When you understand why you are stuck but cannot stop thinking about it
Rumination can be exhausting. The same thoughts return repeatedly, even when you know that thinking about them again is unlikely to give you an answer.
You may replay a conversation, revisit something you said or did, analyse another person’s behaviour, rehearse alternative outcomes or repeatedly ask yourself what you missed. You may wake in the night with the same thoughts already waiting for you.
Perhaps you have talked it through with friends. You may have read extensively, listened to podcasts, journalled, tried meditation or worked hard to understand why your mind keeps returning to the same subject.
You may actually understand it extremely well.
And still the rumination continues.
I am Sally Baker, a senior therapist with more than 25 years’ experience. I specialise in working with persistent emotional patterns, particularly when someone has considerable insight into their difficulties but understanding them has not been enough to change how they feel.
My approach to therapy for rumination is not simply about finding techniques to distract you from your thoughts. The work is designed to explore and change what may be keeping the repetitive thinking emotionally necessary.
What is rumination?
Rumination is repetitive thinking that feels difficult to disengage from.
It is different from deliberately thinking something through. Useful reflection tends to lead somewhere. You consider a problem, reach a conclusion, make a decision or recognise that there is nothing more you can usefully do.
Rumination tends to circle.
You revisit the same questions but rarely arrive anywhere new.
It can involve a relationship or breakup, something that happened at work, a mistake you believe you made, an embarrassing or humiliating experience, a family conflict, a decision you regret or something that happened many years ago.
The subject varies. The repetitive quality is remarkably similar.
People often describe knowing that the thinking is not helping while simultaneously feeling unable to leave it alone.
Why can’t I just stop ruminating?
Telling yourself to stop thinking about something rarely resolves persistent rumination.
This is partly because the mind may still regard the subject as unfinished or emotionally important.
If something feels unresolved, the mind can continue returning to it in an attempt to achieve certainty, understanding, reassurance or a different outcome.
You might find yourself asking:
- Why did this happen?
- What did I miss?
- Why did I behave like that?
- What should I have said?
- What if I had made a different decision?
- What does this say about me?
- How could they have treated me like that?
- How can I make sure this never happens again?
These questions can create the impression that the solution must be one more piece of understanding.
Sometimes it is.
But when you have already examined the situation from every conceivable direction and the emotional response remains unchanged, more analysis can simply provide more material for the rumination.
You can understand something intellectually and still feel stuck
This is particularly relevant to the people I work with.
Many of my clients are thoughtful, capable and psychologically aware. They are often very good at understanding patterns and making connections.
Their difficulty is not a lack of insight.
They may know exactly why a relationship was unhealthy. They may recognise where their tendency towards self-blame began. They may understand their family dynamics, attachment patterns or previous experiences. They may be able to explain logically why something was not their responsibility.
Yet knowing all of this has made surprisingly little difference to how they actually feel.
This apparent contradiction can be extremely frustrating.
It can also lead people to blame themselves. They think that because they understand what is happening, they ought to be able to stop it.
But intellectual understanding and emotional change are not necessarily the same process.
Why does rumination sometimes continue for years?
Persistent rumination can be connected to the emotional meaning attached to an experience rather than simply to the event itself.
An apparently straightforward rejection, criticism, mistake or loss can connect with earlier experiences of shame, abandonment, uncertainty, humiliation, responsibility or not feeling good enough.
Those connections are not always immediately obvious.
For example, someone may spend months ruminating about being rejected by a partner. Consciously, the thoughts are about the relationship. At another level, the rejection may have activated much older emotional learning about being unwanted or unsafe when someone withdraws.
Another person may obsess repeatedly about a mistake at work. The event itself may have passed without serious consequences, yet the emotional response remains intense because making mistakes has become associated with shame, danger or loss of approval.
This does not mean that every episode of rumination is caused by childhood trauma.
It means that the intensity and persistence of the response can sometimes make more sense when we consider what the event has come to mean emotionally.
Relationship rumination
Relationship endings are one of the most common triggers for persistent rumination.
You may repeatedly revisit conversations, analyse messages, wonder whether your former partner ever really loved you or imagine what you could have done differently.
Sometimes the relationship itself was chaotic or unhealthy and you know that ending it was the right decision.
That does not necessarily stop the rumination.
I have written separately about relationship rumination and why someone can remain emotionally preoccupied with a relationship long after they intellectually understand why it ended.
The important point is that the persistence of these thoughts does not necessarily mean you secretly want the relationship back.
It may mean that something connected with the experience still carries emotional charge.
Rumination and self-blame
Self-blame can be particularly difficult to resolve through thinking alone.
