☕ Our Mental Chats: Rumination
“We rehearse answers, imagine dialogues, argue with ghosts, and win arguments that no one witnessed.”
There are conversations that don't require a chat room or a table. They happen inside us, in that mental theater where the other person appears uninvited. There we say what we didn't say, we explain what no one asked us to explain, or we close a story that in reality was left open.
They are invisible, yet intense conversations. Sometimes they are catharsis: a way of putting inner noise into words. Other times they are traps: endless loops in what doesn't change even if we repeat it a thousand times.
The brain, generous and dramatic, plays all the roles. We are screenwriters, actors, and audience all at once. We recreate the other with phrases we believe to be theirs, with gestures they may never have had, with responses that—curiously—allow us to win. Because sometimes we don't want to understand the other, but rather to repair the version of ourselves that felt wounded.
There are mental conversations that heal: they help us practice empathy, to understand what we needed to say. And there are others that only reopen the wound, because they become loops where real silence is replaced by a perfect fiction.
🕯️ When thought doesn't let go
In psychology, this process is known as rumination: the tendency to mentally replay a conversation, scene, or emotion without reaching a resolution. The term comes from the verb ruminate —to chew again— and accurately describes what the mind does when it tries to digest something that hurt and can’t quite do so. (IEPP – Rumination: stop thinking about it)
At first, rumination may be an attempt to process what happened, to find meaning or relief. But when it is prolonged, it becomes a closed circle, where the mind relives what it wanted to let go of. Each repetition seems like an attempt at closure, but it actually keeps the wound alive. (Psychology and Mind – The vicious circle of rumination)
In Gestalt therapy, something similar is consciously used: the “dialogue with the absent”" either "“empty chair technique”"" where one imagines the other person to tell them what they couldn't. When done consciously, this exercise is liberating. But when it happens automatically, without direction, it becomes rumination: a conversation that does not heal, but repeats.
The challenge isn't to stop having these conversations—we all do—but to recognize when they help us understand and when they keep us going in circles. Because what heals isn't talking to the other person in our heads again, but listen to what that inner voice still needs us to understand.
Sometimes the most sincere dialogue is not the one we have with others, but the one we ultimately have with ourselves.
❓ Frequently asked questions
Why do we continue to have mental conversations with people who are no longer here?
Because the brain seeks to close unfinished stories. Psychology calls this process rumination: an attempt to elaborate on what wasn't said, but which, if repeated too much, ends up preventing us from moving forward. Transforming this rumination into conscious reflection is what turns thought into understanding… and memory into peace.
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