Often, it can feel useful at first. You may be trying to understand what happened, to see what you missed, or to figure out what to do next. In that sense, thinking has a purpose. It can help you learn, prepare, and make better decisions.

But at a certain point, you may notice that you are no longer arriving at anything new. The same points repeat themselves, the same emotional tone is present, and there is a sense of movement without any real progress. Instead of leading to clarity, the thinking seems to keep you in place.

When Thinking Stops Helping

At this point, reflection becomes rumination.

One way to understand the difference is to look at the result. Useful thinking tends to move toward some kind of resolution. You see something more clearly, you make a decision, or identify the next step. Rumination, by contrast, tends to recycle the same material. It can feel active, but it does not lead anywhere. When this is happening, the mind is no longer helping in the way it intends to.

And that raises a practical question: if continuing to think about something is not helping, what do you do instead?

If you recognize this pattern in your own experience and want a more structured way to work with it, sign up for my course Breaking Out of Rumination. It explores these patterns in depth and offers practical ways to shift them over time. If you decide to join, you can use the code SUBSTACK10 for a 10% discount.

In the rest of this article, I’ll walk through how to recognize when thinking has stopped being useful, what is often driving rumination beneath the surface, and how to step out of the loop in a way that is both practical and grounded in your experience.

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If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. Self-doubt is one of the most common inner obstacles that people face, and it can feel incredibly frustrating, especially when, logically, you know you’re capable. The gap between what you know intellectually and what you feel emotionally can seem impossibly wide.

I’ll dive deeper into this below, and if you’re ready to dive even further into this work, check out my online Self-Worth Workshop that has helped thousands of people so far, and you can use code substack10 at checkout for 10% off.

What is Self-Doubt Really About?

Self-doubt isn’t just about questioning your abilities. At its core, it’s often a deeper uncertainty about your worth as a person. It’s the nagging feeling that you’re somehow not enough, not smart enough, not likable enough, not worthy enough - just as you are.

This doubt can show up in many ways:

• Hesitating to speak up in meetings or social situations

• Overworking to prove your value

• Avoiding opportunities because you fear failure

• Constantly comparing yourself to others

• Difficulty accepting compliments or acknowledging your achievements

The painful irony is that self-doubt often has nothing to do with your actual capabilities. You might be highly skilled, experienced, and accomplished, yet still feel that gnawing uncertainty inside.

Where Does Self-Doubt Come From?

Our brains are wired with what’s called a “negativity bias”. We naturally pay more attention to threats, problems, and criticisms than to positive experiences. This made sense for our ancestors who needed to remember dangers to survive, but in modern life, it means we’re more likely to remember the one critical comment than the ten compliments.

Additionally, many of us carry messages from our past, from parents, teachers, peers, or society, that somehow, we need to earn our worth through achievement, approval, or being perfect. These messages can become internalized voices that fuel self-doubt, making us believe that our value is conditional rather than inherent.

But here’s a profound truth: Your worth isn’t something you need to earn or prove. It’s already there.

In the rest of this article, you’ll learn:

• How to recognize and shift the patterns of self-doubt in your mind

• Practical techniques to reconnect with your inherent worth

• Ways to build a foundation of self-acceptance that doesn’t depend on external validation

• Methods to strengthen your inner resilience and confidence

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Each time you replay it, the anger feels fresh, if not even stronger. You craft the perfect comeback you didn’t think of at the moment, you rehearse what you’ll say next time, you build a case for why you’re right, and they’re wrong.

This is anger rumination, and your brain is doing something very specific that makes it incredibly hard to stop.

I’ll get into the science below, but if you’re ready to just dive in and stop this harmful pattern, my comprehensive online course in rumination has helped thousands already, and you can use code substack10 at checkout for 10% off.

The Rumination Loop: What’s Actually Happening in Your Brain

Here’s what’s fascinating from a neuroscience perspective: your brain doesn’t clearly distinguish between experiencing something and vividly remembering it. When you replay an angry encounter, you’re essentially re-experiencing it neurologically. Your amygdala — the brain’s alarm system — activates. Stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline course through your body. Your heart rate increases and your muscles tense.

