1st I don’t recall having paralysis by overanalysis. I had many issues in my training life but that wasn’treally one of them. Maybe one time in the past, butI honestly don’t remember having it.
BTW you got it backwards… paralysis by overanalysis doesn’t cause anxiety… anxiety leads to paralysis by overnalysis.
Let me explain.
First you need to understand what anxiety is.
Anxiety, at its root, is nothing more than your neurons firing too fast which leads to your losing control of your thoughts or feelings.
Overanalysis is actually a symptom of anxiety. Anxiety is magnified by uncertainty. People who are naturally more anxious will adopt subconscious mechanisms to reduce their anxiety:
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Overthinking/overanalysis… this comes from the need to account for every little detail, to avoid unplanned events to cause an issue.
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Overplanning … planning something in the smallest detail, trying to account for every possible problem to avoid uncertainty. Knowing that nothing can go wrong if you follow the plan reduces anxiety.
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Being more introverted… you stick to people you know and you avoid sharing personal feelings or thoughts so that you stay in your “safe zone”.
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Being very detail oriented… for example you must know every technica detail regarding a lift, once again this is to feel more in control of the lift, reducing anxiety (anxiety is when you feel like you are losing control of your brain).
Basically anxiety is when you feel like you are losing control of your brain so the defense mechanism is to try to control everything else.
Now, the fact that “anxiety”,the anxious feeling, appears AFTER your paralysis by overanalysis doesn’t mean that the overanalysis caused it. It just means that anxiety ramped up the point where you started to feel physical symptoms… prior to that anxiety was present but was limited to thinking too much and maybe some muscle tension.
People who are more prone to anxiety/overthinking are those who have too little inhibitory neurotransmitters in relation to their excitory neurotransmitters’ efficacy.
Serotonin and GABA are the inhibitory neuroT. Their job is to “calm the brain down” when it’s overactive. If you don’t have enough,when your brain start to ramp up you will become “anxious”.
So my guess would be that either your serotonin or GABA are super low. How do you know which one? Well if it’s serotonin you will be super organized, very routine-based, borderline OCD, have cold hands and feet. If it’s GABA you will be disorganized, will take everything personal, have frequent mood swings.
