You Don’t Need Certainty To Move Forward: Untangling Yourself From Rumination Cycles
Do you ever find yourself getting lost in your thoughts, trying to solve or prevent future problems that haven’t yet transpired? Or do you replay past events that have already expired—determined that, by extracting some piece of insight, you’ll finally figure out how to prevent the same thing from happening again?
For many individuals the mental exercise of replaying past events or forecasting future scenarios feels like problem solving. People believe that if they can get to the root of a potential problem or achieve some level of insight into past events, that they can prevent bad things from happening.
For many of the people I have worked with throughout my therapy career, there exists an underlying core fear about things going badly or the other shoe dropping. They brace themselves for the bad news, the breakup message, the “we regret to inform you” email, the layoff, the medical diagnosis, the jury summons.
As humans we often struggle when we do not have the answers to important questions such as: Where will I be living? What will I be doing? Who will remain in my life? It is incredibly common for people to struggle with the what ifs when experiencing anxiety and apprehension about future unknowns.
These what ifs often sound like:
What if I don’t get the job I want?
What if people don’t think I am good at the job I have?
What if they secretly don’t like me?
What if I fail at this and embarrass myself?
What if I end up alone?
What if I can’t pay my bills and have to move back home?
What if there is something wrong with me?
What if I make the wrong decision and I can’t take it back?
When trying to solve these questions—as well as thousands of other potential what-if side quests—people can get caught up in what we call rumination cycles.
On the outside this may look like a person who has great difficulty making decisions. They take their time responding to text messages because they don’t want to mistype anything, sound too stern or too eager, respond too slowly or too quickly, or leave out an important detail.
They may spend hours shopping online and end up with nothing in their cart because they cannot decide which item is their favorite, whether the cost is worth the product or whether this is the best product on the market. Or they do all of that work only to find out that the shipping isn’t free. Then they have to go back to the physics equation of finding more stuff to add to the cart so that they can qualify— only to end up slamming their laptop shut after hours of research.
They might go to every person in their life whom they trust and seek reassurance about their worth, competencies, abilities or even around basic decisions such as what type of coffee to order or which photo to use for their profile picture. If they don’t get a prompt response they might turn to AI for support in getting the validation or assurance they need.
This may show up as perpetual doubt and anxiety around having too many choices or in fear of making the wrong choice. It could present as procrastination or putting off tasks and decisions: delaying an email for fear of having a typo, avoiding a social outing because something might go wrong, not speaking up at work to share an insight for fear of saying or doing the wrong thing, or missing an application deadline because your resume isn’t ready despite making a number of edits.
Behind the scenes of decision paralysis may lie something far more uncomfortable.
You experience a what-if thought that contributes to difficult feelings such as anxiety, fear, overwhelm, sadness or shame. As a result of experiencing those difficult-to-sit-with emotions, your brain tries to come up with a detour:
Perhaps if I mentally review every interaction I had with my coworkers at the staff meeting—the expressions they were making, who was sitting where, what was said, what was not said, how it was said, who it was said to—perhaps I can achieve some form of insight that will relieve the anxiety I’m experiencing about people thinking I am incompetent at work
Aside from reviewing past interactions, your brain can also start playing out future scenarios that may never occur. You may start planning out responses in your head of what you will say at the next meeting if your boss asks for ideas about a project. You may reflect on what could go wrong and start developing backup plans of what you would do if X, Y or Z transpired. You may even start considering what your boss or colleagues would do or say, which can lead you down yet another rabbit hole of what you might say or do in response.
In both scenarios, your brain is searching for a clear answer about what did or could happen, and it may continue seeking certainty even if that means getting stuck in the same feedback loop for hours—sometimes even days after the original event occurred.
Rumination cycles are mental loops that can center around things that have already happened or things that haven’t happened at all.
With past events, this may look like mental review: replaying scenarios and conversations over and over again in your head. With the future, it can look like mapping out every detail of possible scenarios that may or may not ever happen.
The key is that these thoughts are on a treadmill. You end up cycling through the same material again and again, with no new information.
What initially feels like problem-solving can therefore become something very different. Rather than gathering new information and arriving at a decision, you are repeatedly returning to the same questions in hopes that one more lap around the treadmill will finally produce the certainty you’ve been looking for.
While it is common to have anxiety around life transitions and change, where people can get stuck is in trying to solve future unknowns or mentally reviewing every aspect of previous encounters and conversations in hopes of achieving some form of insight that will “solve” the puzzle once and for all.
Oftentimes what actually happens is that the more reassurance people seek by engaging in rumination, the more they feel the need to continue carrying out these cycles. Rather than providing a lasting sense of certainty, the relief may be short-lived before another question, doubt, or what if appears.
This can keep you stuck in a never-ending loop of scenarios that aren’t rooted in the reality of what is presently in front of you. The amount of time and energy spent trying to solve what already happened—or predict what hasn’t happened yet—can also make it harder to engage with what is actually happening now.
A Small Practice for this Week
One suggestion to help you get out of the what-if cycle is to practice sitting with the uncertainty without trying to solve anything.
Allow yourself to sit with the possibility that the worst-case scenario could happen, while also acknowledging that we have no idea—and are going to keep carrying on anyway.
What this looks like in practice:
Identify a “what if” thought» What if people think I’m no good at my job?
Add uncertainty to it. » It’s possible people will think I’m no good at my job.
Identify a feared outcome. » People will discover that I am an imposter.
Add uncertainty to it. » I might be found out as an imposter.
Now combine phrase 2 and phrase 4 into one sentence AND add in what you’re going to do anyway. The latter half should reflect your values. When we make values-aligned decisions, we can begin moving forward without first having to resolve all of the what ifs.
Final form » It’s possible people will think I am no good at my job, and they could discover that I’m an imposter, AND I’m still going to continue showing up and doing my best in this position each day.
The goal here isn’t to convince yourself that the feared outcome won’t happen. That would just place you in another reassurance cycle. It’s to practice allowing uncertainty to exist without requiring yourself to resolve it before deciding how you want to move forward.
As humans, we have a strong instinct toward self-preservation. Our brains and bodies are constantly taking in information and responding to potential threats. Sometimes those threats are immediate and concrete: you spot a rattlesnake on a hiking trail and move away, or touch something hot and instinctively pull your hand back.
Uncertainty is different. There may be a legitimate possibility that something difficult could happen, but there often isn’t enough information available in the present moment to know how things will unfold. Anxiety can make that uncertainty feel like a problem that needs to be solved right now.
That’s where the mental replay button—or fast-forward button—can come in.
The irony is that when we get stuck on the mental treadmill, we aren’t actually going anywhere. We are standing still, cycling through the same material without receiving new information. There is nothing new or concrete to build from.
When mentally reviewing the past, no amount of additional analysis can change what has already occurred. When trying to predict the future, no amount of guessing, forecasting, or catastrophizing can guarantee what is going to happen—nor can it prevent difficult things from occurring or necessarily make them easier if they do.
So when you notice that you have left the present moment—hitting replay on something that has already happened or fast-forwarding to something that hasn’t happened yet—pause.
Notice what you are feeling. Identify the discomfort you are trying to resolve. Ask yourself whether there is actually new information available to you right now.
And if there isn’t, perhaps the answer isn’t another lap around the treadmill.
Perhaps it is:
I don’t know what is going to happen. I don’t need to know right now. And I’m still going to ______ anyway.
*This content is for educational and informational purposes only and is not therapy or a substitute for individualized mental health care.