Welcome to Episode 131. This is Kristi Angevine, and this episode is a little bit different. It's different from what you usually hear, and I think you're going to love it.

Instead of discussing a topic or hearing me interview a guest, this episode is a conversation I had where I was the guest being interviewed. I was interviewed by Dr. Kavetha Sundaramoorthy and Dr. Erika Bove. We discussed rumination, why we do it, and how to change it.

And as you'll hear from our talk, I had a really great time with these two. They are excellent interviewers. And the reason I wanted to release this particular format on my podcast is I think we got into some really wonderful things about rumination that I think you're going to find really practical.

Once you listen to this conversation, I want to encourage you to go learn about both of these interviewers. Be sure to check out the podcast, Heal Your Relationships, as well as HealYourRelationships.com with Dr. Kavetha. And then check out Dr. Bove's coaching, Love and Science Fertility. You can also hear me interview them here on Episode 67, as well as Episode 103. Let's get started.

Welcome to Habits On Purpose, a podcast for high-achieving women who want to create lifelong habits that give more than they take. You'll get practical strategies for mindset shifts that will help you finally understand the root causes of why you think, feel, and act as you do. And now here's your host, Physician and Master Certified Life Coach Kristi Angevine.

Hello, hello, everyone. Before you get to hear me interviewed by Dr. Kavetha Sundaramoorthy and Dr. Erica Bove, let me just remind you who they are.

Kavetha is a psychiatrist and a physician relationship coach. After she lost her mom to suicide when she was 18 years old, she went into psychiatry so that she could better understand the human mind. And she soon realized that the information alone didn't keep her from repeating these intergenerational patterns. So began a 10-year journey to integrate Eastern and Western modalities into her unique approach to healing. This is what she uses to help physicians heal their relationships from the inside out.

Erica is a reproductive endocrinologist and a certified life coach. She's an expert in sex and intimacy, and she recently joined forces with Kavetha as head coach inside Emotional Mastery for Female Physicians. In the world of fertility, Erica has a keen interest in marrying an evidence-based approach with intuitive knowing in the context of a trusting physician-patient relationship. In medicine and coaching, Erica believes that the best outcomes result when you can see and understand the whole person.

I hope you enjoy our conversation.

Kavetha Sundaramoorthy: So awesome. Well, welcome everybody to another episode of Emotional Mastery Show. We're super, super happy to be doing this with you and to be just meeting you where you're at, whatever you're up to right now. Maybe you're shopping or running errands or in between patients or about to go to sleep. Wherever you are, it's lovely to meet you here in this moment.

And we have a special, special treat for you today. I know I say that a lot, but this one is extra special icing on top. We have Dr. Kristi Angevine. Am I pronouncing that right, Kristi?

Kristi Angevine: Amazing, yes.

Kavetha: Okay, good. We have Dr. Kristi Angevine. She is a habit coach and a physician and an all-around really interesting, amazing, kind, funny, down-to-earth person. Erica and I are super glad to have her here to just ask her some questions and pick her brains, and hear from her expertise and her heart about a topic that I think many of us will struggle with. I know I do.

So welcome, Dr. Angevine. Good to have you here, Kristi.

Kristi: Yes, please, of course, call me Kristi. And we were just talking before we got started officially about how fun it would be to have each other in our pockets on speed dial, so that we could hear and borrow the encouraging thoughts. And I'm absolutely going to just soak in all the kindness you just sent my way.

It's so sweet of you. It's really fun. I'm delighted to be here. It's a gift to be able to be a guest on your podcast. Thank you so much.

Kavetha: Oh my gosh, you are so welcome. The honor is all ours. So, we wanted to start with just asking you a little bit about who you are, what you do, and how you got into coaching.

And most interesting for me is how did you pick habits as your niche? I think it's a great niche, and I'm just interested to see how you stumbled on that.

Kristi: It may have a little bit of a stumbling quality to it, like the story. So, okay, so who am I? So, you pronounced my name perfectly. You're a good pronouncer. So, I'm Kristi Angevine. I did OBGYN for about 10 or 11 years. And then I do full-time coaching now, and I coach on habits.

I live in Central Oregon. I'm married to my partner, and we have our two kids who are 11 and 6. I think in sharing who we are, there's that stuff. And then, I also love the high desert. I love mountain biking. Don't do it as much as I would like right now. I love yoga. Don't do it as much as I would like right now. And I am kind of obsessed with coaching.

