{"id":248,"date":"2017-10-24T22:14:54","date_gmt":"2017-10-25T03:14:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oddlysincere.com\/?p=248"},"modified":"2025-02-14T21:58:36","modified_gmt":"2025-02-15T03:58:36","slug":"over-thinking-perceived-as-a-character-flaw","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oddlysincere.com\/?p=248","title":{"rendered":"Over-thinking Perceived as a Character Flaw"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I followed a Facebook link to a web article tonight. This <strong>totally stood out<\/strong> to me:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>Thinking \u201ctoo much\u201d about things would become a character flaw.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>What people who know me need to understand is that when I hear the well-intended thought that I\u2019m&nbsp;<em>over-thinking<\/em>,&nbsp;<strong>that\u2019s<\/strong>&nbsp;how it comes across to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p>What I\u2019ve gradually come around to is that over-thinking isn\u2019t the right way to &#8220;frame&#8221; it, because while it might <em>technically<\/em> be true, <strong>it\u2019s not helpful<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I\u2019ve decided the real problem isn\u2019t that I\u2019m <strong>thinking too much<\/strong>, It\u2019s that I\u2019m <strong>feeling too little<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Even <em>before<\/em> this mess, my decisions were usually based more on intellect than emotion. However, when I often <em>don\u2019t have<\/em> feelings about something, the <em>only thing I have left<\/em> is intellect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Consider that I\u2019m <em>already<\/em> self-conscious about my intellectual ability. Being told that I\u2019m over-thinking (which carries the natural implication that I should <em>think less<\/em>) leads me to focus on the wrong thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The reason why that\u2019s an important distinction is that <em>thinking too much<\/em> sounds like a <em>character flaw<\/em>. I can <em>make the choice to control<\/em> how much I think, so the thing I naturally infer from the over-thinking comments is that I should <em>choose to think less<\/em>. That sounds\/feels <em>exactly<\/em> like the anti-intellectual garbage I had to learn how to tune out while I was growing up. Also, one of the techniques I learned over the years was to <em>never <strong>ever<\/strong><\/em> over-value myself (which means that I often <em>under-value<\/em> myself, <em>especially<\/em> to other people).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If I\u2019m over-thinking, it\u2019s me using the only skill I know how to use to compensate for situations when I\u2019m <em>under-feeling<\/em>. This is coming from a man who didn\u2019t realize <em>how much<\/em> he used his emotions before, so I\u2019m just now figuring this out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I followed a Facebook link to a web article tonight. This totally stood out to me: Thinking \u201ctoo much\u201d about things would become a character flaw. What people who know me need to understand is that when I hear the well-intended thought that I\u2019m&nbsp;over-thinking,&nbsp;that\u2019s&nbsp;how it comes across to me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10,9,18,12],"class_list":["post-248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-non-belief","tag-deep-thoughts","tag-depress","tag-recovery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oddlysincere.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oddlysincere.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oddlysincere.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oddlysincere.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oddlysincere.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=248"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/oddlysincere.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":527,"href":"https:\/\/oddlysincere.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248\/revisions\/527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oddlysincere.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oddlysincere.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oddlysincere.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}