The Danger of Thinking Too Much?

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The capacity to think ahead is a unique form of consciousness.

For most of us, it is both a blessing and a bane. However, during our pandemic, the latter dominates. There’s a great deal of “What if?” cogitation occupying our minds of late, leaving many overflowing with worry, angst and trepidation.

The capacity to think ahead is not confined to humans, but we get the gold medal. There is growing evidence other animals, including birds, social insects, primates and many other mammals achieve this cognitive feat. Consider the neuro-mechanics behind mental time travel, which is, literally, transporting your psyche into a presumed future. For most of us, this form of cogitating is, at a minimum, a visual experience in the mind’s eye. Often, we picture some event or happening, and sometimes fill in other accompanying sensory data such as sound, and even touch and scent.

Remarkably, the brain can do in your imagination just about anything that your senses can do out here in the so-called real world. Envisioning something is the mental equivalent of being there and, in the brain, elicits similar neurochemical and emotional responses. Translation? Our brains don’t distinguish that much between external reality and conjured reality. If you doubt that, recall a time when you awoke from a vivid dream and required some waking up before realizing it was, after all, merely a dream. Your brain was convinced otherwise, that is until your conscious mind decided differently.

Watch Out Worriers

So, for us worriers that means each time we project ourselves into some unpleasant or frightening made-up future, our brains and bodies will start reacting as if we are actually immersed in the real deal. That may explain, in part, why living in fear is not good for one’s well-being. A recent study linked negative thinking, including worrying, with lower life satisfaction and a premature kick at the proverbial bucket.

Inversely, the toothy positive thinkers among us get a bio-psychological buzz from imagining themselves in some wonderful context to come. And, as we know, hope and optimism are not just mental events—they feed good vibes (and hormones) to the body. These effects, among others, are not minor. Studies show most of us spend a great deal of time thinking ahead, so, whether we spin those thoughts about the future in a positive or negative way, we are substantially influencing our health, both mental and physical. 

Why do we “futurize” so much? It is, in theory, a leg up in the struggle for survival. After all, if you are successful at anticipating events, you accrue a number of advantages, not the least of which is being able to adjust your behavior to steer happenings in your favor. But as Yogi Berra reminded us, “Predictions are difficult…especially about the future.” Our world is full of people who purport to forecast what’s ahead, from stock pickers to political pundits to sports analysts, but few of them get it right consistently.

So, given how challenging it is to envision the future accurately, why do so many of us occupy so much of our neural hardware in this pursuit? Past successes may be one culprit. If, on rare occasions, we do manage to correctly predict what’s next, hitting this particular mental jackpot can feel sufficiently rewarding to keep us trying, no matter the odds. In the past of every bankrupt gambler there’s a time when they handily beat the house at least once.

Thinking ahead has its worthwhile uses but worrying and struggling to make accurate forecasts in the absence of reliable predictive data is not among them. The pandemic has driven home this point. It remains a moving and morphing target that defies our capacity to foretell what will happen next. 

So, the next time you find yourself predicting what’s ahead, consider a Chinese proverb that states, “When men think of the future, God laughs.”

Most of the time, the joke is on us.

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