So, what I do is I have a podcast called Habits on Purpose, and I do small group coaching for women physicians. And then, I really love individual coaching. So, I do one-on-one coaching. I do a lot of work with Internal Family Systems and embodiment work, some somatics, and a lot of cognitive thought work. All blended together in a way that seems to suit my clients and suit my personality.

How I got into coaching is I was on call one night, watching a baby's strip and turned on a podcast that somebody had recommended to me years prior. Maybe not years prior, but a little over a year. And I just didn't really feel like listening. I didn't really listen to podcasts much. I just was like, “How do you even play a podcast on your phone? What do you do?”

And the topic of the podcast, the theme of the podcast, I had zero interest in, but it was the way this host talked about thought work, thinking about thinking, emotions, and B- charting, all these concepts, that all of a sudden, I just was like, “I'm hooked. I need to know more about this.”

And about two milliseconds later, probably a couple of months later, I was at our island in our kitchen telling my husband, “I think I need to learn how to become a coach. I need to know all the things. I think this is probably what I'm… It might be a great thing, after 25 or more years as an OBGYN, I'll retire and do some coaching. That sounds kind of a cool thing. I'll dabble in it now and I'll do more later.”

So, I signed up for certification at the same time as starting to receive coaching. So, I didn't really know what it was like to be on the receiving end and just dove in. And so, for me, like doing those things simultaneously was kind of a classic consummate learner; always wanting to learn, always hungry for that.

And it helped me apply what I was learning by getting coached in all that. And so, in undergrad, I was more the person who studied humanities and psychology. And then at the last minute was like, “I guess I just need to do all my pre-med requisites. So, I'll just do them in this last year so I can go do this other thing.”

It just hit me at a level that just hadn't happened to me before. Love so many things about being an OBGYN, like specifically, there are so many things about that vocation that I absolutely adored. And this just was a different level.

How I got into coaching on habits was I initially started my coaching doing a lot of work on physician over drinking. And what I discovered was, in talking to physicians about their habits of numbing, whether it was shopping or drinking or eating or scrolling or tidying, whatever it was, whatever had a compulsive a sort of quality to it, that there was a lot of shame and fear of speaking about that.

Where nobody wanted to go talk to their psychologist and talk about the drinking because it would go on their medical record. If they weren't having a big enough problem that they needed to go to rehab or AA or something else, but it was just sort of niggling at them, they didn't know what to do with that.

And I had a sense that many of my clients didn't want to say, “Oh, I'm talking to an over drinking coach. I am talking to somebody who helps with buffering and numbing.” Because that sort of held them back. And so, I started thinking about, okay, what solution is drinking giving? Oh, it's a resourceful learned response that’s been habitualized.

“Oh my gosh, it's just a habit.” This is where my mind went. It seems so simplistic now. Yes, it's just a habit. So, then I started getting super interested in habits in general.

I realized on one hand, people were fine saying, “Oh, I talk about my habits.” Yes, we're talking about drinking all the time, but they were fine with that, and it felt comfortable and safe and created a vibe of safety. But then I just really grew interested in why we habitually do what we do, think what we think, feel how we feel.

Kavetha: Wow, I'm actually taking notes just in that intro. Thank you so much for that. And I agree. I think habits really are sort of the building blocks. It's like single Lego pieces, out of which we create our days and our lives and our relationships and our emotions, all of it. When we put it all together, it becomes a habit.

And then before you know it, you don't even think about it as a habit, right? It just is the thing that you do, without even realizing that you have any sort of power over it at all. So, I love that. Thank you for sharing.

Kristi: I love the Lego blocks thing. Yes, they are the pieces that make up identity, paradigms of ourselves, self-concept, how we see the world. Until we examine them and notice that, “Oh, that's my automatic.” Until we do that, we don't see them. None of us do, right? We just don't see them until we start seeing them, and then generally we can't unsee them.

Erica Bove: Yeah, and I think it's so cool that you found a way to do it that reduces the stigma, right? Because it kind of ties back with your humanities background.

We are human beings humaning, as Glennon Doyle says, and sometimes it's awfully painful and sometimes we do reach for things that fill the void temporarily. And so, to do that, I think, especially for very successful professionals, there's this compulsivity that leads to the success, right?

And so, then there's this other side of it where, well, what do we do when there's discomfort? We become more compulsive. And so, it's almost like turning a light on the double-edged sword and then figuring out how to retain the good stuff of the drive and the passion and the success and just keeping that sort of success, that excellence.