You’re not just thinking about being angry. You’re being angry all over again.

And here’s the kicker: each time you replay the incident, you’re strengthening the neural pathways associated with that anger. It’s like walking the same path through a field of grass - eventually you wear a path that becomes easier and easier to follow. There’s a phrase in neuroscience for this: “neurons that fire together, wire together.” Your brain is literally learning to be angry about this particular thing, making it more automatic, more accessible, more likely to pop up uninvited.

Why Rumination Feels So Compelling (And So Necessary)

But if it’s so harmful, why do we do it? There are actually some very good reasons, or at least, reasons that made sense for our ancestors.

It feels productive. Rumination disguises itself as problem-solving. Your brain tells you: “If I just think about this enough, I’ll figure out how to fix it, prevent it, or win next time.” There’s a sense that you’re doing something about the injustice.

It validates our pain. Replaying the incident confirms that yes, we were wronged. Yes, we have a right to be angry. There’s a kind of self-righteous comfort in that.

It’s a form of preparation. Our evolutionary history wired us to learn from threats and prepare for them. If that saber-toothed tiger attacked from the left last time, you’d better remember that. The problem is, your brain treats even smaller threats — like social slights — with similar urgency.

It gives us a sense of control. In rumination, you get to rewrite the script. You win the argument, you say the perfect thing. In a world where we often feel powerless, that fantasy can be addictive.

The Hidden Cost: What Rumination Actually Does to You

The problem is, while rumination feels like it’s helping, it’s actually doing the opposite.

Physiologically, chronic rumination keeps your body in a state of stress. That repeated cortisol release is linked to inflammation, weakened immune function, cardiovascular problems, and disrupted sleep. You’re essentially putting your body through the stress of the original event over and over again.

Psychologically, it narrows your perspective. When you’re stuck in the anger loop, you become less able to see nuance, less open to alternative explanations, less capable of empathy, even when it might serve you. Research shows that rumination is a strong predictor of depression and anxiety disorders.

Relationally, it poisons your connections. You might snap at people who had nothing to do with the original incident. You become less present with loved ones, and perhaps most damaging, rumination can trap you in a victim identity, making it harder to move forward or repair relationships.

The neuroscience is clear: the more you ruminate, the more you’re training your brain to be angry, reactive, and stuck. You’re literally building the architecture of suffering.

The Good News

Your brain’s neuroplasticity, its ability to change and rewire, works both ways. Just as you can strengthen pathways for anger and rumination, you can also build new pathways for calm, perspective, and resilience.

The goal isn’t to suppress anger or pretend everything’s fine. Anger itself is a valid, important emotion. It alerts us to injustice, boundary violations, and unmet needs. The question isn’t whether to feel anger, it’s whether to get stuck in it.

So how do you actually interrupt the rumination cycle? How do you acknowledge the anger without letting it hijack your brain for hours, days, or weeks? And how do you build the mental habits that make peace more accessible than outrage?

In the rest of this article, I’ll show you how to:

• Interrupt the rumination loop in real-time using proven practices from contemplative psychology and neuroscience

• Process anger in a healthy way that honors your feelings while releasing its grip on you

• Rewire your neural pathways through targeted exercises that take just minutes a day

• Create a “mental firebreak” that stops rumination before it takes root

• Transform anger into wisdom by extracting the useful information while letting go of the suffering

These are practical tools you can use immediately, drawing from both ancient contemplative wisdom and modern neuroscience research.

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If you’ve ever felt this way, there’s an actual evolutionary reason for it, and understanding why can help you deal with it.

In my experience, most people move through their lives thinking that somehow it’s threat level orange when, objectively, right then and there, it’s threat level green. Or maybe threat level chartreuse... like a swimming pool of green paint with a drop of yellow.

(If you’re not familiar: threat levels are the security alert system: green means low risk, orange means high risk. Most of us walk around feeling like we’re in high alert mode when we’re actually safe.)

