Texas Experts Speak Out: Overthinking Can Lead to More Mistakes

It may seem obvious to some, but dwelling on your past mistakes can actually make you more prone to making the same ones down the road.

Thanks to researchers at Texas A&M University, we can see the science behind how our brains interpret overthinking, and how this can be a predictor for high anxiety with a term called "avoidance."

Go With the Flow

The key findings in this research can be broken down to this: Everybody makes mistakes. Dwelling on your biggest blunders in life will do nothing but raise your anxiety when confronted with similar situations.

This isn't to say that mistakes are useless and should be ignored. Making mistakes is perfectly normal, and each instance should be treated as a learning opportunity. I know I sound like your parent, but it's true!

Take a look at the science.

Overthinking Helps Nobody

Dr. Annmarie MacNamara and her team at Texas A&M discovered a direct link between overthinking past mistakes and steering clear altogether from uncomfortable situations, AKA avoidance.

“Everyone makes mistakes,” MacNamara stated. “But those individuals who respond with a lot of emotion, or a lot of intensity, when they do make an error, those are the individuals that tend to suffer from anxiety.”

How They Proved This to Be True

To test their theory, researchers measured the brain activity of 74 participants after making a noticeable error. They then repeated this process one year later.

What they found was that participants who exhibited strong emotional response to making their mistake tended to be more avoidant on the second time around. This was due to a key finding that researchers call "blunting."

Blunting—the brain's diminishing emotional response to making mistakes—was the missing element that researchers were looking for.

Strong emotional response to the initial mistake, combined with the concept of blunting over time, is why many people who suffer from anxiety, depression, or PTSD often avoid certain situations for fear of making the same mistakes again.