Hello everyone~~ This is Tina and today, I want to introduce the book, GET OUT OF MY HEAD: Inspiration for Overthinkers in an Anxious World, to you! Following with the introduction, I will share 3 suggestions in the book I like the most.
Before starting, I guess many of you wonder what overthinker is. People who are overthinkers usually worry about everything too much and think of “What-if questions” all the time. It won’t become a problem until it start to hurt them and become a kind of illness with symptoms like sweating and dizzy. The author, Meredith Skrzypek, even created an online community, Beautiful Voyager, to make overthinkers, people pleasers and, perfectionists share and help each other. (If you are interested in this, you may click the hyperlink to know more) In this book, the author gave many suggestions to people who also struggled on it based on her experience and the experience from this community.
Another thing which is worthy sharing is the design of book.
To help foster calmness, it was designed to be full of serene visuals like the buoys on the waves by an artist, Lean Rosenberg who studied the connection between color and emotion. The author uses waves to symbolize the period of being overthinking and the buoys are something that you can catch for saving yourself like this book. Personally, I also like the design. I think the usage of colors are so interesting. Using the high-saturation colors to makes overthinkers feel calm and stable and using adequate blanks to decrease the possibility of being annoyed and stressed out. Also, this can be related to one of the suggestions that I want share with you, use color to stop the spin.
Use color to stop the spin. The experience of overthinking is like keeping spinning without an end. So, the book suggests to use color to stop the spin by naming the color. This movement is aim to help us get out of the spin and focus on present again since you should observe the surrounding first. In my opinion, I think it can be an effective way to do so. From my personal experience, I will think about many things at odd moments, but sometimes, it will make me be unable to listen to others’ voice and make some mistakes. While I’m thinking, I will stare at a single spot and build things in my mind. So, I think it is possible for me to refocus on present by naming the colors. I also recommend that you can take a deep breath to refresh yourselves. A deep breath can make your brain stay awake, which work on me when I’m preparing for the tests and worry about the tests’ performance.
Another suggestion is You can’t always please the people you want to. In the book, one of the overthinkers describes them as “running on a daily people-pleasing hamster wheel.” But the fellow of the community members uses her experience to suggested that we should not focus on the accuracy of words you say but focus on the tone of our interaction. So, do not want to fixate the details immediately; instead, try to wait for a minute so that many information will appear to let you know. I think it is a mean that is worthy trying. Pleasers will feel nervous and anxious when they cannot please others. It is good for them to calm down and stop for a while, which is not only good for themselves but also give others time to react.
Last but not least, Immerse yourself in a hands-on project. The book points out that scientists believe that the singular focus for hands-on projects is good for your brain. It will help you turn your focus into others. Hands-on projects, like playing board games, can make those who are under stress relaxed. Also, they suggest that starting a new hobby is good for perfectionists. Since you cannot learn a new thing without making mistakes, it will be an opportunity for them to learn acceptance. However, I’m not a perfectionist, so I cannot feel this kind of feeling. If you are a perfectionist, you may try on this!
To sum up, the above are the suggestions for overthinkers, pleasers
and perfectionists. If you considered yourself as these kinds of people, you can
try these means and I hope that you can benefit from them!
Hiiiii~Tina!
ReplyDeleteAs you mentioned, I also consider that using “colors” to design is an interesting way. From my own perspective, I often think that reading novels involving lots of words is so stressful because after reading a few pages, I will think why I still have a number of pages needed to read or why I read so slowly. But seeing the photos of this book that you have taken, I am quite interested in this book due to its layout and design. In my opinion, no matter whether readers are overthinkers or not, I believe all of them can feel calm and relaxed when seeing a colored picture. This is the power of pictures. In addition, the topic of this book is appealing to me as well. Several pieces of advice are provided for overthinkers and perfectionists. Although I don’t strongly believe some suggestions will work out successfully, I still think that they are worth trying.
Hey Tina!
ReplyDeleteI’m exactly an overthinker, every time things go unevenly, I would let those annoying shits stay in my mind the whole day. So, thank you for sharing the inspiration from this novel.
I’m not pretty sure whether those approaches work for me, but I totally agree the aspect the author take to view overthinking. It’s really like spinning continuously, circling around a same point and never thinking of what other things changed. For me, it’s difficult to distract from the failed things and look for the bright side.
In addition, I like the phrase the author used “running on a daily people-pleasing hamster wheel.”, it let me realized how dumb I was when doing things to please others. I should put much focus on myself instead of others, and I should not focus on the accuracy of words but focus on the tone of interaction. These indeed provide good suggestions to me. But as a overthinker, I don’t think the last point would work because I can know how hard it is to escape away from the infinitely overthinking cycle. Immersing myself in project is barely possible for me based on my previous experience, but I hope I can haha.
Anyway, I’ll try them and tell you whether they work on me. Thank you for sharing such information again!!!