Decreasing Rumination and Find Peace
If you’ve ever found yourself trapped in an endless loop of overthinking—replaying a conversation, questioning a decision, or imagining worst-case scenarios—you’re not alone. This pattern is called rumination, and while it can feel productive at times (like “figuring things out”), it often leads to increased stress, anxiety, and depression.
The good news? Rumination is not a permanent part of your personality. It’s a learned mental habit—and like all habits, it can be changed. In this post, we’ll explore how rumination works, why we get stuck in it, and evidence-based strategies—especially from Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP)—that can help.

What Is Rumination?
Rumination involves repeatedly thinking about distressing situations or emotions without moving toward problem-solving or resolution. It often sounds like:

• “Why did I say that?”
• “What if something bad happens?”
• “I should have known better.”

While it's natural to reflect on our lives, rumination is different from healthy reflection. It’s sticky. It loops. And rather than leading to insight, it tends to increase emotional distress and reinforce negative beliefs about ourselves or the world.

Why Do We Ruminate?
There are several psychological reasons why rumination becomes a go-to coping mechanism:

• Unprocessed emotions: Difficult feelings—like shame, fear, or sadness—can become stuck if we don’t have the tools or support to feel them directly.
• Perfectionism and control: Rumination can give the illusion of control. If we think through every angle, we might prevent future mistakes or pain.
• Learned coping: For many, rumination started early in life as a way to manage emotional overwhelm or unpredictability in relationships.

But here’s the key: rumination is often a substitute for feeling. And feeling is where healing begins.

The AEDP Perspective: From Thinking to Feeling
Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP) offers a powerful lens for understanding and shifting rumination. In AEDP, the goal isn’t just to change thoughts—it’s to create emotional healing experiences in the presence of a supportive, attuned other.
Here’s how AEDP helps reduce rumination:
1. Slowing Down and Tuning In
Rumination moves fast—AEDP moves slow. A core practice in AEDP is slowing down enough to notice what’s happening inside. That means dropping below the mental chatter and gently asking:
“What am I feeling in my body right now?”
This might be a flutter in the chest, a lump in the throat, or a heavy feeling in the stomach. Attending to sensation is the first step away from spiraling thoughts and toward emotional truth.
2. Feeling with Support
Emotions like sadness, anger, or fear often fuel rumination when they’re unacknowledged or held alone. In AEDP, these emotions are brought into the light, felt in manageable doses, and shared in a safe relationship. This process is called undoing aloneness—and it’s one of the most powerful antidotes to chronic overthinking.
When we feel our emotions directly, the nervous system gets the message: “This feeling is safe to experience, and I don’t have to process it alone.” The result? Relief. Clarity. Peace.
3. Transformational Experience
As emotional blocks loosen, clients often report a shift—from anxiety or self-criticism to self-compassion, insight, or even joy. AEDP calls these transformational affects, and they signal that the brain and body are reorganizing toward healing. These moments are incompatible with rumination. They break the loop from the inside out.

Additional Strategies to Break the Rumination Cycle
While deep emotional work like AEDP is transformative, there are also practical steps you can begin right now.
🌿 1. Name It to Tame It  Simply naming rumination when it starts (“I’m ruminating”) can help create distance. This practice, supported by neuroscience, activates the prefrontal cortex and calms the limbic system. It’s a small but powerful step toward regaining choice.
🧘 2. Drop Into the Body  Rumination lives in the head. Embodied practices like deep breathing, stretching, or grounding exercises bring you back to the present moment. Try:

• Placing your feet flat on the ground and feeling into the support of the earth.
• Breathing slowly while placing a hand on your chest or belly.

These practices gently re-anchor attention in the body, where regulation begins.
🖋️ 3. Write It Down, Then Let It Go  Journaling can help move thoughts out of your head and onto paper. Set a timer for 10–15 minutes. Write freely without judgment. When the timer ends, close the notebook. You’ve listened—and now it’s time to shift gears.
🧠 4. Shift from “Why” to “What”  Rumination often starts with “Why” questions (e.g., “Why am I like this?”) that have no satisfying answer. Try asking “What” instead:

• “What am I needing right now?”
• “What emotion am I avoiding?”

