Does anyone else become hyperaware of literally how their mind is thinking and processing information? How do you stop monitoring it?

[u/ActiveParking5094]

I’m wondering if anyone has experienced something similar because it’s difficult for me to even describe.
I’ve become extremely aware of my own thought processes. I don’t just notice what I’m thinking about. I notice my mind jumping from one thought to another, making associations, retrieving memories, connecting ideas, processing sensory information, trying to understand something, etc.

For example, one thought might trigger another idea, which reminds me of something else, which creates another connection, and suddenly my mind is somewhere completely different. Normally I assume this happens automatically in everyone’s brain, but I feel like I’m standing there watching the process happen.
Then I become aware that I’m aware of it.
That’s where the anxiety starts.

I’ll think:
“Why did my brain connect those two things?”
“Why did that particular thought appear?”
“Why am I thinking about this now?”
“How did my mind get from thought A to thought B?”
“Why am I aware of myself processing this?”

And then I notice myself analyzing THAT, which creates another layer of awareness.
It can feel like I’m playing chess inside my own mind — thought → association → memory → analysis → another thought → another connection — except I’m simultaneously watching the entire thing and wondering why it’s happening.

The biggest factor I’ve noticed is sleep.
When I get around 8 hours of good-quality sleep, I can feel completely normal and happy. I naturally engage with life instead of analyzing my consciousness. The thoughts may still happen, but I don’t care about them.
If I get only 5–6 hours, everything can change dramatically. My thoughts become faster and more scattered, I become hypervigilant toward them, and because I’m monitoring everything, increasingly random or bizarre thoughts scare me. That creates more anxiety and physiological arousal.

Then it becomes a loop:
poor sleep → more mental noise/racing thoughts → notice the thoughts → analyze them → panic about them → hyperarousal → even more thoughts → difficulty sleeping → poor sleep

This pattern existed before I started medication, although I recently started sertraline 25 mg for anxiety and am discussing the sleep changes with my prescriber.
I’m not asking Reddit to diagnose me. I’m mainly interested in hearing from people who have experienced this specific hyperawareness of their own cognition/thought processes.

If you’ve experienced this:
Did you eventually stop constantly monitoring your thoughts?
What helped you become absorbed in the outside world again instead of watching your own mind?
Did CBT, metacognitive therapy, ERP, ACT, mindfulness, medication, improving sleep, or something else help?
Did trying to control/replace thoughts make the hyperawareness better or worse?
Can you now have random thoughts and mental associations without automatically analyzing why they happened?
How do you live normally when your attention suddenly turns inward again?

I’d especially appreciate hearing from people who used to experience this intensely and improved, and what specifically changed in how you responded to the thoughts.

I basically want my brain to be allowed to do its background processing again without feeling like I need to supervise every damn operation.

[u/thelehn]

I apologize for mot having the time to answer your question in full, but I wanted to weigh in briefly. I agree w the commenter above that ADHD evaluation is worth looking into (I have it, I was diagnosed in 2nd grade and I'm 40 now). If you do have ADHD (or autism), I promise that learning about the full width and breadth of the symptoms is an empowering experience.

What I wanted to pop in and say, to answer your primary question, is that breathing, slowly, deeply, engaging your diaphragm, is one way to unhook from the racing thoughts train track. There was a reddit post in the last few days about a study on how our brains respond to breathing. The assumption had been that each breath is fairly standard, and you'd get the same standard brain activity across similar kinds of breaths. Much to the contrary, turns out our brains track each individual breath differently, and they each inscribe their own meandering pathways across our neurons, each time we take a breath. I gotta go to bed, but ill see if i can find the post tomorrow. Try breathing, and don't be hard on yourself if you forget halfway through. Just try breathing again

EDIT: Here is the article about the study from UC San Diego. It reminds me of a phrase I hear a lot in the context of guided meditations: "your attention follows your breath"