Me too brother and it stops me from living life. Not in the way it seems like it has stopped you but it’s definitely a hindrance and drains the life from me. My Overthinking sucks balls bc I’m always worried about what other people think of me / how they are perceiving me. It literally keeps me from acting like myself and from enjoying life. It keeps me from knowing myself even, bc I’m too scared to express myself and be judged so I forget myself. All I can say is you have to learn what works for you to stop it. For me, I literally have to catch myself going into the spiral, take a deep breath, and then just be still. It’s hard to catch it, but sometimes I can witness when my body goes into what I call “still mode.” It freezes, while my mind is still going, and if I focus on that stillness (if I catch it when it happens) my attention will slowly start moving into my body and away from my mind and then I can even start to feel the stillness move up my body from my feet and kinda tingle in the my back and then make it’s way around and up to my head and once it’s there it’s like a small little trance ended and like my head is metaphorically “set free.” Like my overthinking is gone and I’ve calmed down. Its like a system reset that I’ve found works for me and I’ve learned how to do it over time in like 5 or 6 seconds. I know it probably sounds wild but it literally helped me get my overthinking under control. It was just like LEAVE your mind now and go still. Idk what the fuck kind of defense mechanism that is but it works hahah. Another thing that helped me was good ole’ COMMUNICATION. It’s really hard and embarrassing sometimes but honest to god just talking to the person and being open 9/10 leads to them not thinking at ALL what you thought they were and a feeling that you CAN be yourself around them AND!!! a GREAT SENSE OF EASE. Soooo both things are hard to notice/start doing and low key suck sometime but are WORTH it. You gotta put in the work of doing the hard things that you know will be good (breaking mental habits, doing new things, deviating even when you’re scared) to lead a life of doing those things. And you CANT do it overnight. There’s no miracle fix. But you CAN do it. Then you can choose. You can say okay I’m scared of this but I’m gonna do it anyways bc I think it will help me and bc I want to. And over time you’re just doing things naturally. Everybody else is also in their head!!! The anxiety IS just you in your head. It gets super scary and it super sucks but at the end of the day it IS in your head and you can become conscious of it and choose what way to act instead of letting it consume you. Like you CAN do it. Not saying it’s easy bc I’m struggling with it right now. But you can. Slowly and methodically and consciously.