Rumination as safety-seeking

Last Wednesday, my system spiraled into catastrophe and ruin, all because I had a flat tire. The same could be said for Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday—different stories, but all carrying the same structure.

It’s been a really hard mental health week, especially seeing the atrocities ICE continues committing on our friends and neighbors. Please consider how to support yourself in reaching out to your elected representatives. If phone calls feel overwhelming, remember that you get to reach out in the way that feels most accessible and doable to your brain.

On Wednesday, I was feeling like a peeled clove of garlic after my EMDR session, and I recognized that this context mattered. But at the same time, my emotional response at the flat tire felt disproportionate.

Logic brain said, “These feelings make no sense. You’re freaking out over nothing.”

And when the appeal to logic didn’t register, my brain jumped into We Must Fix This mode.

For me, historically, that looks like frantic Google and Reddit searches to try to understand the problem and derive user-scenarios and niche recommendations to my very specific problem.

How do you know when you have a flat tire?

How flat does it need to be in order to damage your wheel or rims?

How much does it cost to replace a wheel?

Does driving on a flat tire damage the axel?

And on, and on, and on.

Slowly, I am getting better at recognizing when it’s happening.

In the past year, I’ve learned that I can ruminate and google search—all of the ways I think I destroyed my car by driving on the flat tire, or how, in granular detail, my disproportionate emotional response is linked to my trauma—

But it doesn’t actually get me anywhere I want to be.

No amount of thinking my way through can fix my flat tire when it’s 10PM and my car is already at the repair shop.

No amount of circular, swirling thinking can ease my hurting mind.

Staying in thinking-brain keeps me in fight-or-flight.

So instead of charging through with the belief that intensely hypervigilant thinking will fix this, which has really only ever caused me to hurt more—

I pivoted into slowness, and rest. I played games on my phone. I scrolled, not as a tool for dissociation, but a tool for supported distraction.

I allowed my fear and anxiety co-exist with moments of small comforts and familiar delights, all without trying to fix or solve.

This is what values-aligned self-support looks like for me in real time.

It’s a lesson I learned last year, in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene;

that rumination keeps me in a hurting brain-state, believing that I deserve it because all of this is my fault.

It wouldn’t have happened if I had been more careful.

But rest shows me that I am safe in my body.

And that, even when I don’t feel safe, I am allowed to support myself with tenderness and care.

I’m starting to pick up on the pattern. My brain wants to believe that if I ruminate about a problem long enough, if I think through every possible outcome, every uncertainty, everything that could go wrong.

Then, eventually, I’ll feel safe.

But the issue is, there is no “enough thinking” that can fix it.

I can’t fix it by thinking harder, or by anticipating every possible scenario.

The action I notice myself taking looks like:

ruminating, endless thinking, questioning, reflecting, doubting, fact-checking.

And the value underneath that action is:

“I have to know every detail in order to be safe.”

But that’s not actually what I want for myself.

The values I want to live from instead are these:

I am allowed to feel sad and grieve my sense of autonomy.

I am allowed to rest, even when things feel unresolved.

I trust myself to solve problems as they come, without needing to be perfect or endlessly efficient.

I deserve to take care of myself when I am struggling.

So support, for me, doesn’t look like trying to force myself to stop ruminating. It won’t stick. I’ll float right back, like gravity.

Instead, it looks like choosing different actions, ones that are aligned with different values.

My own, and not ones chosen for me by fear, shame, or past experiences.

Right now, that looks like:

• Playing in my journals.

• Cuddling my dog & cat.

• Watching a fun TV show.

• Reading a book.

• Going for a walk.

• Feeding myself, drinking water, resting.

None of this solves the problem. But it doesn’t need to.

Because, bottom line:

My nervous system deserves care even while the problem exists.

Care is the way through.