Why is that? Why do we move through our days overestimating the likelihood of bad events occurring and also overestimating how bad it would feel if they happened?

One of the deep roots of the answer to this question is found in our own biological evolution over the six hundred million year evolution of the nervous system.

Our ancestors could make two kinds of mistakes.

First, they could think that there was a tiger in the bushes about to pounce, some kind of bad thing was coming at them... but in fact, there wasn’t such a threat.

The alternative mistake was to think that everything’s fine, the coast is clear... but in fact, there really was a tiger in the bushes about to jump.

What’s the cost of the first mistake? Needless anxiety.

What’s the cost of the second mistake? No more mistakes forever.

As a result, we’re designed to make the first mistake hundreds and hundreds of times to avoid making the second mistake even once.

In effect, we evolved to be adaptively paranoid of paper tigers. A paper tiger is a metaphor for something that appears threatening but is actually harmless. We’re wired to treat harmless things as dangerous because the cost of being wrong was death.

That’s a good prescription for upping the odds of survival at significant cost to well-being back in the Serengeti Plains. And there are situations today in which yep, this paper tiger paranoia is actually really useful because it super keeps us on our toes.

But for most people, what it leads to is needless anxiety and also a needless swerving away from opportunities with an overfocus on threats.

Think about it:

• You don’t speak up in the meeting because you overestimate how badly it could go

• You don’t tell your partner what you really need because you imagine the worst-case scenario

• You avoid opportunities because the potential downside looms larger than the potential upside

Your nervous system is doing what it was designed to do, but it’s miscalibrated for modern life.

So here’s the question: If we’re wired this way, are we just stuck with it?

No.

There’s a very simple and powerful method I’ve borrowed from cognitive therapy that you can start using immediately. It’s a technique for forming more accurate appraisals of threats, not underestimating them and not overestimating them either.

In the rest of this article, I’ll walk you through the exact step-by-step process I use, including a detailed real-world example of how to challenge your anxious thoughts with believable counter-arguments that actually calm your nervous system down. You’ll learn how to separate the paper tigers from the real ones and what to do about both.

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“How do you reconcile wanting to be well with non-dualistic wholeness? If I’m stuck in uncomfortable emotions, shouldn’t I just be sitting with what is?”

This question is not just philosophical, but deeply personal, and it reveals a split that can paralyze people on the path.

On one side: “I am already whole. Nothing is broken. Everything is already complete. I should just accept what is.”

On the other hand: “But I’m suffering, I’m anxious, depressed, triggered, stuck. I want to feel better. I want to heal.”

And in the middle: “If I try to heal, am I rejecting what is? Am I creating the very duality I’m trying to transcend? Am I spiritually failing by wanting things to be different?”

This is the trap of what I call spiritual bypassing disguised as non-duality.

And it’s caused more unnecessary suffering than almost any other misunderstanding on the contemplative path.

So let me be clear: You can be fundamentally whole AND still grow. You can accept what is AND work skillfully with what’s arising.

These are two sides of the same truth. Let me show you how.

The Misunderstanding: Confusing Levels of Truth

Here’s where people get stuck: they collapse different levels of truth into one, and then wonder why nothing works.

On the ultimate level—the level of your deepest nature—you are already whole. Nothing is broken. Nothing needs to be fixed. Your awareness, your consciousness, the very ground of your being is inherently complete.

This is true.

But on the relative level, the level of lived human experience, you have a nervous system that can be dysregulated, thought patterns that cause suffering, and emotional wounds that need tending.

This is also true.

The mistake is thinking you have to choose between them.

People hear teachings about non-duality, about already being the Buddha, about “nothing to do and nowhere to go,” and they think: “Oh, so I should just accept my anxiety/depression/trauma and do nothing about it. To want to change it would be grasping.”

No. That’s not what those teachings mean.

