Explainer | How to stop worrying: metacognitive therapy helps this writer learn to leave her anxious thoughts on the ‘sushi conveyor belt’
- Overthinking is a habit we develop for dealing with worrisome thoughts. Psychologist Adrian Wells developed MCT to help patients break the habit
- It’s not the thoughts themselves that are the problem, but the time spent engaging in them, ruminating and worrying, that weighs us down, expert says
Overthinking has been part of my life for the last year and a half, since the world started feeling the impact of the coronavirus.
I have tried to find answers to existential questions like “Why am I a pleaser?” or “Am I making the most of my life?” and spent most of my waking hours worrying about the impact the pandemic has had on our lives, or simply whether I might have said something to someone to offend them.
Research shows that symptoms of stress, depression and anxiety are often caused by bad reflexes such as overthinking. So I jumped at the opportunity when Sisi Gu Starlit, a psychology student in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, offered to give me three sessions of metacognitive therapy (MCT) with her.
Starlit is training with an acclaimed MCT expert, Danish psychologist and author Pia Callesen, whose bestselling book Live More, Think Less has been translated into seven languages, with a Chinese version coming out in October.
Callesen trained under Adrian Wells, the clinical psychologist at the University of Manchester in the UK who founded MCT. His research suggests that overthinking – that is, worrying and rumination – is a learned strategy that we choose, consciously or unconsciously, as a way to deal with our difficult thoughts and feelings.