This moves you from analysis to curiosity, which opens up possibilities.

Resources for Further Exploration
🎧 Podcast The One You Feed with Eric Zimmer – “How to Work With Overthinking” with Dr. Judson Brewer
Dr. Brewer, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist, explores how mindfulness and curiosity interrupt rumination. A highly recommended listen.
📖 Book “Reclaim Your Brain” by Dr. Joseph Annibali
A clear, compassionate guide to understanding how overactive brain circuits fuel rumination—and how to calm them.
📘 AEDP Book for Clients “It’s Not Always Depression” by Hilary Jacobs Hendel, LCSW
A client-friendly introduction to AEDP that teaches how to identify core emotions and work with them compassionately.

Closing Thoughts
​Rumination can feel like it’s trying to help you—but it often keeps you stuck. The way out isn’t more thinking. It’s feeling. It’s presence. And most importantly, it’s connection—with yourself, with your emotions, and with others.
Therapies like AEDP offer a healing path that doesn’t just manage symptoms—it helps reorganize the inner world toward clarity, vitality, and peace. You don’t have to stay stuck in your head. Healing happens when we come back to our hearts.
Reach out to Debra to get started on your healing journey. 

#rumination #mentalhealth #AEDP #traumainformedtherapy #mindfulness #emotionalhealing #nervoussystemregulation #psychotherapy #undoingaloneness #slowingdown #DebraEngLCSW

Medscape Medical NewsFeatures
Manuela Callari
May 07, 2025 
​
Chronic pain affects 150 million people across Europe, according to the European Pain Federation. That is approximately the population of France and Germany combined. This burden drives countless patients to seek help first from general practitioners, incurring substantial costs to patients and healthcare systems, potentially reaching €12 billion annually. That includes direct medical expenses, out-of-pocket costs, and productivity losses due to absenteeism and reduced work capacity. Bigger still is the physical and mental cost patients endure. People with chronic pain experience a lower quality of life, an increased risk for mental health problems like depression and anxiety, and often face social isolation and a reduced ability to participate in daily activities.

While managing the physical symptoms of pain is essential, a critical, often overlooked, factor contributes to its persistence: The intricate and powerful link between stress and the experience of pain. Despite evolving scientific understanding and clinical guidelines advocating for a biopsychosocial approach to pain, this crucial connection may not be consistently addressed during early consultations with non-specialist healthcare professionals.
Pain specialists see the consequences firsthand.
“In my experience, this is incredibly common,” Ashley Simpson, MBChB, consultant orthopedic surgeon specializing in peripheral nerve injuries at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, London, England, told Medscape Medical News. “A significant portion of the chronic pain patients I see had clear psychosocial stressors, such as high anxiety and unresolved emotional distress, early on that went unaddressed.”

Ashley Simpson, MBChB Research supports this observation, with one review finding that psychological factors were associated with pain becoming chronic in 83% of studies. This missed opportunity represents a critical junction where early intervention could potentially prevent acute pain from embedding into a chronic condition.

The Stress-Pain Connection: An Amplified Alarm System The scientific understanding of pain has moved beyond viewing it solely as a direct signal of tissue damage. Instead, researchers now understand the nervous system, particularly the brain and spinal cord, as a dynamic alarm system whose sensitivity can be modulated by various factors, including stress. In chronic pain, this system often becomes hypersensitive, reacting strongly even to minor stimuli.
Sandrine Géranton, PhD, principal research fellow at University College London, London, England, told Medscape Medical News that chronic stress, whether psychological (anxiety or trauma), physiological (poor sleep or inflammation), or environmental, can significantly amplify this sensitivity.