In the rest of this article, I’ll show you exactly how to hold both truths at once, the framework for recognizing your fundamental wholeness while still doing the healing work that reduces suffering. You’ll learn the practical distinction between true acceptance and spiritual bypassing, discover what “sitting with what is” actually means (hint: it’s not passive), and get a clear both/and practice you can use immediately. This is the resolution to the paradox that stops so many practitioners in their tracks.

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The Problem: Your Mind Can’t Think Its Way Out

When you’re caught in a mental loop, replaying conversations, analyzing decisions, spiraling through worst-case scenarios, it’s natural to assume you need to think your way through it.

But here’s what I want you to understand: When you’re dysregulated, your thinking is compromised. You literally can’t access clear reasoning when your nervous system is activated.

The first question isn’t “What should I think about this?”

The first question is: “Am I regulated right now?”

The “Of Course You’re Upset” Technique

I have a practice I call the “of course you’re upset” technique.

Here’s how it works:

When you notice yourself spinning, pause and say to yourself:

“Of course I’m upset. Of course, this is hard. Of course, I’m feeling this way.”

By acknowledging what’s true in your body and nervous system, you stop fighting your own experience, you stop adding a second layer of suffering (”Why am I so anxious? Why can’t I just calm down?”) on top of the first.

You give your system permission to be exactly where it is.

Regulation First, Then Thinking

Here’s the key: Work with your body before you work with your mind.

When you’re dysregulated:

• Your prefrontal cortex (rational thinking) goes offline

• Your amygdala (threat detection) takes over

• Your body is in survival mode

No amount of “positive thinking” or “reframing” will work when your nervous system believes it’s in danger.

So the sequence is:

1. Regulate (breathe, ground, acknowledge “of course I’m upset”)

2. Then think (once you’re resourced, you can access clarity)

How to Tell the Difference

So how do you know if you’re overthinking or dysregulated?

Check your body first.

Are you:

• Breathing shallowly or holding your breath?

• Feeling tension in your chest, jaw, or shoulders?

• Experiencing a sense of urgency or panic?

• Unable to settle or focus?

If yes, you’re likely dysregulated. Your nervous system needs support before your mind can work clearly.

Overthinking, on the other hand, happens when you’re relatively calm but caught in analysis paralysis, weighing options endlessly, searching for the “perfect” answer, ruminating without resolution.

Most of what we call “overthinking” is actually dysregulation in disguise. The thinking is your mind’s attempt to create safety when your body feels unsafe.

The Practice

When you catch yourself in the spin:

Step 1: Name it
“Of course I’m upset. Of course, this feels overwhelming.”

Step 2: Resource your body

• Take three slow, complete breaths

• Place your hand on your heart

• Feel your feet on the ground

• Notice what’s actually around you right now

Step 3: Ask the question
“Now that I’m more settled, what do I actually need here?”

Often, you’ll find the answer isn’t more thinking at all. It’s rest, or a conversation. It’s letting something go and trusting yourself.

What I Want You to Remember

You can’t think your way into regulation. But you can regulate your way into clear thinking.

Your body knows the difference between real danger and perceived threat, and your job is to help your nervous system feel safe enough to remember. Sometimes that starts with the simplest acknowledgment: “Of course I’m upset. Of course.”

Want to go deeper into practices that help you work with dysregulation and build genuine resilience?

Join my flagship course, Foundations of Well-Being, where I walk you through the neuroscience of regulation, practical techniques for everyday stress, and how to transform your relationship with difficult emotions. This is about building real capacity in your nervous system.

The content in this article has been adapted from my spoken word.

“My 33-year-old nephew died in an avalanche two months ago. I’m trying to practice taking in the good, but I’m struggling. How does this fit with the pain and disorientation of grief? How do I stay in touch with the real pain while also tuning into the real good, without spiritual bypassing?”

There’s a moment in early grief when you catch yourself laughing at something, a joke, a dog doing something ridiculous, the absurdity of a typo, and then immediately feel guilty. How can I laugh when someone I love is gone?

Or you’re walking through the grocery store, hollowed out by loss, and you notice the tulips are beautiful. For three seconds, you feel something other than devastation. And then the grief crashes back in, twice as hard, as if to punish you for forgetting.

