But once you write them down, you give your brain a reassurance that you haven’t forgotten. Now, something else is holding on to those thoughts, your brain can finally let them go for the time being. This isn’t journaling, actually, journaling can lead you back into the loop if you start overthinking what you written down. This is actually a brain dump.
You’re writing your thought down physically on a piece of paper or on a note app, and when this is done, put that sheet of paper away. Close the app, phone face down, and avoid dwelling on it. You’re not analyzing the thoughts, you’re simply liberating your brain from the task of keeping track of them. Now let’s look at a scenario: Say you’ve been lost in your thoughts for whatever it feels like forever.
Let’s say about 40 minutes or 45 minutes, and deep down you know falling asleep like this isn’t going to happen, and your body knows it too. But instead of mindlessly scrolling through your phone, or tell your brain to just shut up. You simply open the Note app, and you take a couple of minutes to jot down everything swirling around in your head right now. Something like: “Feeling nervous about the presentation tomorrow,” or “Still needs to respond to that message,” or something like “Am I being put into a friend zone?” but whatever they are, you don’t bother trying to figure any of it out, you are simply letting it all out on the app.
Then, you shut off the app, you turn your phone face down, put it away, and notice something inside your brain shift, not in a dramatic way, but the underlining pressure will start to lighten just a little bit. It is not that your problem have disappeared, but you just did a brain dump, and that your brain has finally been given the green light to stop juggling them all at once. And I gotta be honest, I was very skeptical about this method. I mean, writing down my thoughts on some piece of paper just seemed too simple to actually make a difference.
How could this be any useful? I mean, this sounded like something straight out of a productivity book that doesn’t really tackle overthinking. But one night when I was deep into a mental spiral, I decided to give it a shot. I mean, it was either that or just don’t bother sleeping at all.
I was genuinely surprised by the outcome. Not because everything was solved. I mean, my worries remained valid and unresolved, but because writing them down felt like releasing a tension I hadn’t even realized I was holding in my head. It felt like my brain had finally agreed to drop all those weight for now, if that make any sense.
And that’s when it clicked. I’d had been asking my mind to keep a mental inventory of all those worries for hours, while trying to fall asleep and telling it to stop thinking about them. No wonder my mind felt so chaotic. It was just working hard to keep everything in check.
As soon as I gave my thoughts a place to land, my mind had finally agreed to drop the weight. So far, we’ve discussed two techniques. One is slowing down your exhale to help your body relax, and the second one is to write down whatever that’s swirling around in your head to allow your brain to release its burdens. But here’s the catch with these two methods: They still operate within the same loop, and what I want to show you next is how to step outside of that loop entirely, and this one is a game changer, which leads us to the final point.
Point 3: The Voice in Your Head Is Not You — You’re the One Hearing It
One reason the mental loop feels so consuming and inescapable, is because it sounds just like you. It speaks in your voice, draws from your memories, and refers to your experiences. You might find yourself thinking: “Why do I always do this?” “I can’t believe I said that.”
“I should have handled that differently.” It mimics an internal monologue, which is what makes it feel like the truth, and as of it’s coming from everywhere at once. However, take a moment to consider this: At this very instant, regardless of whether the loop is playing in your head or not, there’s a part of you that’s aware of what your thoughts are doing. That part can say: “My brain is doing its thing.”
This suggest that there’s a version of you that is slightly separated from the thoughts your brain is producing. Otherwise, who’s doing the observing? While the loop operates in one dimension, the part of you that notice is present exists in another dimension. Just both of those dimensions exist in your brain.
Isn’t that cool? Our brain has the capability to host multiple dimensions, but I digress. The voice in your head is not you, it’s merely a voice. You are the one who hears it.
This isn’t a philosophical trick, it’s simply the reality of the situation. When the loop says: “I can’t believe I’ve said that in front of everyone,” there’s a part of you that simultaneously observes that thought. This observing part doesn’t panic or blow things out of proportion. It just notices.
What often surprised people when they start to pay attention, is that this observing part is quieter, more stable, and less frantic than the loop itself. You have access to that observing part right this moment. In fact, you’ve always had this access. However, when you’re deep inside the loop, that part tends to fade out in the background because the loop is loud.
It speaks to its first person and takes up all the spaces. So how do we reconnect with that observing part? This technique differs from simply naming your thoughts. While naming keeps you in the loop, merely preventing it from intensifying, this technique helps you completely shift your perspective. and the key is a single word: “Notice.”
Swap, “I am” for “I Notice I am.” For example, instead of saying: “I am spiraling,” say: “I Notice I am spiraling.” Instead of: “I can’t stop thinking about this,” say: “I Notice I can’t stop thinking about this.” Instead of: “I keep going back to that thing,” say: “I Notice I keep going back to that thing.”