“There are shared neural substrates between pain and stress,” David Finn, PhD, professor of pharmacology and therapeutics at the University of Galway, Galway, Ireland, said. “Some of the same brain regions and circuitry within the central nervous system mediate both stress and pain, and so maladaptive alterations in that circuitry due to stress can give rise to sensitization within the somatosensory system, which ultimately can lead to chronic pain,” he told Medscape Medical News.
David Finn, PhD The opposite is also true. Persistent pain itself acts as a potent stressor, disrupting sleep, mood, work, and relationships, feeding this cycle of sensitization.
What Primary Care Doctors Should Know Despite the compelling evidence, the integration of this biopsychosocial understanding into initial patient encounters remains often overlooked. Frontline healthcare professionals face significant time constraints, often prioritizing immediate symptom management or investigation of obvious structural issues.

Patients with chronic pain frequently present having received purely biomedical assessments and treatments, such as repeated scans or a focus solely on strengthening exercises, without ever having the stress or psychological component discussed. This is not necessarily a failing of the individual clinician but a reflection of systemic pressures, historical training biases toward biomedical models, and patient expectations often centered on a physical “fix.”
The consequence, as highlighted by both the clinical and scientific experts, is a missed opportunity. Patients may leave consultations without understanding why their pain persists despite a lack of clear physical findings, potentially feeling dismissed or believing their pain is purely physical when stress is a major contributor. This lack of early psychoeducation and acknowledgement of the stress-pain link can hinder their ability to adopt effective self-management strategies and make the pain much harder to treat later.
Simpson shared some key concepts healthcare professionals should help their patients understand early.

• Pain does not equal harm. While pain is real, its intensity is not always proportional to tissue damage. The brain and nervous system interpret signals, and this interpretation is heavily influenced by state of mind, stress, and prior experiences.
• The nervous system can learn pain. Persistent pain can lead to lasting changes (“sensitization” or “priming”) in the nervous system, making it more reactive. The longer pain persists, the better the brain becomes at producing it.
• Stress is a major amplifier and contributor. Chronic stress, anxiety, depression, poor sleep, and fear significantly affect pain processing and can contribute to chronification.
• Movement is generally safe and therapeutic. Reassure patients that moving within limits, even if it causes temporary discomfort, is vital for recovery and helps calm a sensitized nervous system. Pain flares don’t necessarily mean damage.

Practical Strategies for Busy Clinicians (Within ~10 Minutes)
Integrating a stress-informed approach is feasible even in short consultations:

• Listen and ask (minutes 1-3): Weave in brief, open-ended questions: “How has stress been affecting you lately?” “How has your sleep been?” “Have there been any major life changes recently?” Listen for cues about mood, anxiety, or fear related to their pain. Simpson noted that “catastrophizing or fear of movement during an acute injury are much more likely to develop into persistent pain,” suggesting that observing or asking about these responses is important.
• Simple explanation (minutes 4-6): Briefly explain the stress-pain link using the “alarm system” analogy. Reassure the patient that this is a real biologic process involving the nervous system, not an indication that their pain is “all in their head.” Explain that understanding this offers them tools to influence their pain.
• Actionable first steps (minutes 7-9): Provide one to two concrete, simple, and accessible suggestions:
  • Brief relaxation: Suggest simple, controlled breathing techniques.
  • Sleep hygiene: Offer one key tip, like maintaining a consistent sleep schedule.
  • Gentle movement: Encourage starting small with movement, for example, a short walk and pacing activity, focusing on consistency rather than pushing through severe pain. Reframe movement as “calming the nervous system” and regaining function.
  • Signpost resources: Mention reliable patient-facing websites or apps for pain education and stress management if known.
• Validate and refer (minute 10): Acknowledge the patient’s pain and struggles are real. Explain when a referral might be necessary and mention relevant services like pain psychology or pain-informed physiotherapy.

These steps, though seemingly basic, are “profoundly important,” Simpson said. “They help the patient not only physically but psychologically by preventing fear and despair from taking hold.”
“It is important to listen carefully to a patient who is saying that they feel stressed or anxious and to take that seriously,” Finn said. “Be aware of the possibility that if that’s not addressed early, it can exacerbate pain-related conditions or contribute to the development of chronic pain.”