And sort of putting aside the downstream effects. Being able to do that in a space where there's compassion, and that's the beauty of what you do. Because I think you say it's simple, but I think for many people it actually is and it isn't, right? It takes a special balance to be able to look at it and break it apart. So, that's just super fascinating to me, what you do.

Kristi: I love how you phrased that. That you can look at your patterned way of behaving and showing up in the world and see the things that you want to keep, the eyes wide open. These are features that I really want to keep. And then the underbelly, ‘oh, that may not be serving me any longer. Now, this is the part that I can tweak and adjust without losing the good,’ right?

‘Instead of keeping the perfectionism, I get to keep the high achievement thinking.’

Erica: That's right. And I think it's a good segue into what we're especially curious about today, in terms of your work, is that so many of us struggle with the habit of rumination. And it seems to be, at least for me, a go-to place when things get uncomfortable.

Say somebody says something to me that sets me off, and I replay that conversation 5 million times as if it's going to change. And it's tough, because on one hand it gives me a sense of power, right? Maybe I have this sort of control of the situation. But it's like a stationary bike, it goes nowhere. It actually can be very destructive.

So, what I'm most curious about, and Kave too, is how can we start to look at this habit of rumination and sort of pick it apart? And I think that really starts with, what is it in the first place? What actually is rumination and why do we do this?

Kristi: I think you're in my brain, because my first thought is we need to define the terms. I think all of our listeners might have a thought about that. So, the way I think about rumination is, we think about cows who repeatedly chew on things. But when it comes to people, we're not talking about just repeatedly thinking about things.

It's not deep, thoughtful, turning an idea over in our mind and being like, hmm. Because that's just thoughtfulness. Where it goes from just being thoughtful and being just really reflective or really considering all angles, which generally don't have any downsides to them, right? Unless you're being thoughtful while your house is burning down around you. Maybe that’s not the time to be thoughtful and consider all the options.

But it is perseverating, and it is perseverating typically on ideas, on something that we consider distressing, and it's repetitively usually thinking the same things about the situation. And so, oftentimes the perseveration is usually either negative or it's harsh, it's rigid.

The feeling we have when we're ruminating, isn't this sort of contemplative, grounded feel? It's more, as you mentioned, like a compulsion, and it's almost intrusive; it's obsessive as opposed to just deep reflection.

So, rumination is usually characterized by being past-focused or present-focused. You can ruminate and worry fast forwarding to the future and catastrophizing, but usually rumination is about something that occurred in the past and the negatives in that thing.

We're not usually ruminating over replaying that compliment we got that just made us feel like a million bucks. We might replay that, but it's not a problem. So then, the rumination itself usually results in some sort of downstream… even though it's an action, because it's happening in our mind… the emotions that happen as a consequence of doing that over and over and over, usually there's some element of emotional discomfort, emotional distress from that.

And it is a stationary bike. I love that you said that. It's a kind of stewing or brooding that can make it super easy to start second-guessing, catastrophizing, beating ourselves up.

Then, in terms of why we do it, I like to think that there's so much we don't really know. So, I'll give you my take on it. We may learn more as people studying neurobiology and coaching and all the things about why humans do it; I have a general sense of why they do it, and I think we all also.

I think it's really smart to make room for the fact that every individual might ruminate for very unique reasons to their system. So, in general terms, I have a sense that there's a tendency to ruminate when we experience something in which after it's done, something feels unresolved. Or there is something that was either unexpressed or suppressed in our system at that moment. And we go over it and over it and over it and over it and over it again.

So, a great example of this would be… I'm thinking about things that have happened in my own life where I've ruminated on them before… where maybe you park your car, and somebody parks their car behind you and blocks you in, then gets out of their car and goes and does something. And it seems like they're just oblivious to the fact that they're blocking traffic, they blocked you in, but you don't say anything.

You don't get out of your car and say, “Hey, did you notice? Could you move your car?” And then they move their car, and the whole time you're like, “I cannot believe. How entitled? What were they thinking? Why are they being such a… Oh my God. And do you know that someone… They're in charge of the meeting that I'm about to go to. Oh no.”

And so, then you leave. And later, all you can think about is, “I can't believe they did that.” All the negative things about their behavior. And stewing over, “I should have said something. If I could have said something, I would have said something. But I didn't say it because in that moment…” There were a lot of emotions you didn't know what to do with.

I think we do it because we're trying to resolve something that didn't get resolved at that moment. And I like to think about Internal Family Systems. For any of your listeners who like that language, I find that there's “a part” of us that likes ruminating.

