”Introspection” is often praised as a strength - a sign that you have self-awareness and want personal growth. But there’s a fine line that I don’t think most people notice. Spending too much time in your head doesn’t always fix the problem even it if feels productive. You just keep flipping the same thoughts around. Doing this doesn’t always help you understand things better, but can lead you deeper into a ditch. That's rumination disguised as self-improvement, and it usually does more harm than good. You may end up wasting time and energy on thoughts that aren’t actually helping you move forward, but rather roots you in place.
I value introspection and believe everyone needs self-awareness – but there’s a point where it turns toxic. When you start obsessing over every word, reaction, or flaw – yours or someone else’s – it stops being growth and becomes a trap called overthinking. God knows how many times I've been stuck there...
You spiral, overanalyzing everything until you’re emotionally stuck - convinced you’re being ”rational” and self-aware, when really, you’re just feeding anxiety. It becomes a bad mental habit that ruins your mood, your focus, and your ability to enjoy life.
Realizing when you are overthinking VS actually being productively introspective is difficult, and it’s something I’m still learning. But, I think it’s important to share this realization - in case others are tangled in the same patterns.
Anxiety came barging through my door again. Maybe it’s because of the upcoming move abroad and all the uncertainty that comes with. Maybe it’s about the guy I dated a little while back. We stopped, drifted apart slightly, but didn’t entirely let go. I didn’t want to, because I still like him. I found myself wanting him back, wanting to try again, wanting to do better than before. Because I’ve learned a lot from our time together, and especially from our time apart; learned about myself, about what I want, and what I need in a relationship.
I don’t know him well enough to answer whether we’re a good fit or not, so there’s that seductive ”maybe” and ”what if” that keeps me hoping and unable to let go.
A major realization I’ve had has also caused me to hesitate: that maybe I don’t miss him, just the idea of what we could be. I know the difference between fantasy and reality, yet I keep imagining conversations we never had - laughing, arguing, sharing the most vulnerable parts of ourselves as we truly connect. I cannot stop getting attached to those imagined versions of him, while I still don't know the real him. I build a relationship in my mind, while a real one barely exists.
But I think I have an idea of what’s going on. When I’m stressed, bored, or feel bad about myself, I pull at my eyebrows - a thing I’ve done since I was a teenager. It’s probably Trichotillomania. It’s a self-soothing gesture I’m not always aware I’m doing, and the more I do it, the harder it is to stop. Despite having permanently thinned my eyebrows, I still can’t keep myself from doing it again and again.
I think these romantic obsessive thought patterns are similar. They are a self-soothing ritual as well. That’s why I get stuck in them, nearly obsessed, and have trouble stopping. I cannot distract myself, as the image of him intrudes everywhere. Morning, night, during work, while jogging - those ”what ifs” appear everywhere. Just like I pull my eyebrows to soothe myself when distressed, I overthink as an attempt to silence the ache and understand the issue (but unknowingly end up making it worse).
Believe me, I have tried to remind myself that ”You are just overthinking again”, or ”Your anxiety is skewing your perspective, so just let it pass”. I’ve tried journaling, working out, even meditation. None of it prevents the images from reappearing in my head. I feel forced to spill my thoughts out onto the table and dissect them, trying to figure out what caused them and how to fix it. Instead of running from my problems, I try to tackle them head-on. But I never found a permanent solution - I only got realizations that temporarily lifted my spirit, only to find something new to knock me down an hour later. I thought I was being introspective, that it was good to try to sit down and figure out what’s wrong instead of running from the problem. I spent hours trying to think my way out of my problems. But I have been performing some sort of destructive introspection - rumination - that just spirals my anxiety and doesn’t help at all.
I am insecure, and that makes me very anxious and uncomfortable in relationships. Neither have I ever been close to entering a relationship before, and that adds further problems. I try to rid myself of the uncomfortable feeling a relationship brings by trying to ”fix” it. The problem seems to be logical in nature, and so I end up trying to think it away. As a result, I cannot focus about anything but him, and I twist and turn every interaction between us ALL. THE. DAMN. TIME. It’s exhausting. It’s a mental Rubik’s cube that I try to solve to get rid of my pain. But the more I twist and turn, the messier the colors get. I convinced myself he felt things that he later said he didn’t, and built a version of him that didn’t match reality. When the real him didn’t line up with the image, I got anxious, confused, and disappointed. That’s MY fault.