Géranton reinforced the importance of the integrated approach. “You really need to look at it as one package and never separate the sensory aspect from the emotional aspect of the pain experience.”
Simpson, Géranton, and Finn reported having no relevant financial relationships.
Manuela Callari is a freelance science journalist specializing in human and planetary health. Her work has been published in The Medical Republic, Rare Disease Advisor, The Guardian, MIT Technology Review, and others.

All material on this website is protected by copyright, Copyright © 1994-2025 by WebMD LLC. This website also contains material copyrighted by 3rd parties.

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When we think about aging, most people focus on lifespan—the total number of years we live. But what may matter even more is healthspan—the number of years we live in good health, free from serious illness, cognitive decline, or physical disability. The goal of healthy aging isn’t just to live longer, but to live better for longer.
What Is the Difference Between Lifespan and Healthspan?

• Lifespan refers to how long you live.
• Healthspan refers to how long you stay healthy—physically, mentally, and emotionally.

While modern medicine has extended lifespan, many people still spend their later years managing chronic conditions, mobility issues, or cognitive impairment. This has prompted a growing interest in strategies that extend healthspan—often through lifestyle changes and supportive care.
The Role of Lifestyle in Healthy Aging
​Emerging research shows that lifestyle factors have a powerful impact on how we age. The following habits are especially important:

• Nutrition: A whole-food, plant-forward diet rich in fiber, healthy fats, and antioxidants supports brain and body health.
• Movement: Regular physical activity (especially strength training and walking) helps maintain mobility, cardiovascular health, and cognitive function.
• Sleep: Consistent, high-quality sleep supports immune health, memory consolidation, and emotional regulation.
• Social Connection: Meaningful relationships and community reduce inflammation, protect against cognitive decline, and promote longevity.
• Stress Management: Chronic stress accelerates aging. Practices like mindfulness, breathwork, and guided relaxation can reduce wear and tear on the body.

How Therapy Can Support Healthy Aging
While we often think of aging in physical terms, emotional and psychological wellbeing play an equally vital role in healthspan. Psychotherapy can support healthy aging in several ways:

• Processing Life Transitions: Retirement, health changes, caregiving, and grief can all impact identity and emotional health. Therapy offers a space to process these shifts.
• Behavior Change Support: Therapists can help you work through resistance, self-sabotage, or trauma-related barriers that block healthy lifestyle changes.
• Mental Flexibility: Cognitive and emotional flexibility is linked with better aging outcomes. Therapy supports this by helping clients explore new perspectives and build resilience.
• Meaning and Purpose: A sense of purpose is a strong predictor of healthspan. Therapy can help clients reconnect with meaning in their lives, even during times of transition or loss.

Learn More

• Podcast: The Drive with Dr. Peter Attia – A science-driven exploration of longevity and healthspan, featuring expert interviews on nutrition, exercise, sleep, and mental health.
• Book: Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity by Dr. Peter Attia – A comprehensive guide to living longer and better, including a deep dive into the emotional and psychological components of aging.
• Research: Vaillant, G. E. (2002). Aging Well: Surprising Guideposts to a Happier Life from the Landmark Harvard Study of Adult Development – Long-term findings on what predicts successful aging (spoiler: emotional warmth and coping skills matter more than cholesterol).

Healthy aging isn't just about adding years to your life—it’s about adding life to your years. Through intentional lifestyle changes and supportive therapy, you can build a longer, healthier, and more fulfilling life. Whether you're in midlife or already navigating older adulthood, it's never too late to invest in your healthspan.
If you’re interested in working through emotional or behavioral roadblocks to healthy aging, reach out to Debra for support.

#HealthspanNotJustLifespan #HealthyAging #AgingWell #TherapyForAging #EmotionalHealth #LongevityMindset #ResilientAging #LifestyleMedicine #MentalHealthMatters #MindBodyWellness #LiveBetterLonger #PurposefulAging #DebraSupportsHealing