Ep #333: That Thing You Can’t Stop Thinking About: Ruminating in Widowhood

Welcome to The Widowed Mom Podcast, Episode 333: That Thing You Can’t Stop Thinking About: Ruminating in Widowhood.

Welcome to The Widowed Mom Podcast, the only podcast that offers a proven process to help you work through your grief, to grow, evolve, and create a future you can truly look forward to. Here’s your host, Master Certified life coach, grief expert, widow, and mom, Krista St-Germain.

Hey there, welcome to another episode of the podcast. Have you ever had that one thing that you just can’t stop thinking about, no matter how much you want to? Maybe it’s something someone said that felt unfair or hurtful. Maybe it’s the last conversation you had with your person, and you keep replaying what you wish you’d said. Maybe it’s a decision you made or one you didn’t make, and your brain just won’t let it go.

You tell yourself to stop thinking about it and you try to move on, but the thought just keeps coming back. If that sounds familiar, this episode is for you. Today we’re going to talk about what’s actually happening when you can’t stop thinking about something or maybe someone, even though you desperately want to. And we’ll talk about how this relates to the five stages of grief, why the quote, “don’t let them live rent free in your head” isn’t actually very helpful, and what’s really happening inside your brain and body when a thought feels sticky. By the end, my hope is that you’ll understand what’s going on, more specifically why it’s not your fault and never something to beat yourself up over, and what to do instead when it feels like your mind just won’t let that sticky thing go.

The reason this episode came to my mind is because it happened to me recently. I caught myself recently thinking about my ex. Again. For context, Hugo died in 2016. I started dating my ex in 2020. We moved in together in 2021, and I just ended it in March of 2024. So, anyway, I was feeling frustrated, noticing myself thinking about him and noticing all the mental space that it was taking up. We had just had a text exchange and I found myself just replaying it and thinking about it, but then being mad that I was replaying it and thinking about what I wish I’d said and what I still wanted to say.

And that old saying popped into my head, don’t let someone live rent free in your head. And as I heard myself give myself that advice, I realized, oh man, that’s not helpful. And it’s actually kind of mean because “don’t let someone live rent free in your head” makes it sound like it’s a choice. Makes it sound like we have some way of controlling whether these thoughts pop up, but we really don’t. Right? We always get to choose what we want to think next, but we don’t necessarily get to choose the thoughts that pop up. So telling ourselves that we should be doing something that we don’t actually have the ability to control, not very helpful and not very kind.

So, what I actually did was tap. I’ll tell you about that in a minute. But where a lot of people in grief get this a little bit confused is they have heard of the five stages of grief, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. If you have listened to my podcast for any amount of time, you know I do not teach the five stages of grief. Those stages were never meant to describe how we grieve after losing someone that we love. They were essentially research that articulated what people were going through when they were facing their own deaths, right? They were studies of hospice patients.

Also, I don’t believe grief is linear. Even the author of the five stages of grief never meant for people to take it as such, never meant for people to say that these were the only five things we were going to experience, right? But that does seem to be the only model of grief people really ever talk about. And when they notice themselves thinking about things they don’t want to think about or ruminating, they often think, because they understand the five stages of grief, that somehow this is a reflection of their inability to accept. And they tell themselves, if I really accepted this, if I was in a place of acceptance, I wouldn’t still be thinking about it.

We got to stop doing that, y’all. That is not how grief works. That is not how the brain works, okay? Acceptance is not a place anyway. There are many aspects of our grief that keep showing themselves to us over and over that we will wrestle with and maybe choose to accept. But the idea that acceptance is some place that we reach and then we’re done grieving, not helpful, not accurate, not reflective of what any of us I hope are trying to do, and definitely not the reason that you can’t stop talking or thinking about that thing. That’s not what’s happening.

So what actually is happening? When your mind keeps looping on something painful, there are several brain systems that tend to fire together. One is called the default mode network. And that’s the set of regions that turns on when you’re reflecting, when you’re remembering, when you’re imagining the future. It’s kind of what helps you make sense of your life story. And when something feels unresolved, that network can keep reactivating the same memory as it tries to integrate it. Then at the same time, your threat response circuitry, which is centered in the amygdala, linked to the body through the autonomic nervous system, stays a little bit on alert. Your body essentially hasn’t gotten the signal that it’s safe.

And then those two systems start feeding each other. So you’ve got the mental replay that fuels the physical tension, and then the tension keeps the mind scanning for danger, right? And now we’re in kind of this icky loop where we can’t stop thinking about the thing. We don’t feel safe, we can’t stop thinking about it, and we tell ourselves we want to, but we don’t know how to, and it can be really frustrating. If you’ve been there, you know what I’m talking about.