This is the impossible bind of grieving: How do you honor the reality of loss without drowning in it? How do you let in moments of beauty without betraying the person you’ve lost?

The question comes from someone whose nephew, young, vibrant, 33 years old, died suddenly in an avalanche. The grief is fresh, disorienting, total. And yet there are also teachings about “taking in the good,” about building inner resources, about not getting lost in the negative. So what to do?

Is taking in the good a form of spiritual bypassing, a way of avoiding the raw truth of pain? Or is there a way to be with the grief while also recognizing that life, somehow, continues to offer small moments of grace?

The Rhythm of Grief

Here’s the fundamental truth: Grief and goodness are not opposites. They coexist.

This isn’t about choosing one or the other. It’s not about “focusing on the positive” to escape the pain. That would be bypassing, and it would fail because grief doesn’t work that way. You can’t outrun it. You can’t think your way around it. It will find you in the cereal aisle, in the shower, in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon when you suddenly remember something they said, and the floor drops out from under you.

But the other truth is this: You can be devastated and notice the tulips. Both are real and both are true. Recognizing one does not negate the other.

In fact, this is the very practice grief asks of us: to hold the mosaic of reality without collapsing it into a single story.

There’s a rhythm to this. It’s a three-part process: “let be, let go, let in.”

In the rest of this article, you’ll discover:

• How to honor your grief without being consumed by it

• The practice of “letting go” without letting go of your love

• A simple three-breath technique for holding both pain and beauty at once

• Why taking in the good isn’t betrayal, it’s how your nervous system heals

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This is the question that matters most.

Because let’s be honest, when you’re in the middle of a panic attack, when you’ve just gotten terrible news, when someone’s words have sent you into a shame spiral, when your body is shaking with rage or fear, all those beautiful contemplative practices you’ve learned feel completely out of reach.

Your thinking brain has gone offline, your heart is pounding, your breath is shallow and fast, and you can’t remember what you’re supposed to do. You just know you need something, and you need it now.

This is the moment when we most need skillful tools. And it’s also the moment when most practices feel impossible.

So what do you actually do?

I’m going to share my big three, the practices I return to again and again when I’m flooded, or when I’m working with someone who is. These aren’t theoretical; they’re real survival tools. And they work because they meet your nervous system exactly where it is.

First: Get Grounded in Your Body

When you’re overwhelmed, the first thing that happens is dissociation. You leave your body, you go up into your head, or you fragment, or you disappear into a fog of activation.

So the first practice is simple: find your body again.

I don’t mean this in some abstract, spiritual way. I mean literally: Can you feel your feet on the ground? Can you feel your hands as they touch the armrests of your chair? Can you feel the weight of your body being held by the earth?

This is why I always come back to the body as a refuge. Your body is always here. It’s always now. Even when your mind is spinning stories about the past or catastrophizing about the future, your body exists only in this present moment.

Try this right now:

Press your feet into the floor. Feel the contact. Feel the solidity beneath you.

Notice your hands. Can you feel the temperature of your skin? The sensation of your fingers touching each other or resting on your legs?

Take one full breath and feel your belly expand. Then let it go.

That’s it. You’ve just interrupted the flood.

When your prefrontal cortex is offline, you can’t think your way back to calm. But you can sense your way back. The body is the doorway.

That’s the first doorway back to yourself. But it’s only the beginning.

The next two practices build on this foundation, and together, they form a complete system for working with overwhelm. Let me show you what comes next.

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How can you bring together effort and ease?

How do you care about what you do, while also not becoming burdened by it? How do you stay engaged with life without getting caught up in it?

In one way or another, this question shows up for each of us. You have responsibilities, relationships, work to do, and situations that call for clarity and effort. At the same time, you begin to recognize the limits of striving. You see how much tension comes from trying to control what you cannot control, or from holding on too tightly to particular outcomes.

So the question is not whether to make an effort or to let go. The question is how to live with both. It can help to begin with something very simple.

