Episode
When You Can't Stop Thinking About Something, Here's What To Do. | Donna Jackson Nakazawa
- Podcast
- Good Life Project
- Published
- Jul 2, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 3247
- Processing state
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Summary
There is something your brain is spinning right now, that you may never have been given a name for or a way out of. The thought you keep replaying. The conversation you keep recasting. The reel that loads up again and again without resolution, making you feel worse each time and no closer to clarity. That is rumination. And according to the neuroscience, it is the single greatest pre-diagnostic factor for depression and anxiety we have identified, and we are all doing it more than we ever have. Donna Jackson Nakazawa is an award-winning science writer whose work sits at the intersection of neurobiology, emotion, and mental health. Her new book, Mind Drama , is the most rigorous and humane investigation of rumination yet written: what it is, why your brain does it, what it is actually trying to tell you, and how to use a specific neurobiologically grounded framework to loosen its grip. In this conversation, you will explore: Why rumination is a survival response gone rogue, and why knowing that changes how you relate to your own spinning thoughts What a brain scan of Donna's own ruminating mind revealed, and what those red swirls in the default mode network actually mean for your daily life Why midlife may be the season when old ruminative patterns return with the most force, and what that signal is asking you to hear The research showing that women ruminate at significantly higher rates than men, why this is, and what the neuroscience says about the acting-in pattern and its link to depression The MIST framework: a four-step neurobiological practice for naming the mental movies, emotions, and somatic sensations underneath your rumination so the brain can actually let go Why rumination is never random, always circling the question of whether you matter to the people who…