5 Things I Tried When My Brain Wouldn't Shut Up. Only One Worked.

Spoiler: it sounded too dumb to even try.

A while ago, in a land far far away, back when home office was still a big favor you asked for, I requested to work from home one morning. I had a plumbing issue and someone was coming to fix it at 11 am. It didn’t seem like a big deal, I knew the occasional work-from-home day was always approved. Plus, writing reports from my office desk that morning or from my dining table made no difference at all.

Image from Annie Spratt on Unsplash

In my mind, the only acceptable response from my manager would be a quick “Sure, no problem. Thanks for letting me know” or something along these lines.

Instead, here’s what I got: “That’s fine, as long as you're reachable and not skipping any important commitments.”

It felt like a slap in the face. What am I, 4 years old? As long as you’re reachable? Of course I was going to be reachable! And don’t even get me started on the commitments part.

I’m a little ashamed to admit it, but this email kept my brain hostage for 2 days.
48 hours with a tight jaw, running imaginary confrontations with my boss while doing the dishes, brushing my teeth, and on my way to work.

Walk with me for a second here because I want to show you how I dug myself out of this hole. The tool I eventually found is one I've used a hundred times since.

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Step 1: The Venting

My initial reaction was shock. Intense blinking and blank stares at my screen. Then came the indignation. Is this some sort of joke?

If you’re like my friend Camille, you might not get what was so bad about that email. Just a manager doing his job, right? That’s a fair point. I’m usually all for assuming positive intent when triggered. I even wrote a whole piece on how not to take things personally. But there was a specific context with this guy. A history of behaviors that made it hard to take my own advice. I just knew too much.

My first move was to spin around in my chair and tell my colleagues.“You’ll never believe what he just wrote me.” It turned out most of them had also been on the receiving end of unpleasant emails from him over the weekend. So, they started venting to me. My indignation met their indignation, and we had a big indignation party that left us all validated but even more indignant. We even managed to contaminate the one girl who’d been spared the toxic emails. She was now fuming too.

I’m not gonna lie, the venting felt great in the moment. But looking back, it wasn’t a smart move. Research shows that venting can improve the relationship between colleagues, but it also amplifies our frustration, leaving both the venter and the listener more upset than before.

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Step 2: The Narrative

Now that my anger was fully magnified, my brain proceeded to build a compelling narrative around that email. It came up with convincing reasons as to why that specific manager wrote what he wrote. Reasons that had to do with his character, his leadership style and his levels of emotional intelligence. I even made up childhood traumas for him. Do you do that too or are you normal?

The new stories started building on old ones and stacking into a tall pile of incriminating explanations. The more I elaborated, the worse I felt.

I was aware I was in story-making mode, but it felt impossible to question and I just couldn’t stop.

Then came the fantasies. First, I drafted a cutting reply in my head: Don’t worry, I do not usually skip important commitments or suddenly become unreachable while I’m on duty. Then I imagined confronting him about his communication style. My favorite scene was the one where I storm into his boss’s office, all righteous and dignified, and hand in my letter of resignation, explaining that I could no longer tolerate the disrespect.

Good imaginary times… and quite revealing too…

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Step 3: The Journaling

By now, I’d decided to leave that email unanswered. A non-response can be the best response. I was going to solve my plumbing issue and that was all that mattered.

Eight hours later, I came home still very deep in the rumination cycle. So I walked to the nearest park, picked a bench under the trees, and unleashed my irritation on my favorite journal. That’ll help, I thought. And a few insights did emerge:

• The email did not infuriate me because it came from someone I find unpleasant. I imagined it coming from someone I liked and realized it wouldn’t have been okay either.

• When reminded of something obvious, adults experience it as patronizing. That’s a normal reaction. “Don’t eat the whole cake, leave some for the rest.” “Well, duh, who do you think I am?”

• My brain was interpreting the whole thing as a status contest with this man. “He’s putting me down to lift himself up,” I firmly believed.