This simple change allows you to transition from being deeply entrenched in the loop, to stepping outside of it. Even a minor shift in perspective can lessen the loop’s power. The loop thrives on you being fully immersed in it, speaking in first person. The moment you start to observe, rather than becoming a part of it, the loop loses the grip it had on you.
You don’t need to stop the thought, argue with it, or try to dissect it. Just notice is there: “I Notice I’m doing the thing.” This marks the point where the loop begins to lose its hold. Here’s how this unfolds in a real moment: Imagine you’re sitting at your desk, making progress on a task, but your thought keeps wandering back to an earlier conversation, something someone said that you can’t quite decode.
You’ve tried to move past it multiple times already, but instead of pushing it away again, you quietly tell yourself: “I Noticed that I keep returning to this conversation.” You don’t frame it as a judgment or ask: “Why do I keep doing this?” Instead, you’re stepping back and noticing your urge to revisit it. And from this little distance, a question arise that wasn’t possible before: “Does this really need my attention right now?
Or can it wait?” When you were stuck inside the loop, that question feels impossible to ask, but from just outside, the answer often comes into focus. And I went through similar experiences for a very long time before I figured out what was really going on. There was a time where I would find myself deep in a spiral before I even noticed I had started.
I had to become aware of it, mid-loop, and already several steps in. Having concluded something quite dramatic about my situation, and of course trying to talk myself out of it from within the spiral never really worked. It just turned into an internal debate, with both sides reflecting different parts of me, leading basically nowhere. What changed was my ability to catch the loop earlier, not at the dramatic conclusion, but right at the beginning.
Instead of reacting, I choose to acknowledge it: “I Noticed I’m starting the loop.” It felt like watching a pattern unfold rather than being driven by it. And to my surprise, the loop held much less power from that perspective. The thoughts remain the same, but I wasn’t overwhelmed by them.
With this outside viewpoint, I could ask the crucial question: “Do I really need to deal with this right now?” And that question is only accessible from outside the loop. When I was inside of it, everything felt equally urgent. However, from the outside, it often becomes clear that most concern can wait till morning.
This isn’t because the issues don’t matter. Rather, it’s that there’s generally nothing I could do about them at 2 o ‘clock in the morning. And from the observer’s position, my brain can actually recognize that. Alright, let’s do a quick recap.
Three important strategies we’ve covered today. First, it is important to recognize that your brain isn’t broken. When you find yourself tired, and your thoughts is racing, it’s not a malfunction. Instead, it’s your exhausted nervous system lingering in a low-level alert state.
And in this condition, pushing yourself to think harder won’t help. Begin with a physical approach: Slow your exhale. Make it longer than your inhale. Do this three times, you’re not trying to force your thoughts to stop, rather, you’re signaling your body that you’re physically safe, that it is allowed to release tension.
And when your body relaxes, the thought loop will feel different. However, if the loop persists, and it frequently does, stop attempting to quiet it down, as that only feeds the cycle. Instead, take two minutes to write down your thoughts. Simply get the loop idea out onto a paper or a note app.
You don’t need to solve anything, you’re merely performing a brain dump, and giving your brain permissions to let those thoughts go for the night. And last but not least, change “I am” to “I Notice I am.” When you’re caught in a loop. Instead of telling yourself: “I’m stuck in a loop,” try telling yourself: “I Notice I’m stuck in a loop.”
Refrain from saying “stop,” or “why,” just observe. Stating: “I Notice,” shift your perspective from being trapped in the loop to merely observing it. And as you watch, that loop will start to loop its grip on you. Keep this in mind, the loop may feel intertwined with your identity since it unfolds in your mind and carries your voice.
Yet you’re also the one who hears it. The part of you that can say: “I Notice I’m spiraling,” isn’t spiraling at all. That aspect remains steady and present, even when the loop feels overwhelming. For most nights, the loop is just that, a loop.
It doesn’t signify that there’s something wrong with you, or that you’re failing in any way. It’s simply what a brain does when it’s very tired and when they lack a stimuli. By reframing the situation as something that doesn’t require immediate resolution and choosing to observe it instead, the loop generally quiets down. You don’t need to fix those thoughts tonight, just aim to step back from being entirely consumed by them.
So now when the loop arises again, slow your exhale, write the thoughts down, and use the Notice technique. Remind yourself: “I Notice I’m doing the thing.” And see if you experience even a slight shift. If something changes for you today, consider sharing it with someone else who also finds themselves lying awake with similar thoughts.
They may not admit it, but they’ll appreciate that you noticed. If you’d like to share any changes in your experience, or topics you’d like me to explore next, leave it in the comment. And if the loop comes back tonight or any night, you now know how to handle them. And remember, I’m always here for you.
Take care.