Exhausted from ruminating on the past and overthinking everything? In this week’s episode I share practical, no-nonsense tips for rumination and I dig into how to stop ruminating so you can stop dwelling on the past and feel calmer in your own head (hooray!). So, Let’s Talk About Mental Health!
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Episode Overview:
Can’t stop thinking about the past? Does it feel like the past won’t leave you alone sometimes?
Whether you’re ruminating on the past or feeling stuck in the past, it can be absolutely exhausting.
In this episode of the Let’s Talk About Mental Health podcast I’m talking about letting go of the past is so difficult, and what to do when you feel like you can’t move forward.
We’ll discuss anxiety and rumination, why your brain keeps overthinking the past, and what you can actually do about it so you can start making peace with your past. I’ll walk you through how to stop ruminating without pretending nothing happened, share simple tips for rumination that you can use when you’re thinking about the past on repeat, and offer practical ideas for how to stop rumination so you can stop dwelling on the past and feel more present.
This episode is for you if you’re stuck in your own head, tired of mental health tips that ignore real life (and just how horrible overthinking and rumination can feel), and if you want realistic ways to feel more settled day to day.
👉 Ready to calm your mind and stop replaying the past? Then let’s talk!
💡 TL;DR: In this episode I’m tackling ruminating on the past and overthinking. I share practical, no-nonsense tips for rumination and I dig into how to stop dwelling on the past and feel calmer in your own head. 🙂
New here? Hi! Let’s Talk About Mental Health is your weekly dose of practical mental health advice for real life. I’m Jeremy Godwin (hi! 👋) and I keep things simple, honest, and doable so you can feel more in control of your life and your mental wellbeing. If you’re not already a free subscriber, sign up below to have episodes and transcripts land in your inbox every Sunday:
Episode Transcript:
Ruminating on the past? Why you can’t let go… until now
If the past keeps going round in your mind, it’s because something still hasn’t been settled… and until it is, it’ll keep coming back. Not to punish you, but to be processed. Replaying it won’t change what happened, but it will drain you. Today, I’ll explain why your brain does this and how to meet those memories in a way that finally turns the volume down on them. We have a lot to discuss, so let’s talk about… why the past won’t leave you alone.
Hello and welcome back to Let’s Talk About Mental Health! I’m Jeremy Godwin, and this show is all about practical mental health advice for real life. This is the second of four mini episodes looking at things that will help you year-round, but especially at the end of the year when this is being released. Now when you’re struggling or barely holding it together, your mind doesn’t exactly like to pick convenient times to bring up old stuff. It likes to wait until things go quiet: when you’re trying to rest, when you’re on your own, when life finally slows down for a minute… and then, suddenly, your brain decides to get knee-deep in the past again, rehashing old conversations and trying to rewrite endings that you cannot actually redo.
And at this time of year in particular, a lot of us naturally become reflective. You start looking back over what happened and what didn’t, what you wish had have gone differently… and so if you’ve got unresolved emotions sitting underneath the surface, that reflection can easily tip into rumination really quickly. It’s like your brain goes, “Ah, yes, a quiet moment… the perfect time to open every thought I’ve had hidden for years and years and go over and over them.” You know the feeling! So in this episode, we’re going to talk about what those loops really are, why they feel so challenging, and how to calm your mind in a way that helps you stay in the present without pretending the past didn’t happen.
So first, let’s talk about…
Why the past keeps replaying
So… what we’re talking about today isn’t just ‘thinking about the past sometimes’; that’s completely natural. This is when the past grabs you by the collar and will not let go. It’s those old moments that keep replaying, like a dodgy highlight reel that you never asked for. Maybe it’s something you regret, something that hurt you, something you lost, something you’re still angry about, or something you still don’t fully understand.
You might be in the middle of doing something random, like washing the dishes or driving to work or trying to relax, and suddenly… boom! You’re right back there in the thick of those emotions. Not because you want to be, but because your brain has hit ‘play’ on the memory or the thought and the emotions that go with it before you even realise what’s happening.
