Hello and welcome to Being Well, I'm Forest Hanson.

If you're new to the podcast, thanks for joining us today.

And if you've listened before, welcome back.

It's normal and healthy for us to try to process our experiences emotionally.

But sometimes during that processing process, something strange happens.

And we just get stuck.

If you find yourself returning to the same painful memory, current anxiety, or disturbing

thought over and over and over again, you might be experiencing something known as rumination.

Rumination is the habit of obsessive thinking, and it occurs when you just can't move on

from something.

Most people have experienced this at some point, and just speaking personally for a moment

here, it's one of the most frustrating and frustratingly common psychological experiences.

We are just haunted by this thought that we can't get free of.

And part of what makes it so frustrating is that all of this thinking is often not really

getting us anywhere.

So today we're going to be exploring rumination and obsessive thinking.

We'll cover where it comes from and how we can break away from those thought black holes

that tend to suck us in.

So to help me do that, I'm joined today as usual by Dr. Rick Hanson, who is a clinical

psychologist, he's a best-selling author, and he's also my dad.

So dad, how are you doing today?

I'm doing great, and I'm thrilled about this topic.

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