Thinking in Circles: When Reflection Becomes Rumination
Thought For The Week
I’ve been thinking about how often I catch my brain whirring away, trying to problem-solve.
Something happens and I replay the conversation, analyse the moment, reconsider the decision or imagine every possible outcome. Again and again.
Sometimes this helps me reach a decision, take action or see something more clearly.
But sometimes thinking for longer doesn’t bring me any closer to an answer. It simply keeps me circling the same question.
This is where reflection starts to become rumination.
Reflection can help us understand what has happened, decide what matters or identify something we can do. Rumination gives us the feeling of working on a problem while keeping us caught in the same loop. We turn over the same information, yet never reach a satisfactory conclusion.
The problem is that we’re no longer searching for a practical answer. We’re trying to think our way into feeling certain, safe or untroubled.
But that’s something thought can’t always give us.
Sometimes the information we’d need to make the uncertainty disappear simply isn’t available. The key is recognising when we’ve thought as far as we usefully can.
It doesn’t mean the question becomes unimportant, or that we should stop caring. It just means acknowledging the limits of what further thought can do and allowing the uncertainty to remain.
I don’t have an answer to this yet. I may not know how it will turn out.
Choosing to step away from rumination can feel uncomfortable because the uncertainty remains. But the achievement is not becoming completely untroubled; it’s learning that unanswered questions can still be present without taking up our entire attention.
Exercise Focus
When it comes to exercise, we might not be replaying the same conversation over and over, but we might be weighing up our options before we begin.
Which type of exercise is best?
Should I join a gym or begin at home?
How often should I train?
Which programme will deliver the best results?
They’re reasonable questions. But we can still reach a point where further thought keeps us from moving forwards.
We try to imagine what each option will feel like. We research, compare and reconsider, hoping that a little more information will make the right choice obvious.
But the same questions remain because we’re trying to choose before we have all the information we need.
Much of that information can only be gained through experience.
We can’t know in advance how an activity will feel, whether we’ll grow to enjoy it or how our body will respond. Exercise gives us the opportunity to take a step, notice what happens and use that evidence to guide the next one.
The first choice doesn’t need to be perfect or permanent. It simply needs to be safe and reasonable enough to try.
Make the best choice you can with the information you have. Begin. Gather some real evidence. Then you can optimise, if you want to.
Nutrition Focus
After eating, we might find ourselves reviewing the meal.
Was I really that hungry?
Did I need all of that?
Should I have chosen something different?
Has this ruined my progress?
There can be value in reflecting on our choices. We might notice things that were overlooked in the busyness of the day.
Perhaps we were feeling extremely hungry because we hadn’t eaten enough at breakfast. Maybe the meal wasn’t very satisfying because it didn’t contain any carbohydrates. Or perhaps we can see that we were responding to a need that had little to do with food at all.
But once we’ve noticed something useful, continuing to analyse it rarely tells us anything new.
Instead, we replay what we ate, wish we’d chosen differently, and feel guilty about what has already happened. We might begin planning how to compensate by eating less or exercising more. The meal is over, but our mind keeps playing it over.
If there is something useful to learn, we can take that information forward. If there isn’t, we don’t need to invent a lesson or compensate for the choice.
Sometimes the most helpful response is simply to move on.
Explore More
From the archive: We can go to great lengths to research every option and imagine every outcome, but some of the information we want can only come through experience. In Familiarity vs Possibility: Why We Become More Reluctant to Try New Things I explore why that jumping in at the deep end feeling can be so difficult to tolerate.
Book: Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It by Ethan Kross explores how our inner voice can help us reflect and problem-solve, but can also trap us in repetitive thought, and offers practical ways to regain perspective.
Article: Overthinking Is the Problem That Disguises Itself as the Solution explores why repetitive thought can feel useful even when it is keeping us stuck, and how to recognise when thinking has stopped helping us move forwards.
Takeaway
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