That’s also why I decided to end things and take a step back - I needed to calm the storm in my mind and emotions. I wasn’t fair to him, and it wasn’t healthy for myself. I had to stop thinking about him all the damn time, to stop that obsession and projection. (I do sound crazy when I say it’s an ”obsession”, and I don’t think I am crazy, it’s just that my issues go deep.) I want to see him for who he truly is, and that can only be done from a clear and collected perspective, when I have ground beneath my feet - not when I was drowning in the deep, dark and pulling him down under with me.
I think I know a major reason why it’s like this: Loneliness. My brain sees him as the solution to all my anxiety and loneliness. I am starved for genuine, deep connection. I want to be seen, heard, and understood. There are definitely things I like about him, but loneliness is the King that has hijacked my life and set intense fear into my gut. This guy I dated is important to me, because a romantic partner is a big part of your life and therefore happiness, and that’s why I take it so seriously. That’s why I overanalyze, why it hurts so much, why my brain obsesses, and why it’s so hard to let go.
Let me dig deeper into the loneliness issue…
I voice my thoughts out loud a lot when I’m alone - rarely in public (but, yes, it does happen - discreetly). I explain things out loud, as if I’m holding a little lecture for someone who’s just as into the topic as I am. (No, I’m not hallucinating, just good at imagining things.) It’s like I’m talking to a friend that doesn’t exist, an imaginary presence. It’s not a person with a specific voice, appearance, or name. I’m just visualizing what I’d say if I spoke to any safe, close person to whom I can speak freely.
On my walks home from school, I used to imagine talking to someone - not anyone specific, just a presence who listened and understood. Maybe that’s why I preferred being alone. Talking to myself made me feel more heard than most people ever did. It kept me company, filled the silence, let my cry and curse and process my thoughts. So, in my mind, I was never truly alone.
I used to tell myself that I never felt lonely. The loneliness only crept in when I was around others, and they’d glance at me and whisper, ”Poor her, she’s all alone.” I hated that look. I hated their pity. I chose solitude because I relished in it, and they decided to judge me for it - they were the ones putting the ”lonely” stamp on my forehead and saw it as a bad thing, when I never saw myself as such.
But, looking back, it was a sad way to live - and one I lived for most of my life. It’s only this past year that I’ve admitted the truth: I am lonely. All that time I spent talking to myself wasn’t just introspection or a love for being deep - it was becuase I had no one else to share my life with. So I shared it with the wind. (This deeply ties with a story I’ve written: The Silent Wave.)
I never thought of myself as lonely before, because I liked my own company. But now it’s clear - I’ve been deeply alone for a long time, and it’s causing me such grief that I cry some nights. It’s a reason why I got so attached to the guy I dated, and why I struggle to let him go. Because when I started dating him, he quickly became that soothing presence in my mind, that person I spoke to when I was by myself. Instead of my emotions and words floating into the void of that undefined presence I used to talk to, they now had a name, a face, a voice of a real person - HIS. And looking back, it makes sense why I got so stuck on him.
This presence in my head - him - didn’t know everything about me, of course - but we had to start from zero, just as you do when you meet a new person. But he was already that comforting presence in my head that was always there for me. So when I talked to myself, I started imagining I was talking to HIM. (And this wasn’t an active, conscious decision - it just happened.) I Imagined him listening, how he might respond, and that made me feel a little less alone, and gave false hopes to our relationship. I was excited about things I wanted to share with him. I longed to have a person that really knew and loved me.
But when we actually hung out in real life, it was different. I found myself unable to say any of the things I wanted to say. I clammed up. He wasn’t the same man I talked to in my head. Fantasy clashed with reality. He was real, messy, and flawed - and so was I. (With that said, there were many things about the real him that I do like.) I was confused, but I tried to give us time to warm up to each other, I tried to change perspective and find reasons why, but after months of emotional chaos, I had to step back. I couldn’t see or think clearly anymore. My wellbeing was plummeting, and staying would’ve made it worse.
Do you see why I was hyperfixated on him, near obsession? It wasn’t just about him, but about what he represented. I’ve been deeply lonely most of my life. Depressed, too. And then here came someone who wanted to be close, who wanted to know me, and I latched on like a starving person at their first meal. I threw my expectations on to him, and it wasn’t fair to him at all. I did many things wrong, but also cannot fully blame myself. I was desperate for connection. I didn’t know better. I’d never been in a relationship before and had no framework to lean on. Everything I knew came from romance books and movies, which painted love as something passionate, all-consuming, and perfect. But reality is so drastically different that it scared me. Just this clash of expectations VS reality caused a mess, and I doubted our relationship big time, because it didn’t match anything I knew.