Kavetha: Oh my gosh. This is so fascinating. I'm desperately and quickly taking shorthand notes here.

Erica: Me too.

Kristi: I love that we all three remembered that we should record. Isn't that funny?

Kavetha: Thank goodness. Couple of things that stood out to me about how you described that, Kristi, one is the element of the lack of choice. Like it's not a thoughtful introspection because there's choice in that. Whereas this feels like it comes upon us.

It really hit true for me because when I ruminate, I feel almost at the effect of it. Like I just fell victim to it, you know?

Kristi: I love that you put that to words. Because I think that sense of ‘in that moment, I may not have chosen to do what I would like to do’ or ‘I didn't have any choice and therefore I felt stuck,’ without any agency or powerlessness or something, whatever that might be for the person. I think that makes the likelihood higher later on to kind of try to find that choice. “Let me see if I can find it in how I look at it. Maybe later on I can go back.”

But since we can't and we are on the stationary bike, we just keep churning.

Kavetha: Yes. Yes. So, so good. I also liked that you talked about the lack of perspective. Because again, in thoughtfulness or introspection, we have a little bit of space. I often describe it as if you had your hand to your face, you wouldn't even know that it's a hand. It's too close. But if you have a little bit of space, then you can actually look around all around it.

Rumination, when I ruminate, I am so inside of it that there is no perspective. So, you can't be thoughtful about it or look at all the angles, because I don't even know what I'm looking at is a hand yet. So, it's just beautiful.

And the last thing I want to say is I love IFS too. And the thing you talked about actions or phrases or things that you could have done in the moment, that somehow were edited out of that original scenario, to me it also points to what is it that you want to express.

Kristi: I think that really does get to that idea of, if you notice, if your listeners notice they have this habit, that's a beautiful question to ask. “What was really going on? What do I wish could have occurred?” That just gives a little clarity for ‘why I keep chewing on this.’

Kavetha: Yeah. Yeah. So good. Okay. So, we talked about what it is and why we ruminate, and I learned so much just there. But I also want to know at the moment, we all have a kind of vague sense that is not helpful. I often go back and forth in my head.

“Why am I ruminating? Stop ruminating. Then I'm ruminating about why I can't stop ruminating. And if I'm so…” as the title of a famous book, " If I'm so successful, Why Can't I…” right? “If I'm so smart, why can't I stop ruminating? I know it's not helpful. Why am I ruminating?”

So, at the moment, what is something that we can do to give ourselves some space from this habit?

Kristi: Yeah, I love that because we can talk about it all day long, but if we can't actually do anything about it, that could be problematic. I think there are a lot of things that we might be able to touch on retrospectively, once we are aware of it, how can we understand it better and then prepare for the next time so that maybe we'd lower the chances of ruminating, or next time we catch ourselves, we can do it in the moment.

So, the first thing has to be recognition that you're doing it. For anybody who uses ideas like the think-feel-act cycle, or the idea that thoughts cause feelings or cause actions, if we don't have any awareness of our action of ruminating… I like to put it in the “action line”, so to speak… if we don't know we're doing it and we don't even know that we're like, “Oh, what's my problem that I ruminate?” if we don't even recognize we're doing that, it's hard in the moment to do anything about it, right?

The first key is noticing that ruminating. Even just by noticing we can get space from it. Like you said with the idea of your hand is so close that you can't tell it's your hand. I like to think about a pane of glass. So, if we have our glasses on and we can see the world, but then we pull our glasses off and we can see those are panes, we can see the dust on them, we can get some perspective.

I think narrating to ourselves, “Here I am ruminating,” and stopping there in that still, quiet, “This is me ruminating.” And then, if all of a sudden we notice our mind goes to, “What is my problem? I know it's not productive. Here I am ruminating again. All I do is…”

And then I notice there's another part of me that thinks rumination is a problem. “This is what I've got right now. I'm ruminating. I notice I'm ruminating.” So, that to me is the first step. And many times, that's effective enough. Many times also, for anybody who goes and tries this, they go, “Yeah, I'm just ruminating. I noticed myself ruminating,” it keeps the hamster wheel going; totally normal.

What's really helpful in those times is doing something on purpose to interrupt things. And that requires… You're sort of upping the ante. You're like, “Okay, my brain is not actually going to stop this, just with me noticing I'm doing this.” And in those cases, I think it's actually really effective to do something to distract yourself or to get some space.

