Rumination is Poison
You think telling the story will heal you.
You think that if you say it one more time, maybe this time it will land. Someone will get it. Validate it. Offer you the resolution you never got. And so you tell it again—what he said, what you did, what they always do, how no one ever really sees you.
But nothing changes.
In fact, the more you tell it, the worse it gets.
Not just worse emotionally, worse neurologically. You’re not metabolizing the pain. You’re reinstalling it. Every retelling, especially in the same emotional tone, hardens the memory.
This is the opposite of healing. This is memory hardening—the emotional equivalent of fossilizing your neural pathways.
This is how people stay stuck.
Rumination is Not Reflection
Reflection is curious, soft, expansive. Rumination is tight, repetitive, righteous. It loops. It narrows. It builds its own walls. You tell the same story in ten different variations but none of them free you. They just reinforce the core belief: “I was right. I was wronged. I am alone in this.”
And there’s a bitter comfort in it. Because this loop protects something.
Hope is dangerous.
Memory Softening vs. Memory Hardening
The neuroscience is clear: every time we recall a memory, it becomes temporarily malleable—a window opens where it can be reconsolidated. This is how therapy works. You bring up an old wound, but in the presence of new safety, insight, or emotional regulation, you encode something different.
This is memory softening. The story doesn’t go away—but it becomes less charged, less defining. It moves.
But if you bring up the memory and reinsert all the same anger, fear, or blame?
You’re not softening it. You’re reinforcing it. This is memory hardening.
It’s what happens when we retell a story with the same tight energy again and again. We consolidate it more deeply into identity. We calcify it into self.
The Trap of Righteous Suffering
It’s seductive to be the one who tried, who gave, who was mistreated. You can build a whole personality around it. You can keep the moral high ground. And most of all—you can protect yourself from vulnerability.
Because if you’re right, then they’re wrong.
If you were good, then they were bad.
There’s a black-and-white certainty in that story—a kind of moral clarity that feels safer than ambiguity, or grief, or doubt.
But the cost is enormous.
You stay trapped in the loop. You stay emotionally fused with the person or story you resent. You keep drinking the poison—hoping it will hurt them, or save you. It does neither.
This is not memory. This is poison.
How to Stop Drinking Poison
1. Catch the Loop
• Notice when you’re telling the same story again. Especially with the same tone. Ask yourself: “Am I seeking healing—or confirmation?”
2. Ask What It Protects
• Every repetitive story protects something vulnerable. A hope you don’t want to admit. A grief you’re not ready to feel. Ask: “What would I have to feel if I stopped blaming?”
3. Feel the Underneath
• Beneath the anger is usually heartbreak. Touch it. Let it move through. This is the emotional bridge that makes reconsolidation possible.
4. Retell It Differently
• Not with new facts, but new feeling. What do you know now that you didn’t then? What did it cost you to believe this version for so long?
5. Insert a New Truth
• “I didn’t deserve that.” “I’m allowed to want more.” “That wasn’t love.” These aren’t affirmations. They’re updates to your nervous system.
6. Refuse the Old Story
• When the loop comes back—and it will—try saying out loud: “I’m not drinking that poison today.”
The Work
Sometimes healing isn’t about finding a new story. It’s about no longer needing to tell the old one.
You don’t have to rewrite everything. You just have to stop pouring the concrete on the version that keeps you small, bitter, or stuck.
There is life beyond the loop. But it will cost you the righteousness. The certainty. The story.
Are you interested in working on your personal development? Are you looking for a life coach or a life consultant? Are you feeling stagnant? Do you want to jumpstart change?
My transformational approach is a process where awareness, alignment, and action work together as catalysts to create momentum for change.
*Awareness is knowing what you genuinely want and need.
*Alignment is the symmetry between our values and our actions. It means our inner and outer worlds match.
*Action is when you are conscious that what you say, do and think are in harmony with your values.
Together we build an understanding of what you want to accomplish, and delve deeply into building awareness around any thoughts and assumptions that you may already have. To truly transform your life, I will empower you to rethink what’s possible for you.
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