Neuro-Roots LLC

Feelings can sometimes offer an excuse for behavior when in reality it is a lack of accountability or skills to move through those feelings and still arrive at a place where you can engage in decision making about what to do next and about what to do with those feelings. We see this a lot in kiddos because their executive functioning skills are just not at the capacity to do this on a regular basis. We see this a lot in dysregulated adults who may use emotion as permission for reaction or have a trauma response present to people please or avoid emotion and feeling altogether. Creating gaps and space in between what we feel and how we act can give us the power to shift decisions and move forward.

Using your feelings to justify behavior sometimes compounds the problem and gives permissions for actions that don’t always align with your value system. While there may be times where your feelings and behaviors match, skipping the step where you make a decision to act and moving straight to a reaction, often leaves you feeling worse in the long run. Feelings are messengers…use them wisely as informants and not factual witnesses.

Your neurotype has a lot to do with how you identify, interpret, experience, and move through feelings. Knowing how feelings show up for you and noticing them early is the first step in separating them from behaviors and giving you some choice in how you move through situations, events, and discomfort. Therapy can help you identify that and normalize how your specific brain learns to identify these.

We at Neuro-Roots LLC know that not each person learns the same or is interested in the same kind of information and same kind of content. Each week we sum up our posts and shares in what we call Roots Before Fruits Friday, foundational things we believe may genuinely help you understand yourself and others better. We also sum that up in a blog post for readers and visual processors.

And while we haven’t mentioned it before, we don’t use AI to write our content. Not because it doesn’t have value when in the right hands and used in the right way, but because we believe that the people we serve deserve to hear from real people with lived experience, clinical knowledge, and a genuine desire to help. It’s also how we stay rooted to our values.

https://www.neuro-roots.com/blog

Thinking is generally good…but when we think that thinking is going to be the end-all-be-all to a problem, we can miss some really good emotional information. When we overthink, we generally don’t arrive at a better solution and increase a lot of anxiety and worry in the process. If you tell yourself that overthinking a situation will help you out of it, ask yourself if you are using all the information you have first and whether telling yourself that just keeps you stuck in a pattern of overthinking that only helps you to worry more.

It’s possible that we can overthink the worst in a situation and there may be some protective benefits to that. However, what would happen to the narrative if we began to overthink the best? Studies show that better things do happen even if it’s just our outlook, mood, relationships, and sleep. Think about it in a non-polarizing way…while there may be some not-so-great effects of putting a positive spin on everything you encounter, there may be some real positive effects to balancing out the way your brain focuses on the worst and the best of things.

Every person can go into overthinking mode from time to time. The reasons we do it, how it’s expressed and the purpose behind it can be quite different. Overthinking, rumination, and looping are completely different though they can also present altogether and make it difficult to resolve. If you are neurodivergent, specifically autistic, you may be engaging in both or you may be told to stop thinking about something, when completing the loop may be of benefit to you. Slowing the process down to learn what you are trying to achieve when you are overthinking may help you parse it out and then decide how to approach it. Not all overthinking is the same.

Sometimes a reset is about taking your power back. We, as humans, are all going to error from time to time and often multiple times. The bigger challenge can be in deciding how long with sit with the error and how we decide we carry it, let go of it, or move it forward. Consider learning, adjusting, and taking a step forward toward that reset…the finish line is something you can imagine and work toward today.