This means moving your body, doing a grounding technique, doing box breaths, breathing in and holding your breath for a while. You might be turning on a really beautiful piece of music, a really loud piece of music that you would never tell anybody you listen to because you don't want them to judge you for liking this 80s hair band or whatever.

Doing something to be like, “Okay, I am in something that is so compulsive right now. It's hard to stop. I need to just get out.” And I think sometimes doing that is super useful. It's not always practical, because a lot of my clients will say, “Well, I start ruminating over the thing that happened in the last patient's room while I'm with my current patient. What do I do then?”

And so, there are techniques where when you go to wash your hands, you focus on all the physical characteristics of the water, focus on your five senses, anything to pull you out of that maelstrom. I’m picturing a spiral. If that doesn't work, that's when you go back to step one, which is, “Yes, I notice I'm ruminating. There's a part of me that wants to keep going.”

And sometimes we can just talk to ourselves and be like, “May I have permission from my whole system to press pause on this? Because this doesn't necessarily feel productive even though it feels necessary. And if I could get permission to revisit this later with clear eyes, maybe we wouldn't have to go over and over on it.”

And sometimes, just that ask, it gives us just enough of a pause so that we can turn and keep talking to our patient, which is also a way to distract and to focus on something more in the present moment.

So, I think those two things are keys: The awareness and talking to ourselves, narrating what we're doing. And when, or if that doesn't work, doing something that's a physical distraction, a physical grounding technique.

Kavetha: Amazing. So beautiful. I love it. Narration, I'd never actually quite thought about it as narration. That's really fascinating. Just speaking about what's happening inside of your brain in third person. Yeah, so cool. And then using our bodies to change our state.

I hear a lot of using your body to come to this moment, because rumination takes you out of this moment.

Kristi: That's exactly it.

Erica: Yeah, and I wonder too, how much perfectionism plays a role? And maybe out of that moment starting to challenge some of those thoughts. “Why is it that I'm stuck in the last room when I'm here? Is it because I forgot to ask one question that I probably could take or leave?”

And so, I think, maybe outside of the moment, starting to challenge some of those assumptions about being perfect and all of that. Because you can ruminate about food. You could ruminate about a conversation with a loved one. You could ruminate about stubbing your toe. You can ruminate literally about anything.

But I think the underlying assumption is that we're not human at some level, and that we have to do things a certain way, and that injecting mindful self-compassion wherever we can.

I'm curious what you think about preventing this too. Because by the time I start ruminating, it's almost, I don't want to say it's too late because we're talking about how to get out of it, but I wish I had some sort of inkling like 10 steps down the road that before I even started on this pathway, right? So, what do you think we can do to prevent this from even happening in the first place?

Kristi: Well, I want to just emphasize what you just said is so important that there are going to be certain… Each of us have certain things that might prompt our rumination. So, for one person, it might be that they over ate.

For another person, it might be that they didn't eat enough, or they were craving something and they were will powering their way through a meal, they're just fixated on that dessert they wish they had. Or the awkwardness that they had at their meal that they just ate their way through, to get through, and they just go over and over and over.

And for somebody else, it's the, “Oh my gosh, I'm not a good doctor because I forgot to ask this question. Somebody is going to find out that I didn't do a good job. I'm going to cause somebody harm.” And it's perfectionism.

And so, I think the key to prevention is to focus on exactly what you just said. To know the classic situations about which you might ruminate. Where's the fertile ground for rumination for me? Because everybody's going to be different, right? There are people out there who will never ruminate on food. Food is just an irrelevant thing that they happen to put in their body to stay alive.

They don't, so they don't need to think about that. But for somebody who does, knowing mealtime… And what comes up for me when I eat, or when I'm on call, that's fertile ground for later on ruminating. Good to know.

That helps us anticipate what we might need to look at. But I think just knowing, “Okay, these are the classic times,” or the issues like perfectionism, “that prompt this for me,” is helpful. So, I think part of this is a little bit of reflection when you're not in the moment ruminating. When you're in the moment ruminating, it's the worst time to be reflective about why you're ruminating.

Unless you practice that skill, and you're really good about being like, “I noticed I'm ruminating.” Because ruminating, in a way, you can see the superpower of thinking about something really fiercely. Except it becomes unproductive, because it's the stationary bike or the hamster wheel. So, I think that's the first step, is knowing when you do it.

