Overthinking: Positive or Negative?

Yesterday, during an event where I was talking about yoga and opposites, I arrived at the idea of the “middle line” – that sweet spot where solutions emerge. I told the participants that, to truly find the middle of a situation, sometimes you need to understand or even experience the extremes. It’s like entering a room blindfolded: before reaching the center, you inevitably bump into a few walls, just enough to get a sense of the space and your position.

 

I used this image to show that if we avoid suffering, we cannot find real solutions. We cannot avoid something we haven’t first allowed ourselves to feel and understand through our own experience.

 

From there, we moved into a discussion about mental analysis and the phenomenon of overthinking. Spontaneously, I said that its opposite is ignorance. One participant intervened and said that, for her, the opposite of overthinking is acceptance. Her observation seemed logical, especially in modern psychological language. I initially responded that, for me, acceptance is more in opposition to judgment.

 

Then she pointed out something very interesting: for her, thinking is positive, while overthinking – through that “over,” meaning exaggeration – is negative. And I felt she was right. Yet, a question remained within me: why did I spontaneously say “ignorance”? Why didn’t overthinking sound negative to me?

 

This difference in perception made me look deeper within myself.

 

Naturally, I live yoga through experience and philosophy. Only after feeling and experiencing these processes do I start looking for definitions, concepts, and explanations in psychology, and sometimes even neuroscience – to put into modern language what I discover through practice.

 

Through this process, I noticed the difference between exploratory overthinking and anxious overthinking, and I understood why sometimes the process inspires me, and other times it overwhelms me.

 

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Fascinating examples from Indian philosophical traditions

Nyāya uses analysis to the extreme to deconstruct perceived reality.
Nyāya is the Indian tradition of logic and reasoning. It analyzes mental processes to the point where every perception is broken down into pieces so small that what we once thought of as “solid” no longer holds the same consistency.
Purpose: to show that the mind sees through its own interpretations, and what we call “reality” is a filtered construct.
Method: arguments, counter-arguments, classifications, examples, syllogisms, and microscopic analysis.
This is overthinking in its most logical and structured form.

 

Advaita Vedānta applies the neti-neti method (“not this, not this”) until everything becomes almost absurd.
Advaita uses elimination to reach essence.
The neti-neti process involves:

• • I am not the body
  • I am not the mind
  • I am not the emotions
  • I am not the roles
  • I am not the conditioning
    Everything impermanent, ephemeral, or conceptual is set aside.
    Goal: what remains cannot be eliminated – Pure Consciousness.
    Taken to the extreme, the exercise becomes almost absurd for the logical mind because it pushes it to its limits. Where the mind stops, experience begins.

 

Buddhism Madhyamaka takes any argument to impossibility through prasanga.
The Madhyamaka school (the “Middle Way”) uses a method called prasanga:
👉 take any statement
👉 follow it to its logical conclusions
👉 show that the result is impossible, contradictory, or absurd
Whether you say “everything exists,” “nothing exists,” “exists partially,” or “exists conditionally”: all, when taken to the end, contradict themselves.
Goal: to show that reality cannot be captured in fixed concepts.
It is neither “this,” nor “that,” nor both, nor neither – exceeding the mind. It is a radical method of dissolving mental certainties.

 

Tantra explores duality to the limit in order to reach non-duality.
In Tantra, the path is not avoidance but inclusion.
Everything you reject, you explore. Everything that scares you, you embrace. All dualities (pleasure/pain, light/shadow, masculine/feminine) are consciously experienced until their shared nature is revealed.
Through this deep exploration of polarities, duality “burns” from within, leaving only what connects the two: non-duality, the neutral space.
Goal: transformation through direct experience, not avoidance.

 

All these are sophisticated forms of “exploratory overthinking,” where the mind is taken to extremes to reveal what lies beyond concepts and appearances.

 

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Modern science perspective

Psychology and neuroscience clearly show that there are two forms of overthinking:

• Anxious overthinking (rumination): repetitive, obsessive, unproductive, problem-focused, generating stress and confusion.
• Exploratory overthinking: curious, analytical, creative, understanding-focused – exactly the type of mental process I use in philosophy.

 

🧠 The key difference is internal motivation and relationship to the outcome:

 

• if you explore → healthy activity, stimulates the prefrontal cortex
• if you cling to outcomes → anxiety, rumination, mental blocks

 

So the idea is not to stay attached to results… just explore.
This is precisely the definition of the difference between metacognition and rumination.

 

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In my internal system, the opposite of overthinking was ignorance: if overthinking means investigating excessively, its opposite is not investigating at all. The participant, however, was speaking from another framework, in which anxious overthinking needs acceptance or presence as an antidote. We were speaking from two different perspectives – and I greatly appreciated the clarity this discussion brought me.

 

I realized I use both types of overthinking, which is why sometimes I feel inspired and connected, and other times overwhelmed. Recognizing the differences helps me use them as tools, not burdens.

 

It was a beautiful lesson about nuances, language, and perspectives.
Thank you 🙏