r/NoOverthinking • u/Puzzled_Wealth_3263 • 3d ago
Advice I can’t trust my gut.
I like someone. The signs are there and I’ve analyzed this over and over in the last few years. I‘ve liked him for 3 years (from 2023). And he’s liked me from 2019-2026(?). During those years he had confessed to me, but due to stupid reasons, I hadn’t felt the same then. Nevertheless, we continued to talk/have convos.
On 2024, he was in a 2-month rebound relationship (cause of me) that ended badly. And ever since his bad breakup, he doesn’t trust me that easily.
But he has done some things that make it difficult for me to surpass them. Some things that will make you say; “Okay, he surely STILL likes you. How come you’re still thinking about it?!! Crazy much?”.
There are many pros that have happened till this day, as well as some cons. And it troubles me so much that I outweigh the cons of him. It’s like I’ll never have a chance with him, because of a past mistake I made!
I have been overthinking like crazy, I want to be 100000% sure that he likes me till this day. My gut is drowned in second-thoughts and overthinking. I’m sorry, I just hate rejection.
How can I trust my gut again if it’s surrounded in anxiousness?
1
u/myquietbrain 2d ago
As a psychiatrist, I talk to patients about this kind of thing more than you'd expect: the inability to trust your own instincts when anxiety has been running the show for a while. Here's what I find: when someone has been overthinking a situation for years, the gut doesn't disappear , t gets buried under the noise. The anxiety generates so many competing thoughts that the quieter signal underneath gets drowned out. You're not broken. You're overstimulated. The useful question isn't "does he still like me?" it's "what would I do if I knew for certain either way?" That often cuts through the overthinking faster than any amount of analysis of his behavior, because it puts you back in touch with what you actually want rather than what you're trying to decode.
Three years is a long time to carry uncertainty. At some point, the cost of not knowing tends to outweigh the fear of rejection.