rumination

A rumination is a thought that gets stuck in your head and loops over and over again whether you want it to or not (and you usually don’t). Ruminations get their name from ruminant animals who have multiple stomachs and bring food back from stomach #1 to chew on again before it passes down to stomach #2. Human ruminations don’t involve multiple stomachs, but rather refer to the brain “chewing on” the same thought or thought group over and over again without “digesting” them.

Ruminations can be very difficult to move on from. Ruminative thoughts often carry some sort of emotion or judgment. Ruminations are usually intrusive (they pop into your head without you consciously thinking of them)

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. 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 round and round looking for one.