The last time you saw your grandma before she died. That work presentation last month. Yesterday’s argument with your SO. Your performance eval next quarter. That damn toast you agreed to give at the wedding next summer. What do they have in common?

You can overthink the hell out of them.

We all do it, and most of the time it’s relatively harmless. We churn over what we should have said or over-plan what we should do, and then we move on. It’s annoying, but most of the time it’s no more stressful than an earworm song you can’t get out of your head or a nagging discussion you wish you could redo.

But for some people in certain situations, the thinking doesn’t stop and creates even more distress. This compulsive tendency to overthink has a name in the world of mental health: rumination. And it's not great.

Even though I confront rumination every day in my practice, I teamed up with a couple of experts who wrote books on the topic: Dr. Margaret Weherenberg, a psychologist and author of The 10 Best-Ever Anxiety Management Techniques and The 10 Best-Ever Depression Management Techniques, and Dr. Guy Winch, a psychologist and author of Emotional First Aid: Healing Rejection, Guilt, Failure, and Other Everyday Hurts. Hopefully between the three of us, we can shed some light on this aggravating problem and help you deal.