And then when you know when you do it, then you get to start being curious and doing exactly what you just said. Later on, or before, after one episode and before the next, starting to be like, “Okay, what are the classic questions that I mull over?” Is it unexpressed anger? “Because I didn't know what to do with my anger, so I suppressed it and I instead bottled it up and just said nothing. When I actually should have spoken up and used my voice.”

Is it perfectionism? “Wow, I have all these ideas about what it means to be thorough and how if I miss one thing, then I'm terrible.” Is it all or none? Then you can be super curious. “Huh, I wonder why that is? How come that's my go-to? How does that make sense?” Because we know it all makes sense at some level.

Somebody who maybe is uncomfortable with the emotion of anger might ruminate later on when they don't express a boundary breach that they identified. Someone else who struggles with all-or-none thinking and feels really rigid, if they don't do one tiny thing and they recognize that they carry the rule with them that if you don't know all the things, ‘you're a terrible doctor and you're going to cause harm and you should leave this profession,’ they carry that with them from a residency experience.

For them, they get to now be like, “Oh, that's why I ruminate on missing that one question. Super interesting.”

Erica: Yes, I think that's so interesting to think about for us individually, right? Because I think our brains are wired a certain way; that's our wiring, right? And then it has different applications depending on what we've experienced. Maybe some of the unresolved experiences from our past. And also, ways that we've previously been successful too. Because there's that sort of positive feedback trap that we fall into, and that fear that if we let that go that we won't be successful too.

I'm going to have to get real curious with myself. It's not something I can do in the moment, but I think that I just can't wait to find a quiet space and just start to ask myself these questions.

Kavetha: And what came up for me, just as an aside, was I tend to ruminate in relationships. I tend to ruminate when something happens, that clearly I'm making mean something. Yeah, it's just fascinating to think about.

Is there a pattern there? As you were saying, Kristi, what are the situations that classically pull me into ruminating? And what is it? Is it all-or-none thinking? Is it a belief from my own past, as you were pointing to? That's really helpful to start getting some bird's eye view.

Erica: Yeah, and I think you're right. I mean, I'm a person, I used to struggle a lot with food and rumination. I mean, it was like 90% of my thoughts. And then, with a lot of therapy and all of that, that's no longer any sort of anything, right?

However, I understand how my brain is wired and the compulsiveness. And so, I think, like Kavetha, it's when I feel out of integrity with my relationships, where I think there's been something that's not quite the way I want it to be, that's when I stay up at night.

The last time that happened, I had to get some space and talk to a friend about what I was concerned about. She was like, “Oh, that's no big deal. I didn't even notice it.” But for me, it caused me this whole universe of questions and guilt and fear and all of that. So, it's just amazing how we are built, and our capacity for all these emotions and how they really do get stuck sometimes.

And then it's that shame, right? When we can speak it out loud, especially to another trusting person to say, “Hey, this is what I'm really worried about. And I care about you and I value you...” It tends to just dissolve. But to get to that point, I think it is really a skill.

Kavetha: Kristi, I could talk to you about this all day. So many questions are coming up in my brain right now. But do you have any sort of examples or things that have helped you in a real-life situation for your own rumination, or a client's rumination, that might have to do with either something that they're carrying from the past or a relational thing?

Because our listeners are often interested in mastering their own emotions and also healing their relationships through that. And I'm just curious to see if there's anything that we can add to that.

Kristi: Yeah, the first thing to name here is that I think it's so helpful hearing other people's experiences with what they ruminate on just to normalize our own.

And in the same vein, it's just so empowering to look at rumination through the lens of ‘once we can identify that we're doing it, and once we can name it, “This is me ruminating. There's a reason we're ruminating,” and if we can look at rumination as a signal for us to do the, as we call it in therapy, do the “U-turn” to look back at yourself and shine the light back on yourself. What's this telling me about me?

Then we can sort of drop the shame and drop the ‘oh, what's my problem that I can't do it? We get to drop all that and be like, “Oh, this is so curious, this comes up.” So, just in general, I think for your listeners to recognize that curiosity, you can never go wrong with that.

As soon as you start asking those kind, curious questions, it's like, “Oh, I wonder why I ruminate? Why ruminate in relationships? I wonder why I'm ruminating on this conversation? This thing that I left unsaid? My relationship to this person who's driving their car like a maniac, why am I ruminating on this?”

So personally, and I see this… as you both do with your clients… where oftentimes you probably see your clients describe things where you go, “Yes, absolutely, this is parallel or almost identical to my experience.” I think in sharing my own, I have a feeling this is probably sharing things that other people go through as well.