At a physical level, letting go is easy to understand. You release tension in the body. You unclench a muscle. We exhale. There is a natural shift from holding on to letting go.

In your mind, the process is similar, though often more subtle.

You may be holding on to a belief, an expectation, or an imagined outcome. You may be caught in a pattern of worry that keeps unfolding on its own. In these cases, letting go does not necessarily mean forcing your mind to stop. It may instead involve allowing the process to continue while you step out of identification with it.

For example, when you start worrying, you can observe it as a kind of movement in the mind. Thoughts appear, develop, and pass. If you do not feed that process, it tends to settle on its own. In this way, letting go can mean allowing something to run its course without reinforcing it.

There is also a deeper aspect of letting go that involves recognizing the limits of your power.

There are things you can influence, and there are things you cannot. You cannot make another person return your call. You cannot guarantee a particular outcome. You cannot shape the world entirely according to your wishes.

When you see clearly that you do not have the power to make something happen, there is a place for releasing the effort to do so. This does not mean indifference. It means that you stop struggling with what is not in your hands.

At the same time, there is another side to this. There is the matter of doing the right thing.

In each moment, there is something that fits the situation. There is a way of thinking, speaking, or acting that is more aligned with your values and with the reality in front of you.

Sometimes this is very simple. It may be sending an email that needs to be sent, completing a task, or following through on a commitment. At other times, it is more nuanced. It may involve choosing not to say something that would be unhelpful, or deciding to step back rather than push forward.

When you begin to orient yourself toward what is right in the next moment, life can become less complicated. Instead of becoming entangled in everything you could do, you return to a more immediate question.

What is called for now?

And often, if you are quiet enough, you already know.

In the rest of this article, I’ll explore how to stay connected to what is right without becoming strained, how to bring effort into better balance, and how this relates to a deeper recognition of your own nature. The aim is not just to understand these ideas, but also to apply them in everyday life, when things are not simple.

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And usually, something happens inside us too. We might get defensive, or want to argue, or feel confused, flooded, or overwhelmed.

Human beings are profoundly social creatures. Our nervous systems are constantly picking up emotional signals from other people, their tone of voice, posture, gestures, and expressions. When someone around us becomes reactive, we often feel the effects of that reaction almost immediately, because our brains are designed to respond quickly to the emotional signals of others.

But there is a crucial turning point in these situations.

If we get triggered when the other person is triggered, things usually escalate quickly. It becomes much harder to bring steadiness or clarity to what is happening. The real challenge is learning how to remain grounded when another person is not. There’s a teaching in the Buddhist tradition that says: if someone is being swept down a swollen river, how could they help another person across?

So the first task is simple, though not always easy: Stay steady.

In this article, I’ll walk through some practical ways to do that.

Grow the Soil Before the Storm

A friend once told me a saying about farmers:

Bad farmers grow weeds. Good farmers grow crops. Great farmers grow soil.

That’s actually a pretty deep teaching.

In relationships, the “soil” is the inner ground you cultivate inside yourself. If you know you’re walking into a conversation that might be tense — maybe with a coworker, a partner, a parent, or a sibling — the real preparation is strengthening the qualities you want to bring with you: things like like patience, clarity, or compassion.

A lot of relationships follow familiar scripts. If we’re honest, we often know roughly how an interaction might unfold. When we recognize the script, we can prepare ourselves differently. Instead of bracing for a fight, we can cultivate the inner soil that helps us respond wisely.

The First Two Moves When Someone Gets Triggered

When another person becomes reactive, the first steps are surprisingly simple.

1. Remember that your steadiness matters most.

If you lose your footing, the interaction will likely escalate. But if you stay grounded, you create the possibility of something different happening.

2. Notice your own reactions.

When someone gets intense, raising their voice, leaning toward you, accusing you, your nervous system reacts, and that’s normal. Maybe you freeze, push back, or want to escape.

The key is to notice your reaction without being carried away by it.

