Anxiety & Rumination

When your mind won’t let something go

Maybe your mind is constantly trying to figure something out. You replay conversations, analyze how someone responded to you, worry that you made the wrong decision, or keep returning to the same question hoping that eventually you’ll feel certain. Even when you find an answer that gives you relief, another “what if?” seems to take its place.

You might know you’re overthinking, but telling yourself to stop doesn’t work. The more important something is to you, the more urgent it can feel to get certainty, prevent a mistake, or make sure nothing bad happens. Over time, you can spend so much energy trying to feel certain that it becomes harder to be present for the life happening around you.

You might recognize patterns like:

  • Replaying conversations to figure out whether you said or did something wrong

  • Second-guessing decisions after you’ve already made them

  • Feeling like you need certainty before you can move forward

  • Asking others for reassurance but finding that the relief doesn’t last

  • Trying to figure out what your thoughts or feelings “really mean”

  • Mentally reviewing situations for evidence that everything is okay

  • Feeling overly responsible for preventing something bad from happening

  • Getting stuck on questions that don’t seem to have a satisfying answer

  • Avoiding decisions because you’re afraid of making the wrong one

  • Knowing something logically while still feeling compelled to think about it again

The problem is not the anxiety itself, but how we respond to it.

Jonathan Grayson

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)

I use Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) to help you change your relationship with difficult thoughts and feelings rather than spending all of your energy trying to get rid of them. ACT teaches skills for noticing when your mind has hooked you, stepping back from thoughts without arguing with them, and making room for uncomfortable experiences when trying to control them is keeping you stuck.

This doesn’t mean resigning yourself to feeling anxious or pretending that your thoughts don’t matter. It means learning that you can have uncertainty, anxiety, or an unwanted thought without having to stop everything and solve it. We’ll also spend time identifying what matters to you so that your life can become less organized around avoiding discomfort and more connected to the relationships, experiences, and values you care about.

ACT may help you:

  • Feel less consumed by anxious thoughts

  • Stop organizing your life entirely around avoiding anxiety

  • Build self-trust and emotional flexibility

  • Respond to fear with more compassion and intention

  • Reduce shame around intrusive thoughts and emotions

  • Stay connected to your values even during distress

  • Create a fuller, more meaningful life beyond symptom management

Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP)

ERP is a therapy approach that helps break the cycle of fear, avoidance, and compulsions that often keep thought loops and anxiety going. Together, we gradually practice facing feared thoughts, feelings, sensations, or situations while reducing the habits that anxiety tells you are necessary in order to feel safe or certain.

This process is collaborative, supportive, and paced carefully. ERP is not about overwhelming you or “throwing you into” fear. Instead, it helps your brain and nervous system learn that anxiety, uncertainty, and discomfort can be tolerated without needing to constantly escape, fix, neutralize, or control them.

Over time, many clients begin feeling less consumed by fear and more able to respond to anxiety with flexibility, confidence, and self-trust rather than urgency or avoidance.

ERP can help with:

  • OCD and intrusive thoughts

  • Health anxiety

  • Emetophobia

  • Panic and fear of bodily sensations

  • Social anxiety

  • Perfectionism

  • Contamination fears

  • Harm or responsibility fears

  • Relationship anxiety and reassurance-seeking

  • Avoidance related to uncertainty or discomfort