But my experience with ruminating would be that I would ruminate over… I would see somebody, and oftentimes be work-based or in social scenarios. And I think I started the habit of ruminating quite young, when I was in elementary school. I would ruminate on, “What did it mean when so-and-so looked at me that way? They said this thing… and they like…”

I have this image of being in fourth grade and getting up to sharpen my pencil and hearing some giggling and seeing it was a good friend of mine talking to somebody else. And then when they saw me they stopped giggling. And I think in the moment I was like, “Oh, I wonder why they're giggling.” And then I started being like, “Oh no, am I wearing the wrong clothes? Do they hate me?”

And so, if you fast forward to adult me, I would sometimes take body language or words that they would say, and I would turn them into scathing self-criticisms about me. I knew it must be that, whether it was or not. I mean, I could take valid, constructive criticism of, “This would have been better if this had been this way,” and I could hear that fine.

But what I was doing is I was taking subtle, vague things, and I would turn them into meaning something that was not spoken by them. So, my personal flavor ruminating had to do with feeling like I didn't belong, feeling insecure and feeling judged. That was my trifecta of ‘I don't belong and there's something wrong with me,’ therefore I feel insecure because I'm being judged by these other people who know best. So, that would be from elementary school, middle school through...

Kavetha: I think we're twins, by the way, Kristi.

Erica: Yeah, me too. Triplets. You can have triplet brains.

Kristi: Yeah. So, what I would do is, and I'm picturing this would happen at work or in a meeting or passing somebody in the hall, the event would happen, and the rest of the day I would be consumed with replaying this scenario. So, I would just go over and over and over in my mind.

I would bring it home. I would tell my husband, “Can you believe that so-and-so… I cannot believe that…” or whatever. I would probably have dreams about it. I would experience all the emotions that would go along with those themes of mine.

I would have shame. I would be angry, but not know what to do. At the moment, I would just be almost, I don't want to say mute, but I would just be almost frozen because I wouldn't know how to interpret those things.

And then, later on, for me, the lack of resolution was what I didn't know how to feel in the moment and put words to, I was trying to piece that together. So, for me, when I was able to do this work on myself, I had to first just notice that I was churning in all of that.

And then get curious about… just sort of doing like what Erica said, in hindsight, what was I making things mean? Am I observing a truth or am I observing just speculation? How might I find out? And so, sometimes I would get to the point where… later on when I would stop ruminating… I would just do a small experiment.

I would go up to the person that I thought, “Oh my gosh, they must hate me now,” and I would just ask a question that would help me find out some more information. Sometimes I would find that we'd discovered there's some friction here. Or I would discover they just found out that their best friend was diagnosed with cancer and they were in a terrible mood.

And so, their body language that reflected that had nothing to do with how grouchy they were when I saw them at the meeting, right? And so, that would give me that space. “How interesting, why am I ruminating?” What I would start doing is I just would start noticing ‘I have a tendency to ruminate. Okay, good to know. I do it in these circumstances. Good to know.’

So, in advance, I know, when I'm around these particular people, I have a tendency to have these thoughts that later on I ruminate on. And so, I just started being able to watch myself and be like, “Oh my gosh,” with so much compassion. “It's so hard when you make things into these scathing self-rebukes from someone else that you really care about. Oh, that's so hard. Maybe that's not the only way to look at this. What else might there be?”

And so, that was a super calming way for me to be. Instead of in the past, and going to interact with a person and bringing with me all the ruminating events that I had in the past to that, and being all tense. To be like, “All right, what's actually present here?”

That's how I would do that interrupt. It took a lot of work of just recognizing the pattern, recognizing the habit in itself and being like, “Why might I do that? Oh, this makes sense. I can see why I did it for years. Okay. And another way might be…”

Erica: So cool. And I think it resonates with our discussion about emotional intimacy, because that does take courage, right? It takes courage to then go up to somebody later. It takes courage to shine the light on ourselves, because what are we going to see? What if we don't like what we see? I'm really inspired by what you just said, Kristi. That was really, really beautiful.

Kavetha: Me too. I love that. It takes courage to go back, and it's much more likely to result in a new, previously unseen perspective if we have taken the time to be aware of ‘this is my tendency to ruminate. Oh, I know I ruminate in these kinds of situations.’ It makes total sense.

And I love the self-compassion that you're introducing into each of these. Every step along the way is filled with compassion. It's not like, “Why am I doing this again? But of course, it makes sense.” I love that so much. Beautiful.