Mindfulness helps here, because it creates a kind of inner shock absorber, a small space where you can observe what you’re feeling without immediately acting on it. That space is often the difference between escalation and wisdom.

When the Situation Gets Intense

Sometimes another person’s reaction can feel overwhelming. This is especially understandable if you’ve had past experiences where you were bullied, attacked, or treated unfairly.

But even then, it helps to remember something important: You can stay mentally engaged even if you step back physically or emotionally. You can keep your sense of agency and choose how you respond.

Viktor Frankl, the psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, wrote about the deep freedom that remains inside us: the freedom to choose our response, even in very difficult circumstances.

Protecting that inner freedom matters. Sometimes that protection means:

• Asking someone to slow down

• Setting a boundary

• Leaving the situation

• Getting help

And sometimes it simply means refusing to let another person’s intensity dictate what you believe or how you see yourself. Inside your own mind, you do not have to surrender your integrity.

In the rest of this article, I’ll walk through the full 9-point plan for responding when someone else is triggered, including:

• How to protect your mind without hardening your heart

• When compassion actually helps calm difficult situations

• What to do when someone is triggered about you

• The simple “three piles” method for responding to criticism

• How to stay clear about your priorities in tense moments

• The deeper practice that helps you remain steady even in conflict

If you’re already a paid subscriber, thank you. If you’re not, you can join to read the rest.

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One question I get asked all the time is:

How do I know if I’m ruminating, or just processing something?

It’s a really good question. Because rumination often disguises itself as helpful introspection. It can feel like we’re trying to figure something out or work through it—when really, we’re just running in circles.

So I created a short, reflective quiz (link below!) to help you check in with yourself. And to give you a quick framework, here’s a helpful breakdown of what rumination is—and what it isn’t.

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What Is Rumination?

Rumination is like mental quicksand: the more you struggle with it, the deeper it pulls you in. It’s repetitive, negative, and unproductive. You’re not exploring new ideas or gaining insight—you’re rehashing the same thoughts, feelings, or stories over and over again, without resolution or movement.

Here are some hallmark signs of problematic rumination:

• Dwelling on something repetitively, negatively, and unproductively

• An ongoing, deliberate engagement with the negative material, that you keep getting drawn back into, keeping you stuck

• Recurring and persistent worries, resentments, regrets, self-doubts

• Revisting thoughts, interactions, memories, feelings, sensations, or desires that make us feel bad

• Interfering with your ability to think about other things, be productive, or enjoy the good aspects of life

• Not generating anything new in terms of new ways of thinking, new behaviors, or new possibilities—just rehashing the same old information without any change

Examples of Problematic Rumination:

• Replaying conversations.
  You go over a social interaction again and again, criticizing yourself or imagining how others judged you.
  “I can’t believe I said that. They probably think I’m such an idiot.”

• What-if spirals.
  You imagine worst-case scenarios or obsess over things outside your control.
  “What if I fail again? What if this ruins everything?”

• Reliving past regrets.
  You beat yourself up over mistakes, big or small, wishing you could go back and do it differently.
  “If only I had made a different choice…”

• Self-criticism on loop. Your inner critic is in charge, and the voice in your head is harsh and unforgiving.
  “I always mess things up. What’s wrong with me?”

• Rehearsing unresolved arguments. You mentally relive a fight or conflict, building your case or imagining what you should have said.
  “Next time, I’m going to tell them exactly why they were wrong.”

• Obsessing over how others see you. You try to analyze every little social cue, convinced you’ve done something wrong.
  “She didn’t text back right away—did I say something weird?”

What Is Not Rumination?

Not every repeated thought or revisit to the past is rumination. In fact, many of the things that look like rumination on the surface are actually signs of emotional processing—or just being human.

Here’s what’s not rumination:

• Positive daydreaming or fantasizing

• Reflecting or mulling things over with curiosity

• Processing complex or meaningful experiences

• Experiencing unwanted intrusive thoughts related to trauma

• Feeling the emotional waves of sorrow, regret, or anger

• Being surprised by a new emotional reaction, even after you thought you had moved on

The key difference? These experiences aren’t deliberate, repetitive mental loops. They tend to move or shift over time. Even painful feelings can be part of a healthy healing process if they’re not keeping you stuck.

