Ruminating? Is It Useful?

Something is bothering you. Maybe a problem won't budge, or someone hurt you, and the first thing you reach for is a friend who'll listen. You want to vent. You want to hear that they'd feel exactly the same in your shoes, as if that agreement settles anything.

There's a small benefit to that kind of shared hashing-out. Past a certain point, though, it turns on you. Endless replaying of frustrations, bad news, or love that went nowhere tends to leave you feeling worse, and women seem especially prone to this. Depression can sink lower. Anxiety climbs. And the friends on the receiving end of your 2 a.m. calls and nonstop texts can start to pull away.

Part of the trouble is physical. The more you circle the same thoughts, the more you wear a groove into the brain's pathways, and the feelings attached to those thoughts get louder with every pass. Grinding away at a problem that has no fix right now wears out everyone involved, you and whoever you keep dragging into it. Worse, it can blind you: when the situation finally shifts or a way out appears, you may be too deep in the loop to notice.

One trick is to set a deadline. Tell yourself when you'll take another crack at the problem, or pick a point when it would actually make sense to worry that you still haven't heard from someone. Until that date arrives, step back. Don't do anything impulsive and don't decide you already know how the story ends.

Jury duty is a decent example of how little we can predict. Picture yourself dreading a long, sequestered trial. Then you get excused before you ever report, for some reason you had no idea would disqualify you, or you're sent home during selection. The thing you spent weeks bracing for never happens.

Here's a line I come back to whenever I catch myself fearing that something terrible already occurred: the bad stuff usually lands when I'm not expecting it. So if I'm sitting here anxious that it has happened, odds are it hasn't.

Enjoy yourself; it's later than you think. Give yourself permission to drop the loop, particularly when you're missing half the facts and won't have them for a while. Stay ready to act once the moment comes. Preparing and making plans is far easier when you're calm enough to think straight instead of tangled up in worry.

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