Common patterns
- Replaying conversations
- Trying to predict every outcome
- Needing certainty before acting
- Fear of being wrong
- Turning therapy into an intellectual project
When thinking becomes the problem
Thinking is genuinely useful, and I don't treat it as something to shut down. Some clients need a clear conceptual picture of what's happening before they can engage with it at all, and I'm glad to work that way when it helps. But analysis can also become a way of staying one careful step removed from whatever the thinking is actually about.
One thing I pay attention to is what happens when your attention suddenly shifts: a pause, an unrelated image, a comment you almost didn't say out loud. Those moments often lead somewhere more relevant than the loop you were just describing, and I'd usually rather follow that thread than redirect you back to it. This kind of moment-to-moment curiosity draws on an approach called Method of Levels, which pays close attention to shifts in attention as clues about what's actually organizing a problem.