In hindsight, I’ve learnt that love isn’t passionate, all-consuming, nor perfect at all. Real love is stable and safe, not a chaotic rollercoaster of ups and downs. Real love doesn’t make you chase or guess, but it’s consistent and peaceful.
I have learned that: relationships are a tricky balance, people are fucking confusing, and love doesn’t come right away but takes time to grow. Sometimes there’s awkwardness, doubt, resentment, confusion, and attraction can come and go. Sometimes, there’s magic too.
I have learned so much from that relationship. Oh, my heart wept a sea’s worth of tears after I ended things, because I still had some feelings for him, but also because I had to let go of the idea of him that I’d built. That version of him - the one who listened when no one else did - was really just a piece of me. Letting go of him means letting go of a piece of myself, the part that kept me company, in my head. And yeah, I know it sounds twisted and maybe even vain… But I wasn’t narcissistic or broken, just longed to be seen and cared for. It’s a coping mechanism, I suppose.
But realizing all of this is great. It is growth. This is not merely overthinking disguised as introspection. This is actual progress. I have recognized important patterns in myself that possibly could help prevent future relationship disasters, calm me down, keep me sane and stable. It has also shown me why I might be so unreasonably attached to him. This knowledge will definitely help me in the future.
I don’t blame myself that much anymore for the things I did when we dated. I did the best I could with the knowledge I had. I see things clearer now since my anxiety has calmed, my thoughts have been collected, and the whole shabam has been properly analyzed from a less emotional state of mind.
2025 felt like a shitshow so far. Anxiety over the breakup, anxiety over moving abroad - it’s been overwhelming. But, pain also forces growth. And damn, have I grown. I feel more stable in my boots, understand myself better, although I still lack strong boundaries. I am proud of myself. I’m not done figuring this out, and I don’t think one ever will be. But, for once, I feel like I’m facing the right direction. Even if some of the situations I walked into ended up hurting me, I don’t regret them. They led me here. And I think moving abroad will grow me even more in ways I still can’t predict.
After the "breakup", I went through this whole spiral of regret — wondering if I gave up too soon, if I should’ve fought harder, if I was the problem. One of the biggest mistakes I made in that relationship was letting my life revolve around him. But now? I’m calmer. My relationship anxiety is gone. I’m out of it and my habits are back to normal. I can think again and see the patterns - and that's a relief. I understand where some of the panic came from.
I’ve written down things to remember for next time: I need to communicate better, show more of who I am without fear of judgment, set boundaries and stick to them, stop building my life around someone else’s preferences. Stop trying to be someone they’ll like, and end up hiding who I really am. Stop people-pleasing (easier said than done, I know).
Next time, stop changing my needs after his. I’ll listen to the music I love, not pick songs I think he will approve of. I will keep writing romance fiction even if it’s embarrassing, because it’s my hobby. I will go about my everyday life as I normally do, and make the food I want, not try to tailor my life around his preferences. He can accept it or not. I cannot GUESS what he likes, since I don’t know him well enough. Yes, you can be flexible around each other, but only to an extent. I went too far and lost myself along the way. My job is to stay grounded in who I am. He didn’t pressure me to do any of these things. I did, and that was wrong.
A relationship shouldn’t be about changing yourself for someone - it should be about extending yourself. Don’t shrink your life to fit around them. To put it concretely: instead of making a fancy dinner to satisfy him, make that bowl of instant noodles like you usually do when alone, but instead of one bowl, make two.
It hurt like hell to walk away. But I’m glad I did. Because now, I can finally stand on stable ground again. I’m not in panic-mode anymore where all I hear is warning bells. Now I can see him clearer (albeit not perfectly): not the fantasy, but the real version. (Of course, there's much more to the big picture than me just imagining us doing things together and how unhealthy that is.)
I will admit that, despite all my realizations, old patterns are hard to break out of, and I still find myself fantasizing about the two of us together, having conversations with him in my head, even though I shouldn’t. I don’t blame myself for it though, and at least I’m more aware of what I’m doing. I’m trying to resist the urge to indulge, but sometimes it happens so fast, automatically, and casually that I am not aware of it. I have gotten better, and I am much calmer than before. I just think this first more serious relationship I got tangled in was a good learning experience. How things will turn out between us is to be seen. I try to not have hopes, try to live my life the way I’ve done before. We have already hung out once since, and it went well. Come what may. And this trip abroad may be a breaking point. Maybe we’ll stay in touch long-distance, or we will drift apart. Whatever the outcome is, I’m okay with it. Either way, I’m not obsessed anymore, I’m not attached, I’m finally myself.