A Simple Check-In

If you’re not sure whether you’re ruminating or processing, try asking yourself:

• Am I gaining any new insight or clarity?

• Is this helping me move forward or feel more whole?

• Do I feel more open or more closed off after thinking about this?

• Have I gone over this exact same thought many times already?

• And most importantly: Does this feel like growth—or just spinning?

If it feels like spinning, it might be time to gently step away from the loop and ground yourself in the present moment. Even a small break—some movement, connection, creativity, or rest—can help disrupt the cycle and shift your state.

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Ready to Reflect?

Want a little help figuring out your patterns? I created a short, insightful quiz you can take to get more clarity on your own thought habits.

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Imagine a world where people interact like ants or fish—responding to surface-level behaviors, utterly unaware of each other’s inner experiences. Picture a day at work or at home like that—aware of the people around you but oblivious to their inner life while they remain unmoved by your own. No real connection, no sense of being seen or felt.

That’s a world without empathy.

When empathy breaks down, relationships suffer. Think back to a time you felt misunderstood—or worse, when someone didn’t care to even try to understand you. It’s disorienting and painful. And for those who are especially vulnerable—like children or the elderly—a lack of empathy can be deeply distressing.

In my work as a therapist, I’ve seen again and again that poor empathy is often the core issue in struggling relationships or families. When empathy is missing, nothing good is likely to happen, and small challenges can feel insurmountable. But when it’s present, even the toughest issues can be resolved.

Empathy helps us feel what it’s like to be another person. Even when it’s subtle or unspoken, empathy sends the message: You matter to me. I see you. And that’s often what people most long to know—more than having their ideas accepted or their problems solved.

Empathy soothes, calms, and bridges divides. It gives us valuable insight into what others care about and what might be hurting underneath the surface, so we can work through issues more effectively.

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How to Practice Empathy (In Just a Few Moments a Day)

This week, try dropping into small “empathy moments.” It doesn’t have to take long—just a few seconds of tuning into the inner worlds of the people around you.

And remember: empathy doesn’t mean agreement or approval. You can feel into someone’s experience even if you disagree with them, or even if they’ve upset you. Empathy isn’t about giving up your boundaries, waiving your rights, or fixing their problems. It’s simply about being present to what’s going on inside them.

The good news? Empathy is built into your brain. We’ve evolved systems that let us simulate others’ actions, emotions, and even thoughts. For instance, the same part of your brain that lights up when you feel an emotion—your insula—also activates when you see that emotion in someone else. You were born with the tools to be empathic.

So how do you use them?

1. First, center yourself.
   If you’re too swept up in your own reactions, empathy becomes harder. Oddly enough, a little bit of healthy detachment—like the kind that lets you stay grounded—can actually increase your empathy. As Robert Frost put it, “Good fences make good neighbors.”

2. Tune into their body.
   Watch their posture, gestures, and breathing. Imagine what it would feel like to move your own body in that way.

3. Feel into their emotions.
   Look beyond the words, especially if they’re angry or defensive. What might be underneath that? Watch their eyes—the most expressive of any species on Earth. And check in with your gut. Sometimes your body knows what someone else is feeling before your brain catches up.

4. Get curious about their thoughts and needs.
   What might be going on in their mind? What are they hoping for or worried about? What matters most to them? Consider their past experiences—especially their history with you.

5. Ask gentle questions.
   Test your intuition. Try, “Were you feeling ____?” or “Did you want ____?” Keep it soft and respectful—not a cross-examination. And avoid slipping into persuasion. Right now, it’s not about your point of view.

Empathy is a kind of mindfulness practice—only this time, your attention is turned toward someone else’s inner world.

And when you’re the one who needs to feel seen, you’ll understand more deeply what it is you’re truly asking for.

The best way to get empathy is to give it.

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