• True or not, this was proving to be emotionally expensive and had to stop.

• On some level, I believed that rising above it all meant letting him get away with it. It felt unfair.

• The incident did not deserve the amount of mental space I was giving it.

I felt a little calmer after, and walked home. Isn’t walking supposed to regulate you? It did a little bit, but not enough to stop the mental loop. My mind just loved revisiting that email.

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Step 4: The Self-Coaching

That’s when I started asking myself some serious questions: Why am I so triggered? What am I protecting? I realized it was all about my dignity and my worth. It felt like they were under attack. It wasn’t the first time I'd reacted this way to feeling disrespected. The mental pattern usually goes something like this:

Rude behavior —> Feeling of disrespect —> Threat to dignity —> Rumination.

Do I have a self-worth problem? I wondered. If I’m giving people such an easy access to my dignity, maybe it isn’t rooted enough… Is it really that fragile?

Then I thought: What would I tell a friend if they came to me with this problem?

Here’s what I think I’d say:

• You can decide it’s not worth your energy.

• That email took 2 minutes to write, it’s costing you an entire day. Let it go.

• Non-retaliation does not mean submission.

• All this rumination and all the confrontation fantasies are a desperate attempt to even the score with this man.

• Someone can disrespect you and your worth remains fundamentally unchanged. Disrespect can perfectly mean nothing.

• This person will keep behaving this way with you. Why don’t you see these events as a chance to practice letting go of minor aggressions?

  

  Image from Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash

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Step 5: The Thing That Finally Put It To Sleep

The following day, the rumination machine started again the moment I opened my eyes. I decided right there and then that enough was enough. It had to stop.

I had diagnosed the problem, identified my dignity wound and my status dynamic with this guy. I had walked, written and breathed. Yet, my mind kept presenting me with opportunities to revisit the situation. I was keeping the injury open by checking on it every 5 minutes and craving a resolution that the situation was not going to provide.
I had to simply let it be an annoying, unresolved, slightly stupid thing that happened.

So, I googled “How to stop a rumination cycle?” and started reading through a number of tips. One of them caught my attention, although to be honest, it sounded pretty lame. I didn’t think it would work.

It’s dead simple: Every time a thought on this topic shows up in your head, think “enough.”

It worked immediately. Throughout the entire morning, my brain kept sending me invitations to revisit the topic, and I kept turning them down.

-“What if…”
- “Enough.”

-”Let’s reread the email. Can you believe this guy?”
-”Enough.”

-”How’s it going to be like when you see him? Will you act cold?”
-”Enough.”

I labeled every one of these intrusive thoughts as recurring event instead of new problem to think about. And it worked like magic. By the end of the day, I’d moved on. Think of it as waving off a fly, or when your five year old kid keeps putting his toy on your head for the thousandth time while you’re trying to work. “Enough, honey.”

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I’m not going to lie, I hesitated a lot about posting this. This is me, giving hundreds of strangers a window into just how obsessive my mind can get about tiny things.
It feels vulnerable and a little risky. Will people think I’m crazy?

However, I remembered that if I go through this, many people do too. And if this piece can help them feel seen, validated and less lonely, then it’ll have been worth it to have unveiled such an intimate part of myself. Plus, I did figure out a very effective strategy against rumination. And that is worth sharing with my fellow overthinkers 🫶🏻

Step nº 5 was my personal breakthrough. Journaling, spending time in nature, or walking can all bring you much closer to the answers. They’re fantastic ways to build self-awareness and find some relief.

But for those tricky cases when nothing seems to work, it’s time to press that “enough” button. I hope it serves as an extra tool in your self-regulation toolbox.

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Tell me you've done this too. What's the most disproportionate amount of headspace you've ever given a tiny thing?

And if you enjoyed this read, press the 💗 to let me know. It’ll make my day! ☀️

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If your own loops have been louder than usual lately, I work with a small number of 1:1 clients to help quiet exactly this kind of noise.