Rumination sabotages our daily lives
By Cecilia Camacho, founder and editor of CC/magazine
There is a kind of noise that can’t be heard with our ears, yet it’s often more deafening than traffic, a heated argument, or the constant ping of notifications. It’s that relentless murmur that lives inside our heads — a stream of thoughts that loops, analyses, judges, anticipates… and rarely stops. Most unsettling of all, we’re often not even aware it’s happening.
I’m referring to mental rumination — that internal conversation that spirals on repeat and, rather than helping us resolve anything, traps us in a loop with no way out. We’ve all experienced it: going over what we said (or didn’t say), imagining worst-case scenarios, replaying past mistakes, or rehearsing responses to situations that may never come to pass.
For a long time, I thought this was simply part of being human — having a restless mind, being introspective. But in recent years, I’ve learned that although thinking is a vital and wonderful function of our brains, not all thoughts are useful. And when we fail to manage that inner dialogue, it can become our worst enemy.
One expert who has deeply shaped my understanding of this is Ethan Kross, psychologist and author of “Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It”. According to Kross, we all have an inner voice — a kind of constant narrator that interprets the world. When well guided, this voice can be a powerful ally. It helps us make decisions, reflect on the past, and plan for the future. The problem arises when that voice spins out of control and becomes noise — what he calls chatter.
This mental chatter, when chronic, increases anxiety, reduces concentration, sabotages our relationships, and weakens our mental health. And the worst part? It’s become so normalised that we often mistake it for thinking, when in reality, it’s a form of self-sabotage.
Behavioural psychology has studied this for decades. Rumination — repeating the same negative thoughts over and over without resolution — is closely linked to depression, chronic stress, and even physical illness. It’s not just a passing annoyance: it’s a silent trap that keeps us from being present and thinking clearly.
And in today’s hyper-stimulated, digital, fast-paced world, everything seems to feed that noise. Constant comparison on social media, multitasking, perfectionism, the “do more” mindset, fear of missing out… all of it keeps our minds in overdrive. And when the mind finds no silence, it becomes agitated.
The solution? It’s not about “switching off your brain”, but learning to relate to your thoughts in a different way. Kross offers practical tools that are far from magical solutions, but rather anchors that help bring us back to the present: speaking to ourselves in the third person (yes, like athletes or actors before stepping on stage), journaling to organise mental chaos, immersing ourselves in nature to quiet cognitive hyperactivity, or even turning routines into emotional grounding rituals.
But for any of that to work, we must do the hardest thing: pause and observe. Notice the chatter. Recognise the voice that keeps repeating we’re not enough, that we should have done something differently, that the future is a looming threat. And once we recognise it — stop feeding it.
I’m not writing this as an expert or a psychologist — because I’m neither — but as someone who finds endless fascination in these topics, who reads and reflects constantly. As an editor, I’m as interested in looking inward as I am outward. And in many ways, that’s what these editorials are: an attempt to share questions that, one way or another, resonate with many of us.
Talking about mental noise is also a way of talking about the world we live in — how we inhabit it, what we let in, and what we choose to listen to.
(*) Photo: Elina Araja.
