# How to Stop Overthinking in Real Time | Donna Jackson Nakazawa | Happiness | E524

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/love-happiness-and-success-with-dr-lisa-marie-bobby-7046318/how-to-stop-overthinking-in-real-time-donna-jackson-nakazawa-happiness-e524
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/love-happiness-and-success-with-dr-lisa-marie-bobby-7046318/how-to-stop-overthinking-in-real-time-donna-jackson-nakazawa-happiness-e524.md
Podcast: [Love, Happiness and Success with Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby](https://stenobird.com/podcast/love-happiness-and-success-with-dr-lisa-marie-bobby-7046318)
Published: 2026-05-21T09:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://www.spreaker.com/episode/how-to-stop-overthinking-in-real-time-donna-jackson-nakazawa-happiness-e524--72095163
Audio file: https://api.spreaker.com/download/episode/72095163/yap2318709958.mp3
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Duration seconds: 4200

## Resource

Have you ever lost a whole afternoon to a conversation that ended three days ago? Picking it apart, wondering what the other person actually meant, mentally rehearsing what you should have said. There is a name for what your brain is doing. ⁠It is called rumination, and according to research from Yale, it is the single most damaging mental habit science can measure⁠. In this episode, I sit down with Donna Jackson Nakazawa, the science journalist who has spent decades translating cutting-edge neuroscience into language regular humans can actually use. Her new book Mind Drama (out this week) is the most useful explanation I have read of what is actually happening in your brain when you cannot stop replaying a conversation, and what the science says you can do about it. Donna and I get into the survival biology behind your overthinking, the unexpected link between early relationships and adult thought patterns, and her real-time interruption tool. She walks me through it live, with my own ruminative mind as the example. It got pretty real. In This Episode The four-step framework Donna walked me through live, in real time, while I was actually overthinking something (it interrupts a spiral in under a minute) Why your brain creates these loops in the first place, and the evolutionary reason it cannot just stop on command The hidden link between your earliest relationships and the thought patterns you carry into adulthood The word for what you have been calling overthinking, and why nearly a third of adults have never heard it How rumination shows up at work, and the moment I realized I was doing it about my own business while we were recording The Yale research that names rumination as the biggest single predictor of depression, anxiety, eating disorders, and even cognitive…

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## Transcript

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