And it usually shows up in pretty predictable ways. So… you rerun conversations and think of what you should have said instead. You might picture different endings for things, or you might blame yourself for things that you couldn’t control. You may feel a wave of shame, grief, or rage for no obvious reason. Then you realise it’s tied to something old that did or didn’t happen. Sometimes it’s a specific memory. Other times, it’s more like a theme: “I wasn’t good enough,” or “I should have known better,” or “I don’t feel safe,” or “people leave” or “I ruined everything.” It’s like your mind is doing a background scan for unfinished business and then dumping it on your desk at the least helpful moment, like a horrible boss.
Here’s why this happens. Your brain doesn’t replay old stuff because it enjoys torturing you. It does it because something about that experience never got properly processed, understood, or felt all the way through. So maybe you had to survive it at the time, so you pushed your emotions down just to get on with life. Maybe you were never allowed to be upset about it. Maybe you didn’t have support. Maybe there was no clean ending. Maybe you’re carrying shame. Whatever the reason, your mind keeps circling back because it’s still trying to make sense of what happened and what it means about you.
If something in you is still hurting, ignoring it will not make it disappear. It just makes it louder in the background. Quiet moments tend to make this worse too. So when you’re busy, your brain has far less space and capacity to be able to pull old ‘files’ from the shelf to then go flicking through for stuff. But when you’re in a position where things have slowed down, especially at the end of the year, your mind finally has room to go, “Right! Now, what haven’t we dealt with? And we’re going to deal with it now!”
And so that’s why it often hits when you’re alone or when you’re trying to rest or when life gets reflective. It’s not random. It’s your nervous system saying, “Hey, I’m not done with this yet.” And so the cost though is real. Like, rumination doesn’t actually heal you. It exhausts you. It keeps your body on high alert, your thoughts tangled and all over the place, and your emotions stuck firmly in yesterday. It eats away at your ability to feel calm, safe, and settled here in the present because part of you is still living in the aftermath of the past.
Now, two things can be true at once here. What happened mattered. Of course it does. But also, you deserve to stop reliving it. So the goal is not to erase your past or force yourself to somehow “hurry up and be over it.” The goal is to change how you relate to it so that those memories can exist without hijacking your mind every time life goes quiet.
And we’re going to talk about how to do that right after this quick break.
[AD BREAK]
And welcome back! So now let’s talk about…
How to stop ruminating
So the core focus here is simple, even if it takes practice: it’s stop wrestling the past like it’s an enemy, and start meeting it as unfinished emotions that are asking to be understood. So when you do that, when you change that approach, the loop doesn’t need to keep on shouting all the time to get your attention because your brain knows that you are doing something about it.
So here are two things that you can do immediately, and then we’ll dig into some longer term stuff. These immediate ones are not going to fix your entire life, but they’re just going to create some breathing room. First…
Name the theme, not the scene.
When a memory barges into your mind, don’t get dragged down into every little detail of it. Instead, pause and label what’s underneath it. For example, “This is grief,” “This is shame,” “This is fear of being rejected,” “This is anger I never got to feel.” That one sentence to yourself helps your brain to sort the ‘file’ properly instead of just replaying the footage over and over again. It’s you telling yourself, “I get what this is, I know what it is,” and that takes the sting out of it a lot faster than you’d expect. Next…
Park the thought respectfully.
Instead of fighting the thought or letting it hijack your day, say something to yourself like, “Yes, you matter… but not right now.” Then write a quick note, literally one line, about what it is that you’ll come back to later. You’re not dismissing it; you’re giving it a place to land so you can keep living your life today without ‘white-knuckling’ your way through a mental spiral.
OK, so now for the next few weeks, there’s one quick action that’s going to make a big difference because it will really teach you what these mental loops are actually about. And it is…
Do a ‘loop pattern check’.
