Dr Sameer Gudhate reads Nick Trenton’s I’m Anxious and Can’t Stop Overthinking and asks: Which of our thoughts actually deserve to be believed?

Nick Trenton’s I’m Anxious and Can’t Stop Overthinking made me look differently at the noise inside our heads

There is something strangely exhausting about an anxious mind.

It can take one unanswered message and turn it into a story. One mistake can become evidence of incompetence. One uncertain tomorrow can occupy an entire afternoon. And sometimes, the more we try to solve the thought, the more thoughts we create.

That is where Nick Trenton’s I’m Anxious and Can’t Stop Overthinking begins.

But what interested me most about the book was not its promise of stopping overthinking. It was the question underneath that promise:

Why do we keep thinking about something long after thinking has stopped helping us?

Trenton approaches that question through ten fictional therapy conversations between Leah and Dr. Amanda. Leah is anxious, self-critical and caught in familiar mental loops. Dr. Amanda becomes the voice that challenges those loops, questions the beliefs behind them and introduces practical techniques drawn largely from cognitive behavioural therapy.

The format is the book’s biggest strength.

Instead of presenting anxiety as a collection of psychological definitions, Trenton puts the ideas into conversations. Leah makes the kind of statements many readers may have made privately to themselves, and Dr. Amanda keeps asking her to examine what she has accepted as fact.

That distinction matters.

An anxious thought can feel true simply because it feels urgent.

And perhaps that is one of the most important things this book understands about human behaviour: we are remarkably good at confusing the intensity of a thought with the accuracy of a thought.

A thought that keeps returning starts acquiring authority.

“I might fail” becomes “I will fail.”

“They haven't replied” becomes “They are angry with me.”

“I made a mistake” becomes “I am a failure.”

The mind quietly removes the uncertainty from the original thought and replaces it with certainty.

Trenton’s dialogues are designed to interrupt that process.

The book introduces techniques such as behavioural experiments, affirmations, behavioural activation, values-based reflection, shame-attacking exercises and scheduled worry time. The empty-chair technique is another interesting inclusion, particularly because it turns an internal argument into something almost visible.

What I appreciated is that these techniques are not presented merely as motivational slogans.

The underlying idea is more uncomfortable.

If our beliefs influence our behaviour, and our behaviour reinforces our beliefs, then sometimes the only way to challenge a belief is to behave differently and see what actually happens.

That sounds simple.

Doing it is not.

This is where the book becomes more interesting than a collection of tips for calming down.

Because anxiety is rarely just about the event in front of us. It can be about our interpretation of that event. And our interpretation is often shaped by beliefs that existed long before the particular situation arrived.

Still, I would not call the book revolutionary.

Some of its psychological ideas are familiar, and readers who have already explored CBT or read extensively about anxiety may find parts of the book quite basic. There are moments when the conversations make an idea so explicit that an experienced reader may feel the author is explaining something they understood several pages earlier.

But I am not convinced that simplicity is necessarily a weakness here.

When your mind is already overloaded, complexity can become another burden.

A book about anxiety does not always need to impress an informed reader. Sometimes it needs to be accessible to someone whose attention is scattered, whose thoughts are racing and who may not have the energy to work through a dense psychological textbook.

That makes Leah an important choice.

She is not presented as an abstract case study. She becomes a mirror.

And mirrors can be uncomfortable.

While reading her conversations with Dr. Amanda, I found myself thinking about how easily human beings turn possibilities into predictions. We don't know what someone thinks, so we guess. Then we react to our guess as though it were evidence.

Perhaps that is one of the stranger habits of the anxious mind.

We create a future in our head and then experience emotions in the present because of something that has not happened.

But there is another question the book made me consider.

Is all thinking that looks like overthinking actually useless?

I don't think so.

Reflection can prevent mistakes. Planning can protect us. Considering different outcomes can sometimes be wise. Thinking deeply is not the enemy.

The problem begins when thinking stops producing understanding and starts producing only more thinking.

That distinction stayed with me.

There is a difference between solving a problem and repeatedly visiting it.

Between reflection and rumination.

Between preparation and mentally rehearsing every possible disaster.

And perhaps between being careful and being afraid.

That is where I found the book most useful.

It doesn't necessarily give a sophisticated new theory of anxiety. Instead, it gives familiar experiences a structure and gives readers language for recognising patterns that otherwise feel like an inseparable part of themselves.

I also liked that the book does not pretend that changing self-talk means replacing every negative thought with a cheerful one. Realistic thinking is considerably more useful than forced positivity.

You don't necessarily have to tell yourself, “Everything will be wonderful.”

Sometimes the healthier statement is simply:

“I don't know what will happen yet.”

There is freedom in that sentence.

I’m Anxious and Can’t Stop Overthinking will probably work best for readers who recognise themselves in Leah but have never quite known what to do once the mental spiral begins.

Readers already deeply familiar with CBT may want greater depth and complexity.

For everyone else, Trenton offers something more modest and, in its own way, more practical: a conversation with the anxious voice inside us.

The book did not make me believe that we can simply switch anxiety off.

It made me think about something else.

Perhaps the goal is not to stop the mind from producing frightening thoughts. Perhaps the goal is to stop treating every thought as a fact that deserves our attention.

And that is a distinction worth carrying beyond the final page.

Because sometimes the question isn't:

“How do I stop thinking?”

It is:

“Which of these thoughts actually deserves to be believed?”

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