12/19/2025
Understanding rumination as a physiological blocker rather than just a mental habit shifted everything for me. We talk a lot about stress management, but we don’t talk enough about stress completion.
Your nervous system wants to return to baseline after stress. It’s designed to adapt, to learn, to get more efficient at handling repeated challenges. But rumination essentially jams that process. It’s like trying to heal a wound you keep reopening.
This is why some people can go through incredibly stressful situations and bounce back quickly, while others get stuck on smaller stressors for days. It’s often not about the size of the stress. It’s about what happens in the hours after.
The research shows this isn’t about willpower or positive thinking. It’s about understanding how your nervous system works and working with it instead of against it. Your body already knows how to recover from stress. Sometimes we just need to stop interfering with that process.
Research: Gianferante, D., Thoma, M.V., Hanlin, L., Chen, X., Breines, J.G., Zo***la, P.M., & Rohleder, N. (2014). Post-stress rumination predicts HPA axis responses to repeated acute stress. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 49, 244-252.
