Rumination
Brooding repetitively on distress and its causes without moving toward a solution.
What it means
Rumination is a pattern of repetitive, passive thinking that dwells on one's negative feelings and their causes, meanings, and consequences without progressing toward problem-solving. The response-styles theory contrasts it with distraction and with active problem-solving and identifies it as a maladaptive way of responding to low mood that prolongs and deepens depression rather than relieving it, partly by impairing concentration, sapping motivation, and biasing memory and interpretation toward the negative. Mechanistically, ruminators keep retrieving and elaborating distressing material, which strengthens negative associations and blocks the disengagement that would allow recovery, so the very effort to 'understand' the bad feeling perpetuates it. It is distinct from helpful reflection by its abstract, self-focused, and unresolved quality, and it is a transdiagnostic risk factor linked to anxiety, binge eating, and self-harm as well as depression. It matters because targeting rumination — through behavioral activation, attention training, and concrete rather than abstract self-questioning — is an effective lever in treatment and prevention.
Examples
After a setback at work, someone lies awake replaying it and asking 'why does this always happen to me?' for hours, feeling steadily worse without arriving at any plan.
After a first date that ends flatly, someone spends a week re-reading the messages and asking what is wrong with them, learning nothing and feeling worse with each pass.
Waiting on test results, a patient loops through every worst-case meaning for hours a night — not writing down questions for the doctor, just circling the dread.
First described in Response-styles theory; Susan Nolen-Hoeksema (1991).