How to Stop Overthinking What to Say

The sentence is fully formed in your head. Then your inner voice arrives to edit it, to check how it will land and by the time you decide it is safe to speak, the conversation has moved on to something else. You leave the meeting thinking it’s okay, I’ll say it another time but you forget.

Overthinking what to say is not a personality flaw and it is not a lack of intelligence. It is a habit, learned early and repeated over and over again. Your brain builds up these habits as a quick response mechanism then enforces them as a routine. I know too well before becoming a voice coach and there is a way to change the habit of overthinking.

Why "think before you speak" keeps you stuck

We often hear this phrase and the advice is well intended but useless to someone who already thinks too much. There is no off-switch. For a person who rehearses every sentence, "think before you speak" gives official permission for people to continue thinking long after the conversation has finished. It also implies that the thinking is quality control, as there might be a right or wrong answer when it comes to saying something.

Speech happens in real time, not an exam that you revise for. There is no draft version or no undo button. People are rewarded when they are willing to speak up, have a conversation with another person without waiting for the perfect sentence to come along.

Where the habit actually comes from

Most people I meet can trace it back some kind of conditioning we have through when growing up. A classroom where when the wrong answer you were pushed aside and the child with the correct answer was praised. A culture where speaking first was read as showing off and waiting your turn was read as good manners. A family where a person more senior, their opinions were welcome and had more importance than everyone else. These lessons we learn and as we grow up, we still play by that rulebook, check before you speak and check again so you’re not wrong. But it is simply out of date now and it costing you more than you think.

What overthinking sounds like

We don’t necessarily think of it as worrying, but something that we need to do at least once so we don’t embarass ourselves when we do say something out loud. It’s like when we are writing an essay, we check for the wording, the punctuation and spelling mistakes. You might have more than one way to say something but you are thinking which one is the best way. You have a debate with yourself about your own opinions of that sentence or question you want to ask.

You’re checking for reassurance from yourself. When the reassurance arrives, then you might say it out loud. But up until that point, nothing gets resolved, it’s a continous cycle of you being stuck with your own thoughts, keeping all the emotions stuck inside the body.

Start with your breath

When you get ready for speaking, your body behaves as though it is about to be tested. Your shoulders lift, your jaw tightens, your breathing goes shallow and your chest moves more than your belly. Your mind reads that physical state as evidence of danger, so it searches for the danger and the nearest thing to search is the sentence in front of you, so you stop yourself from speaking.

The quickest interruption is breath, because it is the one part of this system you can control. Before you speak, soften your shoulders and let your jaw relax. Breathe in through your nose, then let the out-breath be longer and slower than the in-breath, without strain. Breathe deep down into your hip sockets. A long, quiet exhale calms the body and when you calm the body you calm the mind. Use the same pattern while somebody else is talking in any room, in any environment. The principle is the same whether speaking to one person or speaking to 10 people.

Three techniques that break the loop

Notice the pattern rather than the thought

Thinking about each thought keeps you stuck inside the loop. Step back and catch yourself in the process. Name it, tell yourself, ‘there it is, I’m thinking again’. Naming it turns it from something that happens to you into something tangible that you can track and that’s your baseline of where to start from.

Interrupt with movement

When we overthinking, often we are static, we are listening to another person speak, we have nothing to do. So next time your body has paused itself, move around, write your thought in your notebook when you’re in a meeting, exhale the air and fill up glass of water. By producing the thought out on paper or breathing the air out, the physical interruptions allow your brain to reset.

Reframe the prediction

Overthinking is usually a forecast and forecasts are where it does the most damage. If you keep thinking "I am going to make a mess of this", replace the prediction with something accurate: “Let me try and see how this goes”. You cannot predict exactly how this will go and that’s the whole point of speaking. Sometimes we have to be a little spontaneous, we say something and then we wait for the other person to respond before saying something else.

How I help people just like you

I overthought what I wanted to say for years. I internalised every sentence that I wanted to say, I had the ideas but weren’t saying them out loud because of what I thought about other people might think about me or it was the perfectionism in me, to get something right. Once I changed my perspective of why I was speaking, knowing that my voice and opinions mattered, my confidence started to grow. This was mainly down to the breathwork and the mindset training.

This is the work I do now, helping clients overcome the exact same issue, in Canary Wharf and online. Most people have a similar version of the same story: how to be more articulate without being stuck in my head, how I can something out loud without hesitating or overthinking. Once you have a process and structure to follow, speaking seems easy, the ideas flow to you rather than trying to force the words to come out of your mouth.

We help you manage your inner voice in your head. It’s good that the voice is there to keep you safe, but when you’re communicating and speaking with people, you want to make a good impression with people, so if you’re not speaking up at work, you are underselling yourself.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why do I overthink what to say even with people I know well?

The habit is not really about the audience. It was learned in a setting where speaking carried a risk and now it’s an automatic habit. You might find that you have to be more cautious with the people you do know well compared to strangers because there is more at stake, to make them proud or to impress them.

Is overthinking what to say a sign of anxiety?

It can be. Overthinking often accompanies social anxiety and fear of public speaking, though it also appears in people who would not describe themselves as anxious at all. The useful question is not what to label it, but how much it affects you from grabbing those opportunities to be seen and heard. If you are constantly quiet at work, people are led to believe that you have nothing to contribute to the team or the company so therefore why should they promote you?

Does breathing really help before you speak?

Yes it helped me a lot. It helps more than most people expect, because it works on the physical side, calming your nervous system. When your body is not in danger, your mind will switch off the survival mode button too, so you can think clearly and structure your sentences before you speak.