All right. Well, you've given us so many useful things that I know I'm going to... I already have some ideas on where I ruminate and which topics I ruminate on. So, when that's coming up next, I'm going to use your curiosity and compassion techniques that you gave us.

Anything else that you would like to add about this topic that maybe we hadn't had the forethought to ask you about?

Kristi: I think all your questions are amazing. So, I really can't think of anything off the top of my head. I would just say for your listeners, if they're listening to this and thinking, “Okay, that's me. Those techniques sound great. I'm going to try those,” and they notice, as they try them, that there's a bit of judgment going on, the same steps work for a really ruthless inner critic.

To just be like, “I noticed I have the habit of criticizing.” And until we can notice and name and get a little space from that, it's harder to get to the core of rumination. Because if the whole time we're doing, like you just said, “What is my problem? I can't figure this out. I know better. I listened to that podcast and Erica and Kavi said to do these things, and Kristi said to do this, and I still can't.”

If that's also going on, it's like trying to run a marathon. Or do something while people are throwing things at you and telling you what a piece of crap you are and are like, “What's wrong with you?” That's just so much harder. But sometimes you can use this work to identify, “Are there other things going on while I'm trying to get to the heart of this one issue?” So, that's all I would add.

Kavetha: Lovely. It also harkens back to the IFS model that you mentioned in the beginning. Where other parts get in the way of us being able to talk to one part of ourselves. I love that. Love it. Love it.

I wanted to also ask, what is a childhood memory that you really cherish and you want to hold on to forever?

Kristi: Gosh, there are so many. I think one of the ones that comes to my mind right now, instantly, was a rocking chair that was all padded. Very 1970s style, with buttons that would push in on this velveteen thing, and it would rock back so softly. And when I would get sick, my mom would cook me soft eggs and toast and would let me sit in the rocking chair and eat it.

And either before or after I'd eaten this soft eggs and toast, she would just sit in the rocking chair and just hold me and we would rock. I always remember feeling so safe. Even if I felt terrible, it was just so beautiful. So, that's the first thing that comes to my mind. I love that you asked that.

Kavetha: I love that.

Erica: It is so beautiful.

Kavetha: Yeah. I just made up my own corner in a rocking chair, and you and your mom, like, I can see it.

Erica: I know. And that's precisely what you're doing with yourself, Kristi, when you're holding yourself with that love and self-compassion. You're right there. I mean, that's just the most beautiful thing that you've now been able to do that.

Kristi: [cross talk]

Erica: Yes. Yes. That's right. Wow.

Kristi: Yeah. That's my shout out. Thanks, mom.

Erica: Thanks, Kristi's mom. I was just going to say, this was such a wonderful time spent together. I mean, we could talk for days on all of this stuff. I know our listeners are going to want to know where they can find you and learn more and listen. So, where can they go to hear more about Habits on Purpose?

Kristi: Yeah, I keep everything simple. My website is HabitsOnPurpose.com. My podcast is Habits on Purpose. My Facebook group is Habits on Purpose. And yeah, all the things are Habits on Purpose. I'm on Instagram, whatever the handle is with my name, @kristi.angevine. I don't really know much about Instagram, but I'm there.

Kavetha: That sounds like Erica and I. We're always like, “What is Instagram? We really have to do better with that.” But we don't know really what it is. But I love that everything is Habits on Purpose.

Kristi: And I just wanted to just say, I feel like the two of you are such a duo that works so well together. I had so much fun. If you like doing interviews, you should do even more of them because you guys are both super skilled at them.

Erica: Aw, thank you so much.

Kavetha: Thank you so much. And thank you for being here and sharing your immense, I feel like I just sort of touched the tip of the iceberg; immense wisdom and knowledge. Thank you.

Erica: And talk about thoughtfulness, Kristi. I mean, you are so thoughtful about this topic. I've thought about this a lot in my life because I ruminate so much, but I have a whole new perspective on it today. And I think it's because of the deep work and thoughtfulness that you bring to the table. So, thank you for that.

Kavetha: Agreed.

Kristi: You guys are so kind. This was so fun.

Kavetha: It was so fun.

Erica: We'll do it again. Take care.

Kavetha: Bye.

Kristi: See ya.

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Thank you so much for listening and talk to you next week.

Thanks for listening to Habits On Purpose. If you want more information on Kristi Angevine or the resources from the podcast, visit HabitsOnPurpose.com. Tune in next week for another episode.