How do I stop arguing with myself or overthinking?
The skill needed here is inner conflict resolution. It’s not completely dissimilar to regular conflict resolution. The idea is to get all the parts of you to cooperate. You do that by listening and understanding them.
Start talking with your inner parts. I recommend writing it down in a journal. This gets the thoughts out of your head.
Talk like you want to be friends with them, like you want to understand them, you care about them, and you want to re-establish trust with them and live peacefully together the rest of your life. Do this regardless of whether they are ill-tempered or mean. You can tell them, “hey, you’re being mean”. But do it like you know they are good at heart and just picked up terrible communication habits and you’ll get through this and learn how to get along. Talk to them like you are committed to your relationship.
Then try to understand what your inner parts need and meet their needs. Stop hating them for having needs, even if it’s inconvenient or you think it makes you less acceptable to other people. Build an inner fence around your parts so they know you are on their side, not the world’s side against them.
Notice and stop being mean to yourself. Do you actually want to treat yourself that way to begin with? Wherever you learned it doesn’t matter as much as stopping, right now. This takes practice but once you really realize how much damage it is doing, you won’t want to do it anymore. You will realize that damage by talking to your inner parts that are on the receiving end of it.
Stop making your feelings wrong. Your feelings just are what they are. They are information, but otherwise neutral. They have no intrinsic meaning or morality. They are just chemical signals, like being hungry or needing to pee. Learn how to validate your own feelings first, then if others validate you it’s a bonus. You always have a reason to feel how you feel. Feelings never happen for no reason. It doesn’t really matter if it’s a “good” reason. Evaluating if it’s OK to feel a certain way is the opposite of validation. Validation is, “It makes sense that you feel that way”. That is what helps your feelings settle. (see: how to emotionally regulate)
Decondition yourself from self-harming ideas. Examine and reject any ideas or beliefs or mental habits you picked up anywhere that are unsupportive of your happiness & freedom. I mean any thoughts that are anti-you. Thoughts like, “you aren’t good enough” or habits like constantly comparing yourself to other people. Ask yourself how you would want the bestest friend imaginable to talk to you and think about you, and do that.
Stop letting people harm you. Or if you do let people harm you, don’t expect it not to hurt. What I mean is, accept the results of your actions. This is more an argument with reality, but it can show up as inner conflict with a part saying, “It shouldn’t be this way”. If you have parts like this, you have to gently help them accept reality while validating that reality is not fair, not good, and not OK a lot of the time—but you are still there for them and you will do the best you can to treat them well.
Stop masking. This is a whole subject in itself and obviously you might not even know you are doing it. But if you have the vague sense that you are hoping one day you will achieve being “normal” or “acceptable”, that’s masking. The key here is to reject the premise. You were never not acceptable or broken or wrong just because neurotypical people couldn’t accept you as you are. That is actually their deficit, not yours. You accepted them, you were open-hearted and open-minded. They are the ones with a xenophobia problem, not you. Of course you have the right to exist the way you were born.
This process takes a long time. Several years at least depending on what skills you already have. But its totally worth it.
I have some books on the skills I’m referencing here, including how to stop being mean to yourself and do inner dialogue using empathy rather than arguing. I also highly recommend learning the basics of NVC as a framework.
About the Author
If you like this, check out Self-Liberation Society, my neurodivergent personal growth community.
See all Autistic/ADHD Self-Help Articles