This is not a lack of discipline. This is a protective loop. This is something that your nervous system learned to run until it senses safety again. So telling yourself to stop thinking is not helpful. It’s actually going to probably make you think about it more. It’s like if I tell you to not picture a pink elephant, you’ve heard this before, right? What do you picture? A pink elephant. You can’t help it. So telling yourself to stop thinking about it or telling yourself, don’t let that person live rent free in your brain, it’s not helpful. Scolding yourself, trying to push the thought away, it doesn’t do anything to break the pattern.

So, here’s what you can do instead. I’m so glad that I know how to tap and that I have such muscle memory that I almost just go exactly there because doing something that teaches your nervous system that the danger has passed, that reminds you that you are safe, is so, so very helpful and can start to break this pattern. So, you could tap. All right? Now if you don’t know anything about tapping, I’ve recorded several episodes on the podcast. You can go back and listen to them. You can get the tapping solution app. It’s good for people who are beginners at tapping. It’s good when you just want to push play, but once you learn the tool, you can just tap on it yourself, right? So when I was tapping, it was, “Even though I can’t stop thinking about this, and I want to stop thinking about this, right here and right now, I’m safe.” And that’s what I tapped on for quite a while.

So you could tap. You could also just put your hand on your heart and take a few deep breaths. You could look around the room and orient yourself. You’ve probably heard of 5-4-3-2-1, where you notice five things that you can see, and then four things that you can touch, three things that you can hear, two that you can smell, and then one that you can taste, right? Just orienting yourself in a grounding way.

Any of these things will be helpful. You could also cross your arms and tap gently on your shoulders, like a butterfly hug. If you’re watching this on YouTube, you can see me doing it. But essentially just hug yourself and then alternate left, right, left, right, left, right. So you’re hugging yourself and you’re also giving yourself a little bilateral tapping.

Even just the way that you talk to yourself can create some safety. So you might just tell yourself, “Thank you, brain. Thank you, nervous system. I see what you’re doing.” Or you might narrate your own experience. “Oh yes, this is the part where my nervous system is trying to keep me safe. I’m safe whether I think about this or not.” Which, by the way, was the conclusion that I came to in tapping. It’s funny how sometimes we can use a body-based tool, which actually will create a reframe.

Tiny actions, okay, tiny, small, doable things that signal to your nervous system that there is no danger in the present moment. You are safe. And then over time, because your body learns that it’s safe, you don’t have that same need for your mind to keep replaying that same story, to keep trying to process it.

Now, if the same thought keeps showing up, it’s just probably something that you haven’t yet finished processing about what happened. And I would offer that there might be some deeper work. You don’t have to take it so seriously. We don’t have to come at that deeper work because we’re telling ourselves that we shouldn’t think about this anymore. We just might notice, okay, there’s something here for me that I might want to do a little what we call thought work on, right? We would still use that healing grief spiral that I teach, right? Which is settle the storm inside first. So, calming our nervous system, processing our emotions, then we would look at, okay, what am I thinking? I want to choose some intentional thoughts. Am I thinking about this in ways that are helping me? And then I’m going to take toward action toward what it is that I want.

So, you can use that as well. But what’s most important is that you do something that helps your body realize it is actually safe in a way that it can understand. You orient yourself to the space with some sort of grounding, you tap, right, hand on the heart. Any of those tools will help.

What I really want you to hear is that you’re not doing anything wrong when you can’t stop thinking about something. Doesn’t mean you’re not doing grief right. There’s no such thing as that. Just not a thing, right? It doesn’t mean that you’re weak. It doesn’t mean that whatever terrible story your brain is telling you, don’t listen. It doesn’t mean anything. It actually just means that your nervous system is trying to keep you safe. Your body is trying to keep you safe. And what will help is not self-criticism. What will help is calming the body, is meeting the thought or the loop or the rumination with compassion, reminding yourself, right here and right now, I am safe. When your body feels safe, your brain will not have to keep looping.

If this resonated with you, if you are ready for more tools to help you move beyond survival and actually start loving life again, I invite you to apply for Mom Goes On. You can go to CoachingWithKrista.com, click on the work with me tab, you’ll find it there. It is the program where I teach you how to navigate grief and truly build a future that you actually want to live. So CoachingWithKrista.com, click on the work with me tab, you’ll find it there. And if this podcast has helped you, please subscribe or rate and review. That is how more widows find this level of support, and I really appreciate when you take the time to do that.

All right, that’s what I have for you this week. Remember, I love you. You’ve got this. Take care and I’ll see you next week. Bye.

If you like what you’ve been hearing on this podcast and want to create a future you can truly get excited about even after the loss of your spouse, I invite you to join my Mom Goes On coaching program. It’s small group coaching just for widowed moms like you where I’ll help you figure out what’s holding you back and give you the tools and support you need so you can move forward with confidence.

Please don’t settle for a new normal that’s less than what you deserve. Go to coachingwithkrista.com and click Work With Me for details and next steps. I can’t wait to meet you.