Loneliness says I’m unlovable, and that’s why I’m alone. Unlovable in what way? That I’m annoying, too clingy, that I seek too much validation and reassurance. That I overthink and overanalyze things, cling to mistakes, need too much alone time, and get stuck in doubt - about myself and the relationship. Basically, I’m too flawed to be accepted long-term.
I fear I’m someone who’s easy to like at first - kind, maybe even funny - but once people get closer, they see the patterns. I become repetitive, too much, or not enough. They get disappointed because I’m not what they expected, or grow tired of seeing the same thing.
But is that really my flaw? No, that is their projection - the same way I projected ideas onto the guy I dated?
I know that people do like me. My coworkers enjoy my company, I’ve been told I’m fun and warm to be around. I’m not unlovable - I just haven’t been with enough people who match me deeply yet. And I am learning from my last relationship. I can see my issues and I’m working on them.
I worry that I’m too perfectionistic, lose interest too fast, or quickly feel disconnected if we don’t align in values. (But I don't know that - I don't have enough experience!) I fear being disappointment because I easily become enthralled by new friendships, and quickly get knocked down when I realize they are not what I expected. I fear picking the ”first best” option when I could’ve had something better (and that’s a harsh, unfair thought toward a partner).
I feel like I’m missing my chance at love. I’m nearing 30, and many friends already have partners, are settling down - even coworkers much younger than me. I haven’t even had my first real relationship yet.
They have someone to share life with. I don’t. It makes me feel behind, invisible, incomplete. I want to travel, but not alone. I want to share joy and new experiences, and I can’t always rely on friends who now prioritize their partners. I want someone who puts ME first. Not someone I’m just a second option to.
Most of my life I’ve been hiding in the background — partly by choice, because of anxiety, and partly because no one seemed to care when I did try to speak. I got ignored, interrupted, dismissed. Eventually, I stopped trying.
That made me believe my opinions didn’t matter. That other people’s ideas were always better.
I want to be someone. I want proof that I lived, but most of my life has been hidden. You only feel like you exist if your words land in someone’s ears — not if they disappear into silence. I know I’m a good person. I know I can be thoughtful, kind, and have something valuable to say. But just thinking that for myself isn’t enough. ”I think, therefore I am,” said the philosoper Descartes. And sure, you yourself know that you exist, but if nobody ever sees or hears you - if your presence is never acknowledge by other people - you may as well not exist at all. (Again, that's what I basically write in The Silent Wave.)
I used to live by Mark Twain’s quote, “It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.” But that's too harsh and made me shut my mouth and hurt myself more than it did any good. Everyone say stupid things from time to time, just like we say clever things.
We say humans are social creatures. That we need community and connection to survive and thrive. Our thoughts aren’t meant to be kept locked in our own heads forever — we need to share them, bounce them off someone else, or we get stuck in the solitude of our minds and decay emotionally. That’s where depression grows. We say that a lot of people-pleasing comes from childhood fear of rejection. If a child is disliked and neglected by nearby adults, they will die, since a child cannot survive on their own. Thus, we adapt, make ourselves likeable to keep the peace, and we start people-pleasing.
But then we also get told: Don’t rely on others for validation. Love yourself. Be content on your own.
So, which is it? Should I be independent and whole on my own, or do I need others to feel complete? These ideas seem to contradict each other, and it confuses me. One idea emphasizes independence, the other says we only survive in groups. I feel like I’m missing something here.
One part of me says: Yes, it’s human to crave recognition. We need others to witness us. To feel seen. That’s part of survival.
But another voice says: You’re too needy, you shouldn’t depend on others to feel like you matter. That voice scolds me for needing reassurance.
But I think both sides are right - they don’t cancel each other out. Yes — we need self-esteem, and we need to feel love from within. And yes — we also need to be seen and valued by others. We’re not meant to live in emotional isolation.
Honestly, I am certain that I can be a loving partner. I can be warm and affectionate, caring and understanding. Again, you just have to be in the right company. I’m not perfect, and I don’t need to be - I am good enough.
Good distractions require your full attention, are challenging, and therefore redirect your focus in a way that gives your brain a break. They don’t leave space for overthinking to sneak back in.
Bad distractions are futile attempts to keep your mind off things - they simply don't work because they are often too familiar and you act on muscle-memory (which require no thought).
For example:
Good distractions often mean learning something new, or meeting new people - which is a gust of fresh air and can be especially helpful when trying to forget a person. Do something with your body instead of using your head, like cleaning...
Background image from Hulki Okan Tabak on Unsplash