You ruminate on the same painful thoughts for hours

Rumination is exhausting because it wears the mask of useful thinking. Three things free you. First, rumination is a wheel, not a road — real thinking moves toward a decision or understanding, while rumination retreads the same ground, deepening the rut, so stop expecting the next circuit to bring the relief it never will. Second, you cannot reason your way off the wheel from inside it; the exit is to notice you are circling and step off, turning attention to something present that requires it, again and again as the wheel pulls back. Third, address what the rumination circles at its source — the grief not grieved, the thing not said, the problem not faced — since the mind circles a wound it does not know how to close. What does yours keep returning to?