How To Stop Overthinking: 9 Stoic Practices That Actually Work

You're not actually solving anything. You know that, right?

When you're three hours deep into a spiral — replaying a conversation, catastrophising about something that hasn't happened yet, running worst-case scenarios on a loop — your brain feels like it's working. It's whirring, it's busy, it's doing something. But it's not solving. It's just suffering.

The ancient Stoics had a word for this: wasted time. Seneca put it bluntly — we suffer more in imagination than in reality. And he was right then, and modern neuroscience agrees with him now. Your nervous system cannot tell the difference between what's actually happening and what you're vividly imagining. Every time you rehearse the disaster, your body lives through it.

No wonder you're exhausted.

Here's the thing about overthinking that nobody says clearly enough: it isn't a character flaw. It's a symptom.

Of caring too much. Of living in a body stuck in fight-or-flight. Of being a high-achieving, high-functioning woman in a world that constantly tells you you're still not doing enough.

Of course you overthink. It's a wonder any of us don't.

But there is another way. These nine practices are grounded in Stoic philosophy — not the stiff-upper-lip, suppress-everything version of Stoicism, but the practical, surprisingly tender tradition of Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and Epictetus, who were essentially ancient nervous system coaches.

They work. Not because they're clever, but because they bring you back to what's real.

Photo by Klugzy Wugzy on Unsplash

9 Ways to Stop Overthinking Inspired by Stoicism:

1. Return to what's actually true right now

The first move when you catch yourself spiralling is to zoom all the way in. Not to where you might be next week, or how that conversation might go, or what could happen if things go wrong. Right here. Right now.

What do I actually know, in this moment?

Often the honest answer is something like: I'm sitting down. I've eaten today. My worst fears are not currently unfolding. I'm okay.

This is classic Stoic training — come back to what's true, not what's imagined. It sounds deceptively simple, and it is deceptively simple, which is why most people skip it in favour of something that feels more like doing something. But this is doing something. It's the most important something.

2. Separate what's yours from what isn't

Stoic philosophy is built on what's called the dichotomy of control: what is up to you, and what is not. Overthinking almost always involves trying to solve for things that aren't up to you — other people's reactions, outcomes you can't predict, timelines you can't control, the general chaos of being alive.

When the spiral starts, try asking: what is actually up to me here?

Maybe it's sending the email. Maybe it's going to bed earlier. Maybe it's not replying to the message tonight. Sometimes the only thing genuinely up to you is how you breathe right now. That still counts. That's still power.

3. Practice voluntary discomfort

This one's maybe a bit unexpected, just stay with me here.

The Stoics believed that deliberately choosing small discomforts — regularly, intentionally — builds the kind of resilience that means when the hard thing actually hits, you're not levelled by it. You've already practised sitting with something difficult without immediately reaching for a fix.

In practice, this looks like: going for a walk when you're tired and don't want to. Not googling the intrusive thought. Letting the email sit in someone's inbox without refreshing obsessively. Not reaching for your phone the moment you feel the first flicker of discomfort.

It sounds small. It is profoundly not small. Sitting with a feeling without immediately trying to escape it is one of the most regulating things you can train your nervous system to do.

This is also why physical and sensory rest matter more than most people realise — if your nervous system is chronically depleted, no amount of willpower gets you out of the spiral (read about the seven types of rest here).

(And no, this means you probably don't need to contact your ex for closure. Just sayin'.)

4. Remember that thoughts are not facts

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Your nervous system doesn't know you're imagining things. It responds to a vividly imagined threat the same way it responds to a real one — cortisol, heart rate, the whole performance. This is why catastrophising is so physically depleting. You're not just thinking scary thoughts. Your body is living through them.

The shift that changes everything is learning to narrate your thoughts rather than believe them:

"Ah, there it is. My brain making disaster movie trailers again. Classic. Thank you for trying to help. Let's take a breath."

This isn't toxic positivity or pretending everything is fine. It's stepping back from the thought and recognising it as a thought — which is, at its core, what meditation is. You don't need a cushion or an app. You just need the tiny pause between the thought and the belief.

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5. Come back to your body

You cannot be fully in your body and fully in your head at the same time. Overthinking lives in abstraction. Your feet, right now, are not abstract.

Feel them. Wiggle your toes. Take a long, audible sigh — the kind that makes people look at you on the bus. Roll your neck. Yawn deliberately. These aren't random fidgets; they're vagus nerve activators, and they signal to your nervous system that you're safe enough to exhale.

There is always something anchoring in the present moment. Always. You just have to look small enough, quiet enough, close enough to find it.

6. Go outside without your phone

The Stoics were devoted to nature, and it turns out they were onto something neurologically solid. Your nervous system naturally co-regulates with the natural world — exposure to green space, natural light, and the particular rhythm of walking has a measurable calming effect on the threat response.

Leave your phone at home, or at least in your pocket on silent. No podcasts. No music. Just the sound of your own feet and whatever is actually around you. Most problems either shrink dramatically or become embarrassingly solvable after twenty minutes of this. The ones that don't are usually the ones that were never yours to solve in the first place.

7. Ask whether this is how you want to spend this hour

Seneca's On the Shortness of Life is essentially a loving intervention about time. His argument: we are not short on time, we are profoundly wasteful of it — and worry and spiralling are where enormous amounts of it disappear.

When you notice you're in a loop, try asking: is this how I want to spend this particular hour of my life?

It's not a guilt trip. It's a redirect. A quiet, firm, compassionate reminder that you get to choose where your attention goes, and that the loop is not the only option.

8. Give your brain one page

You do not need to process every thought you have ever had in order to find peace. The Stoics kept journals — Marcus Aurelius's Meditations is essentially his — but they weren't doing excavation. They were making sense of things and then moving on.

When your brain is loud, give it ten minutes and one page. Set a timer. Write everything out — uncensored, unbeautiful, unpresentable. Then stop. Draw a line under it. Go and make a cuppa.

You don't need answers. You need space. The page gives you the space so your head doesn't have to hold it all.

9. Ask what you'd say to someone you love

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When logic has left the building and your inner critic has taken over, this is the cheat code.

Step outside yourself for a moment. Imagine this exact spiral belongs to your best friend, or your sister, or someone you love unreservedly. What would you say to them? What tone would you use? What would feel true and kind and wise?

Now offer that to yourself.

This is Stoicism's quieter side — the Marcus Aurelius who reminded himself to be both firm and gentle, the Epictetus who said reason must be practised as a guide, not wielded as a weapon. Sometimes you don't need a solution. You just need a voice that says: of course this is hard. You're doing your best. That's enough for right now.

A final word on overthinking

Overthinking isn't a flaw. It is not evidence that something is wrong with you. It is what happens when a caring, conscientious, high-functioning person spends enough time in a world that chronically overstimulates and under-supports her nervous system.

(If you're not sure where to start with that, understanding which type of rest you're actually missing is often the first and most useful step.)

The Stoics knew the mind needed training, not punishment. Your body knows there's a quieter way through. These practices are the bridge between the two.

Start with one. The one that made you exhale slightly when you read it — that's the one you need most right now.

If this resonated, I write about nervous system regulation, burnout recovery, and joy-led living on Substack every week — in a way that's practical, occasionally sweary, and never preachy.

Subscribe below and get it straight to your inbox, as well as my 1-Week Reset series to help you find calm and ease this week.