The mind constructs an apparently simple proposition:
If I had behaved differently, this would not have happened.
That belief can create the illusion of control. If everything was your fault, then perhaps everything could have been prevented.
The reality of human relationships and difficult events is usually far more complicated.
Therapeutic work can involve separating realistic responsibility from excessive responsibility and exploring why blame has become attached so strongly to you.
The purpose is not to absolve you automatically of responsibility or persuade you that you did nothing wrong.
It is to reach a more accurate emotional understanding of what happened, including what was and was not within your control.
Why talking about it may no longer be helping
Talking is an important part of processing difficult experiences.
There can, however, come a point when repeatedly telling the story no longer changes anything.
You know the story.
You know what happened.
You may have told friends, family members and previous therapists. You may have reconstructed conversations and events repeatedly.
If the emotional response remains unchanged, continuing to analyse the narrative may not be where the therapeutic work needs to happen.
This is one reason my approach does not depend on repeatedly recounting difficult experiences in minute detail.
How I work with persistent rumination
My Deep Therapy programme is designed to work with persistent emotional responses and patterns rather than simply helping you manage them more effectively.
The work is individual rather than protocol driven.
Depending on what is maintaining the rumination, we may work with emotionally charged memories, self-blame, shame, rejection, loss, earlier experiences or beliefs that have become attached to what happened.
I work integratively and use several therapeutic approaches, including EFT, BWRT, IEMT, NLP, hypnosis, guided therapeutic work and the Orpheus Decoupling Process.
My work is also informed by memory reconsolidation.
Memory reconsolidation refers to the brain’s capacity to update previously learned emotional responses when particular conditions are present. This is relevant when a response that once made sense continues automatically even though circumstances have changed.
Some of the approaches I use can also be content free. This means it is not always necessary to describe every detail of a distressing experience for therapeutic work to take place.
The aim is not to erase memories or persuade you that something did not matter.
It is to help the emotional response change so that remembering something no longer means being repeatedly pulled back into it.
What happens when rumination begins to change?
Change does not necessarily feel dramatic.
Often people simply begin to notice that the thought is not appearing as frequently.
Something that previously occupied hours of mental space may occur and then pass.
A memory can still exist without producing the same emotional reaction.
You may notice that you have gone several hours without thinking about it and then, eventually, several days.
The compulsion to analyse can begin to lose its urgency.
This is an important distinction. The goal is not to spend the rest of your life successfully suppressing unwanted thoughts.
It is for the thoughts to stop carrying the same emotional demand for your attention.
When should I consider therapy for rumination?
There is no arbitrary length of time after which thinking about something becomes a problem.
Context matters.
However, therapy may be worth considering when rumination is interfering with your concentration, sleep, work, relationships or ability to enjoy your life.
It may also be appropriate when you recognise that you are repeatedly asking the same questions without finding any new answers.
Another important indication is that you already understand the situation intellectually but that understanding has made surprisingly little difference to your emotional response.
At that point, the question may no longer be:
“What else do I need to understand?”
A more useful question may be:
“Why does some part of me still respond as though this needs to be solved?”
That is something we can work with therapeutically.
Relationship Rumination: Why You Can’t Stop Thinking About a Past Relationship
Deep Therapy for rumination
I work with adults through my Deep Therapy programme.
The programme consists of six 90-minute therapy sessions and costs £2,200.
This is intensive therapeutic work rather than an open-ended series of weekly conversations. The sessions give us sufficient time to explore what is maintaining the pattern and work therapeutically with the emotional responses, memories and beliefs involved.
I work from my private practice in South East London and with clients online.
Before deciding whether to work together, I offer a 30-minute discovery call.
The purpose of the call is for us to discuss what is happening, what you have already tried and what you would like to change. I can then tell you whether I think my way of working is appropriate for what you are experiencing.
There is no obligation to proceed.
About Sally Baker
I am a senior therapist, published author and media commentator with more than 25 years’ professional experience.
My particular interest is in working with people who are intelligent, capable and often highly self-aware, but who find themselves experiencing emotional responses or repeating patterns that insight alone has not resolved.
I work with anxiety, trauma, persistent rumination, relationship difficulties, overwhelm and other longstanding emotional patterns.
My therapeutic approach is integrative, with a particular focus on changing the emotional learning that can continue to drive responses automatically.
Book a discovery call
If persistent rumination is taking up too much of your life and you have reached the point where thinking about it more is no longer helping, you can book a 30-minute discovery call with me.
We can discuss what is happening and whether Deep Therapy is an appropriate next step for you.
