Breaking the Habit of Overthinking: Rumination, Cognitive Bypassing, and the Insight Trap

Being Well with Forrest Hanson and Dr. Rick Hanson

Being Well

Education, Self-improvement, Health & Fitness, Mental Health

4.8 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 20 April 2026

⏱️ 84 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Why does knowing we overthink not help us stop? Dr. Rick and Forrest discuss why rumination becomes a self-reinforcing habit, and why insight alone rarely helps. They distinguish between rumination and reflection, and talk about how balancing acceptance and agency can help us go from one to the other. Forrest talks about the relationship between overthinking and feelings of disappointment and failure, and Rick shares practical ways to interrupt the cycle, shift into more concrete forms of problem-solving, and finally stop ruminating. Rick's Rumination Course: If rumination is a persistent issue for you, check out Rick’s five-week online course focused on practical tools for letting go of these negative thought loops. Learn more at RickHanson.com/ruminating, and use coupon code BeingWell25 to receive a 25% discount. Previous episodes on rumination and overthinking: Breaking the Self-Awareness Trap: How to Stop Overthinking | Being Well Rumination: How to Disrupt Obsessive Thoughts Key Topics: 0:00: Intro: what is rumination 5:35: Why we ruminate 21:06: Why rumination doesn't help us 25:24: Moving from rumination to reflection 31:35: Rumination as a habit 38:40: Interrupting the rumination habit 46:44: Radical helplessness and radical resourcefulness 53:43: More ways to move from abstract to concrete thinking 1:07:23: The role of mindfulness 1:13:32: Recap Support the Podcast: We're on Patreon! If you'd like to support the podcast, follow this link. Sponsors Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at shopify.com/beingwell. Level up your bedding with Quince. Go to Quince.com/BEINGWELL for free shipping on your order and three hundred and sixty-five -day returns. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to being well. I'm Forrest Hanson.
0:10.0	If you're new to the show, thanks for joining us today. And if you've listened to before, welcome back.
0:15.0	Today we're talking about overthinking and a particular form of it called rumination.
0:20.0	Overthinking can be really difficult for people to deal with, in part because knowing that you
0:24.0	overthink doesn't seem to help that much. If anything, ruminating about your rumination is its own
0:30.0	special kind of problem. So we're going to be talking about why that is. What is rumination? Why does
0:35.9	it tend to make us feel worse? And why does developing
0:39.3	insight about it not seem to actually solve the problem very much? Then we'll talk about what we can
0:45.2	actually do to break the cycle of rumination. And to help me do that, I'm joined by today's guest,
0:50.6	as usual, clinical psychologist, Dr. Rick Hanson. So, Dad, how are you doing today?
0:55.2	I'm good, and I'm already experiencing anticipatory delight at this topic.
1:00.9	I think it's a great one. I learned a lot doing the prep for today's episode. And before we get
1:05.2	into it, I want to give you a quick reminder that Rick actually has a course coming up that's
1:09.3	focused on rumination. It is a five-week
1:11.5	online course that's focused on practical tools for letting go of negative thought loops. You can
1:16.7	learn more about it at rickhanson.com slash ruminating and use coupon code being well to five to receive a
1:24.2	25% off discount. So I'm going to start with a deceptively simple question here, Dad.
1:30.5	What's rumination?
1:32.0	An official definition of rumination that comes from response styles theory,
1:37.9	drum roll and name check, is that when we're ruminating, we are repetitively and passively, two key words,
1:49.2	thinking about our problems, their causes, and their consequences.
1:55.3	We are, in other words, doing laps around the rumination track,
	...

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