Ruminations are thought loops that you seemingly can’t get out of.
Examples: thinking about what you should’ve said 5 years ago, feeling anxious if they misunderstood you, or worrying about whether you should’ve behaved differently, did they judge you, whether you were in the wrong, etc. Can be present in both OCD or ADHD.
Rumination often functions as a desperate attempt to think your way to certainty. For people with a high intolerance of uncertainty, the brain keeps cycling through the same material because it cannot reach the resolution it needs to let the thought go.
Getting stuck in a thought loop is itself a form of cognitive inflexibility — the thinking can’t shift to a new perspective, release the topic, or accept that the issue might not have a clean resolution, so it keeps circling the same ground looking for one.
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sensory overwhelm