A space to
understand
yourself more
deeply.

Imagine a driver who is lost. Rather than stopping to reassess, they keep driving the same loop — circling back to the same intersection, growing more frustrated with every pass. This is rumination: a mental loop that feels purposeful but leads nowhere. And the more we surrender to it, the more exhausted and disoriented we become.

Rumination is a pattern of repetitive, intrusive thoughts — often about past events, perceived failures, or anticipated threats — that we return to again and again without resolution. It can last minutes, hours, or extend across days. And while it can feel like we're "thinking through" a problem, research is clear: rumination does not lead to solutions. It deepens distress.

Why Do We Ruminate?

The brain is wired to detect and respond to threat. When something feels unresolved — a painful interaction, a fear about the future, a wound from the past — the mind returns to it compulsively, searching for resolution or control. This is especially common for those who have experienced anxiety, depression, trauma, or significant life transitions like immigration.

Often, the thoughts themselves are not rooted in present reality. They are echoes: old emotional conclusions from past experiences, reactivated by a small trigger in the present. A dismissive comment from a colleague becomes evidence of a lifelong fear of rejection. A moment of loneliness becomes confirmation that you will never belong.

Four Ways to Step Out of the Loop

1. Name what you're actually ruminating about

The first step is simply to identify the thought that has captured you. Ask honestly: is there a real, present problem here that requires action — or am I revisiting something that already happened, or fearing something that may never occur? This distinction alone can loosen the grip. Like the driver who finally stops and asks, "Have I actually been going in circles?" — awareness creates the opening for change.

2. Create a deliberate pause

Before the next intrusive thought arrives, pause. Stand at the threshold for a moment. Notice what the previous thought has done to your body and your mood. Ask yourself whether that thought was accurate, and whether it served you. You are not obligated to follow every thought that appears. With practice, this pause becomes a powerful tool for interrupting the cycle before it gains momentum.

3. Practice self-compassion — not self-criticism

A common response to rumination is frustration with oneself for ruminating. This is understandable, but it creates a second loop on top of the first. Approaching yourself with genuine compassion — acknowledging that these thoughts are distressing and sometimes very difficult to control, rather than evidence of weakness — actually reduces their intensity. Self-compassion is not passive; it is one of the most evidence-backed interventions in clinical psychology.

4. Use breathing to shift your nervous system

Rumination activates the sympathetic nervous system — the body's threat response. Slow, deliberate breathing — particularly with a longer exhale than inhale — activates the parasympathetic system and physiologically shifts your body out of the defensive state. As the body softens, the thoughts become less vivid and less compelling. Regular breathwork practice, over time, builds resilience against intrusive thought patterns.

When Rumination Is a Sign of Something Deeper

For some people, rumination is not simply a habit but a symptom of anxiety, depression, OCD, or unprocessed trauma. If you find that these strategies provide only temporary relief — or that rumination significantly interferes with your sleep, relationships, or daily functioning — it may be a signal that deeper therapeutic work could help.

Schema therapy is particularly effective for people whose rumination is rooted in longstanding core beliefs: "I am unworthy," "I am always rejected," "I am not safe." These beliefs don't respond well to surface-level coping. They need to be explored, understood, and gently rewritten at the level where they were formed.

Immigration is often framed as an achievement — a brave beginning, a better future, a story of possibility. And in many ways, it is. But this narrative, as hopeful as it is, can obscure something important: immigration is also a profound loss.

You lose the texture of daily life in a place you knew deeply. You lose the ease of moving through the world in your first language. You lose proximity to the people who knew you before. You may even lose a version of yourself: the self who was confident, fluent, understood, and at home.

This grief is real. And it is often invisible — both to the people around you and, frequently, to yourself.

Why Immigrant Grief Is So Hard to Name

Unlike the grief that follows a clear ending, immigrant grief exists alongside hope and progress. You chose to come here. Things may be going well by many measures. How do you mourn something you also wanted? How do you name a loss that comes without a funeral?

This ambiguity makes immigrant grief uniquely difficult to process. Many newcomers push it aside — there is too much to do, too much pressure to adapt — and it accumulates silently, surfacing as anxiety, irritability, a pervasive sense of emptiness, or a longing they can't quite name.

Signs You May Be Carrying Unprocessed Immigration Grief

You might recognize this grief in unexpected sadness around cultural holidays or family milestones. A persistent sense of not quite belonging — not fully there, not fully here. Feeling emotionally distant from your partner or children, who seem to be adapting more easily. A kind of identity disorientation: not knowing who you are outside of the context that formed you.

These experiences are not signs that something is wrong with you. They are signs that you are human, and that you have left something significant behind.

How Therapy Can Help

Therapy provides a space to name what you're carrying — often for the first time. It offers the chance to grieve intentionally, rather than letting unprocessed loss drain quietly in the background of your life. For bilingual clients, being able to speak in Farsi — to find the exact word, the exact feeling, without translation — can be deeply releasing.

Schema therapy can also help those whose immigration grief has activated older wounds around belonging, abandonment, or self-worth, by addressing not just the present transition but the deeper patterns it has touched.

Have you ever found yourself in the same painful situation with a different person? A different partner, a different workplace, a different city — and yet somehow, the same core wound is touched, the same hurt emerges, the same dynamic plays out? This is not coincidence, and it is not a character flaw. It is how unexamined schemas work.

What Is a Schema?

In schema therapy, a "schema" is a deeply held belief or emotional theme about yourself and the world — formed in childhood or adolescence in response to unmet emotional needs. These schemas are not simply thoughts; they are felt truths. They operate below conscious awareness, shaping how you perceive situations, what you expect from others, and how you respond when those expectations are met or threatened.

Common schemas include beliefs such as: "I am fundamentally unlovable." "I will always be abandoned." "I am incompetent." "I don't deserve good things." They feel like facts because they were formed at an age when we lacked the capacity to question them.

How Schemas Drive Relationship Patterns

Schemas are self-perpetuating. Once formed, they actively shape our experience in three predictable ways. We may surrender to the schema — unconsciously recreating the conditions that confirm it, for example repeatedly choosing partners who are emotionally unavailable. We may avoid it — going to great lengths to never be in situations that might activate the painful belief. Or we may overcompensate — behaving in the opposite direction, perhaps becoming excessively self-reliant or controlling.

None of these responses are conscious choices. They are survival strategies that have outlived their usefulness.

What Schema Therapy Offers

Schema therapy works by bringing these patterns into awareness, understanding their origins with compassion, and systematically building new, healthier ways of relating to yourself and others. This involves both cognitive work — examining the evidence for and against your core beliefs — and experiential work, including exploring the emotional needs that were unmet and learning to meet them in healthier ways.

For clients navigating relationship difficulties, this approach is powerful because it addresses the root, not just the symptom. Rather than teaching you to communicate differently without addressing why communication breaks down, schema therapy helps you understand the underlying pattern — creating the possibility of genuine, lasting change.

You Are Not Your Patterns

Your schemas are not you. They are a story your nervous system learned to tell in order to survive. And like any story, they can be examined, challenged, and — with time and the right support — rewritten. Change is possible. Not the quick, surface-level kind — but the deep, lasting kind that shows up in how you feel about yourself on a quiet Tuesday afternoon.