Every time the past pops up, ask yourself, “What’s the repeating message here?” Because most rumination isn’t actually about the event itself; it’s about what the event taught you to believe… things like, I’m not safe, I don’t matter, people leave me, I should have known better. When you stop and spot the message, you stop being trapped in the scene. Once you’re dealing with the actual message, instead of the replayed thought, you can finally start loosening its grip on you. It’s basically you closing 24 browser tabs down to just focus on the one that actually matters!
Alright, so then there are a couple of much longer term changes that I really encourage you to consider and work through over the coming months. I’m going to keep these really simple, but they are important because they stop your mind from ambushing you at random. So, first…
Schedule regular processing time for yourself.
Guess what? If you don’t process your emotions, they don’t just disappear… they sit there waiting for the attention that they need and deserve. So make the time to work through things proactively, because suppressing your emotions just means that eventually they will pop up again when you least expect it if you’re not going to do something about them.
If your mind keeps on dragging you back to the past, it’s because there hasn’t been a safe and structured place to deal with whatever’s still sitting there. So, create one. Even if it’s 20 minutes once a week, that’s… that’s enough, you know, for a whole bunch of different reflection activities and journalling, although working with a counsellor or therapist is always going to be best if you have access to that option, or especially if the things that you’re dealing with are quite deep, hurtful, painful… potentially even challenging.
So whatever it is though, pick one theme that you keep looping on. Just one. Sit with it on purpose and let yourself feel and name what’s actually there. When your brain trusts that you have space to feel what you need to feel, it doesn’t have to shove the past in your face at 2:00 AM or in the middle of a random Tuesday while you’re in the supermarket. This is one of the most absolutely direct ways to calm your mind long term. Not by suppressing your thoughts, but by actually consciously giving them somewhere to go. OK, next…
Work towards closure, not perfection.
A lot of people stay stuck because they think they need the perfect explanation or the perfect forgiveness or the perfect ending before they’re allowed to move forward. You don’t. You need enough truth and understanding to say, “That happened, it mattered, and I’m allowed to move forward anyway.” Closure might come from grieving properly, from setting a boundary, having a conversation, writing a letter that you don’t send, or working with a therapist if you can.
But the aim here is not to rewrite history. It’s to make peace with the reality of the situation as it is so that your present doesn’t keep paying for your past. Not because it didn’t hurt, but because you’re done letting it own you.
Alright, so those are the tips. Now, before you go off and try to do all of this at once, I’d suggest just picking one or two things to focus on at first… you can do that and then build over time, and that’s how you make sure that you don’t overwhelm yourself. Let me know in the comments which one or two you’re going to focus on over the next week, and let’s talk about it!
Conclusion
So here’s the main thing I want you to take away from all of this today. If the past keeps looping in your head, it’s because something in you still needs care and closure… and you don’t calm those loops by fighting harder against them. You calm them by meeting what’s there differently, with a bit of structure and a whole lot of kindness for yourself.
So here’s something for you to sit with: what’s one old story or wound that keeps resurfacing for you, and what would it look like to give that part of you a safe place to be heard? Not to try and ‘fix’ it, but just to start slowly changing the relationship you have with it.
Because when you boil it all down, when you’re ruminating your mind is trying to let you finish some of your unfinished business.
Each week I like to finish up by sharing a quote about the topic, and I encourage you to take a few moments to really reflect on it and consider what it means to you. This week’s quote is by an unknown author, and it is…
Ruminating thoughts make you a captive of your own mind.
Unknown
Let me repeat that.
Ruminating thoughts make you a captive of your own mind.
Alright… that’s it for this week! If you’d like to support the show, my Patreon gets you early ad-free episodes and extras; it’s linked below.
Thank you very much for joining me today. Look after yourself and make a conscious effort to share positivity and kindness out into the world… because you get back what you put out. Take care and talk to you next time!
Join me next week to talk about why resolutions don’t work, and check out my episode on letting go next. It’s linked in the description. And follow or subscribe to never miss an episode!
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