Latest / Dr. Rosen Reveals- Real Medicine. Clear answers / How to Stop Overthinking Every Conversation at Work

Transcript

How to Stop Overthinking Every Conversation at Work · Dr. Rosen Reveals- Real Medicine. Clear answers

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever had a completely normal conversation at work, then spend the rest of the day wondering if you said something wrong?
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe your boss seemed a little off, or you made a comment in the meeting and later started wondering how it landed.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: And now a simple five-minute conversation is taking up the next five hours of your day.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Dr.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: Heather Rosen.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a board certified family physician, and if this happens to you a lot, I want to help you figure out when your brain is filling in the blanks and why some people suddenly become much more prone to this than they used to be.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: First, stop treating your interpretation like a fact.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Your boss says, Can you uh stop by my office later?
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's what actually happened.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: But if you are already anxious and worried about it, you're being perceived.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Your brain may turn that one sentence into, she's upset with me.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: I must have done something wrong.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I'm in trouble.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: Now you're reacting to a story before you even have the information.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: I learned this a hard way because in residency I was a huge people pleaser.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted everyone to like me.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: So when an intending physician was critical of something I did, I had a tendency to hear it as rejection instead of feedback.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: After that, I started to hear criticism differently.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of immediately deciding somebody did not like me, I would ask myself, is there anything useful in what they were saying that could make me better?
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: Try this.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: After a conversation that you cannot stop replaying, remind yourself what was actually said and then compare it to with what you are afraid it meant.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: Those are two very different things.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: And even when you know that intellectually, there is another trap that keeps people stuck, trying to figure out what everybody else was thinking.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: We are not mind readers, so stop trying to read everybody's mind.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Your coworker is short with you in the hallway, and suddenly you're wondering what you did wrong.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: Your boss seems distracted in a meeting and now you're convinced that they're disappointed in you.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe they are.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: But maybe it has absolutely nothing to do with you.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: The problem is that once you decide you know what somebody else is thinking, you start responding to that assumption.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: You become more defensive.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: Explain yourself more.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: Then you need to or pull away because you have already decided that there's a problem.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: If something genuinely needs clarification, I would much rather have you ask a direct question.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: You can say, I wanted to make sure I understood your feedback earlier.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: Was there something you wanted me to do differently?
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: Now you have the information instead of spending the rest of the day trying to read somebody's mind.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: But that still leaves an important question.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: What if there's nothing to clarify and your brain keeps going back to the conversation anyway?
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: The question I want you to start asking when you catch yourself replying something, is there actually a problem here that I can solve?
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: If your boss gave you an unclear feedback, then yes, ask for clarification.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: If you made a mistake, fix it.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: If you said something that generally crossed the line that may need a conversation, have it.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: But if what you were trying to figure out is whether everybody still likes you, or whether you sounded impressive enough, or whether you could have phrased one sentence better, you may be chasing certainty that you're never going to get.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: You cannot control exactly how everybody interprets you.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: You can communicate clearly, listen to feedback, and make corrections when you need to.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: At some point though, you have to let the conversation just end.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: If this is helpful, then take a second to like the video and subscribe.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: This is a new channel, and I'm going to be talking a lot about anxiety, depression, stress at work, and some of the physical health issues that can get missed when everything is blamed on stress.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: Now everything I've talked about so far assumes this is a pattern you've had for a while.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: But what if it isn't?
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: What if you used to be able to leave work at work and suddenly your brain will not let anything go?
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: What if you never used to be like this?
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: That is where I start thinking differently as a physician.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: If you have always been somebody who tends to second guess yourself, that may be a pattern you needed to understand and work through.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: But if you're telling me I was never like this before, and now I overthink everything, I want to know what's changed.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're lying awake replaying conversations that never used to bother you, or you're suddenly more anxious and irritable at work than you've ever been before.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: At that point, I'm not only thinking about personality, I want to know how you're sleeping, whether you're using more caffeine, whether you started a new medication, and whether there are physical symptoms showing up alongside the anxiety.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: Because sometimes the question is not simply, why can't I stop thinking about this conversation?
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: The better question is, how does my whole system suddenly feel harder to shut down?
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes your body is making this harder.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: One thing I would consider is thyroid function.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: An overactive thyroid can make you feel jittery, restless, interfere with your sleep, and leave you feeling like your mind is constantly running.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: For women in their 40s and 50s, I also pay attention to perimenopause and menopause.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: If somebody tells me that she's always handled stress fairly well but suddenly feels anxious, irritable, and unstable to shut her brain off, especially if sleep or other physical symptoms have changed at that same time, I want to look at the whole picture.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: That does not mean that hormones are always the answer.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: I mean I do not want to tell somebody to work on their mindset when there is also something physical contributing to the way they feel.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: I pay attention to sleep, nutrition, possible deficiencies, medications, and other changes that happened around the same time.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the answer really is anxiety and therapy or medication may help.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: But before I stop there, I want to know that we are treating the whole person.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: And there is a reason I care about figuring that out sooner rather than later.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: Because if this keeps going, eventually it may stop being something that only happened inside your head.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: It can start changing what you do when you're at work.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: When overthinking starts costing you, you may stop speaking up because you're afraid of saying the wrong thing or avoid conversations that could actually help your career because you know you're going to replay them afterwards.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: You can end up spending so much mental energy worrying about how you perceive that you're fully not present in the work that's there in front of you.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: That is when overthinking stops being an annoying habit and starts affecting your life.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: The goal is not to stop caring what anybody thinks of you.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: The goal is to stop treating every conversation like a test you have to pass perfectly.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: If there's a real problem, deal with it.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: If there's not, let the conversation be over.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: And if this kind of overthinking is new, getting worse, or showing up alongside changes in your sleep, mood, energy, or other physical symptoms, I'd want to look at that too.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: Because sometimes your brain needs a different way of interpreting what is happening.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes your body is making that much harder to do.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: If this has started affecting your work or your life and you want someone to look at both mental and physical sides of what's going on, you can use the link below to get in touch with me.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: And if your anxiety at work ever crosses over into your heart racing, feeling like you can't breathe, or worrying that you're about to lose control, watch my next video on what you could do if you have a panic attack at work.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: I will see you there.