Don’t you hate it when you can’t stop going over something in your mind endlessly? A problem you can’t solve, or an irrational fear, or a situation you wish you’d handled differently, or something someone has said to you. You keep going back to it again and again, however hard you try to stop, until it feels as though your thoughts are controlling you instead of the other way round.

This obsessing, or overthinking, feels very negative and often leads to stress, anxiety, depression. Indeed it is often associated with these conditions but all of us, regardless of our underlying mood, can fall prey to it from time to time. At its worst it can make you feel physically ill and can leave you exhausted and unable to function effectively.

One of the most frustrating ironies of replaying incidents, worries or problems in our heads is that you focus more and more on the problem. What you should be focused on is the feelings it causes. It’s much more productive to address the fact you are prone to anxiety, than to address your fear of flying without dealing with the underlying anxiety. And even if you did successfully sort out your feelings about your upcoming plane journey, you still won’t have tackled your broader tendency to feel anxious. It will just find an outlet elsewhere.

So what you want is to stop brooding. Ah, but that brings its own problems. If I say ‘whatever you do, don’t think about little white polar bears’, what’s the first image that comes into your head? If you actively try not to think about a thing, that can be counter-productive. It’s easier to acknowledge that the thoughts will start running through your head from time to time and then decide what you’ll do when it happens. Prepare a positive thought to counter the negative one. When you catch yourself thinking about your fear of flying, visualise yourself happily walking off the plane after it’s landed. If you keep returning to the memory of your boss tearing you off a strip, remember a time they praised you for something.

If you’re going over a situation or encounter that you’re not happy about, think about the emotions it engenders, not the situation itself. Recognise why it’s making you unhappy – do you feel ashamed, or unappreciated, or guilty, or disappointed or not listened to? Now think about how to tackle the feeling, because that will enable you to move on from the situation itself, which isn’t really the issue – just as with a worry that stems from underlying anxiety rather than an inherently worrying scenario.

Ultimately, distracting yourself is helpful too, if you can use distraction to break your mind of the habit of running on this particular negative thought stream. Ideally, distract yourself with something that engenders positive emotions, whether that’s going for a run, phoning a friend, gaming, watching TV or anything else. Mindfulness is also helpful here, not only in diverting your thoughts but also in observing them to give you some detachment.