The ObservatoryWorry and rumination
The tendency to get stuck in worry about the future or repeated negative thoughts.
Questions to ask yourself
- 1How much of your thinking time goes to worry or rumination?
- 2What do your thoughts most often return to?
- 3How often does rumination lead to anything useful?
- 4What usually breaks the spiral in the end?
- 5What do you want to try the next time your thoughts get stuck?
In the app, you rate the area 0–10, answer the questions, and watch how your answers shift over time.
Getting started
Exercise
Worry time
Stop worrying a little all day long. Gather the worry into one fixed, limited stretch of time and sort it there.
10 min · Discipline
Tool
The worry log
A standing tool: catch the worry when it comes, sort out what you can influence, and park the rest for a set time instead of ruminating all day.
8 min · Rationality
Exercise
Think the thought through
Worry always bails out at the worst part and leaves you there. This time you follow the thought all the way, until it loses its force.
10 min · Rationality
Exercise
Put the thought on trial
A painful thought often feels like a truth. Here you examine it, calmly and methodically.
12 min · Rationality
Session
5-4-3-2-1: come back to the present
An emergency tool for moments when your thoughts are racing. Anchor yourself in what is around you.
5 min · Compassion
Exercise
Thinking traps in the wild
Learn to recognize catastrophizing, all-or-nothing thinking and mind reading before they get a grip on you
10 min · Rationality
Story
Nina and the highway
Facing a fear one kilometer at a time, not all at once.
5 min · Discipline
Article
Rumination that pretends to be work
Replaying something feels like doing something about the problem — here is why it rarely is
2 min · Rationality
Exercise
Waiting for news
A way to get through uncertainty you can't influence (a test result, an application, news that is taking its time) by separating the waiting from the worry inside it
8 min · Compassion
Session
Examine a thought
Take a thought that weighs on you and examine it as a hypothesis: what speaks for it, what speaks against it, and what a more accurate version would say.
7 min · Rationality