When Your Mind Won’t Stop

Working with Catastrophic Thinking and Ruminating

Many people have two very persistent mental habits that make it hard to settle and feel at ease. One pulls us into the future. The other drags us back into the past. We need to understand catastrophic thinking and ruminating, and why our nervous system generates such urgency.

Two patterns, one nervous system

Catastrophic thinking is worry about the future. Your mind takes a real concern and projects it forward into the worst possible outcome. You might start with a difficult situation at work, a financial worry, or a health concern, and find yourself three steps down the road imagining a scenario way beyond what is actually happening right now.

Ruminating is the same compulsive quality aimed at the past. We go back over something that happened, wishing it had gone differently. We rehearse what we should have said. We shame ourselves for how we responded. We replay the scene looking for a redo.

Both of these patterns are driven by our nervous system. They are not signs that something is wrong with your mind. They are the mind doing exactly what it evolved to do: scan for danger and try to protect you. The problem is that the brain believes the thoughts it generates. When we catastrophize, our body responds as though the feared event is actually happening. When we ruminate about unfinished business, we feel anger or shame. The stress load adds up.

Why it is so hard to stop

Our nervous systems are under a lot of pressure right now. Many people are carrying financial stress, political anxiety, grief, isolation, and the long aftermath of COVID. Add in the constant input of social media and news, and our nervous systems are absorbing threat cues all day long. Humanity developed in small groups, in relatively stable environments, without screens or global information newsreels. What we are navigating now is a lot.

If you have been struggling with catastrophic thinking or heavy rumination, that is not a personal failing. Your nervous system is doing its job in a difficult environment, but is it accurately assessing the level of danger?

Working with catastrophic thinking

The first step is to name what is happening. This is catastrophic thinking. These are thoughts, not events. What my nervous system is predicting may or may not come true, and it is not happening right now.

Come back to what is actually true in this moment. This is my situation right now. Everything else is thoughts about the future. You might be surprised how often what is actually true right now is manageable, even when what you have been projecting feels overwhelming.

One practice that can help is to externalize or witness thoughts. Bring the worry forward as an image. Images are just colors and shapes. Open your eyes and place that image on the wall across the room. Put a frame around it. Now you are over here, and the image is over there. Take your eyes slowly around the empty space surrounding the image in both directions, then look back. Often people find the image has lost some of its vividness and it is a little easier to breathe. Your brain has received the message: this is a thought, not a present moment threat.

These patterns are persistent. You may do this practice and find yourself right back in it five minutes later. That is normal. Each time you interrupt the trance, your body settles a little. Coming back to witnessing is the practice.

Working with rumination

Rumination gets a bad reputation, but it is not always harmful. Sometimes going back is useful. We can rehearse a different response for next time, build a sense of agency around something that felt out of our control, or go back and offer our younger self something they did not have at the time: understanding, compassion, and the presence of someone who sees them.

Where rumination becomes harmful is when we loop without resolution, especially when the inner critic steps in. We shame ourselves for how we handled something. We decide we should have fought back, spoken up, or done something differently. We go over it and over it with the same result.

It helps to bring some understanding to what was happening at the time. In many cases, we were in fight, flight, or freeze. Our nervous system was managing a threat, and that shaped what was available to us. We did what we could with what we had. That is not a measure of our worth.

You can use the same image practice with rumination. Place it on the wall, look at it from here, let your body breathe. Notice if shame is present. Lift your collar bones a little. Take a few slow breaths. Ask yourself: what could I offer the person I was then? Patience, maybe. Kindness. Some grace for what we were carrying.

We can take responsibility for what happened and feel genuine grief about it without shaming ourselves for what we could not do then.

Settling our nervous system

All of this is easier when our nervous system is more regulated. When we are deep in fight, flight, or freeze, we do not have full access to our wisdom or our heart. The first step is often to let things settle a bit.

Breath helps. A double inhale through the nose followed by a long slow exhale through the mouth, as though breathing out through a straw, is a direct ways to activate your body's relaxation response. Moving your body helps too. Stand up and shake it out, go for a walk, or go outside and breathe. You might connect with people or animals who feel grounding and safe. 

It is also worth being thoughtful about what you let in. Social media and news can flood your nervous system with threat cues all day. You can stay engaged with the world while protecting your capacity to be present and think clearly.

Coming back to now

Keep returning to the present moment where your actual life is happening. Thoughts about the future and the past are here as thoughts. They are not the events themselves.

Each time you notice you have gone somewhere else, come back. Notice where you are. Feel your body. Look around and notice what is actually true right now.

This series of talks and practices is highlighting sections from my newly expanded and published book Friends With Your Mind, How To Stop Torturing Yourself With Your Thoughts. Learn more here.

Join us Tuesdays at 6 PM Eastern on Insight Timer and via the Daily Practice Zoom link, and Sundays at 10 AM Eastern for our free community class. This Sunday we work with catastrophic thinking and ruminating. The following week we move into neurodivergence.