174: Are You Ruminating Or Actually Processing?

Getting over someone feels impossible when your mind keeps replaying the same moments on a loop. In this episode, Sabrina breaks down the difference between genuine emotional processing and rumination, explaining why your brain clings to old stories and how to finally create real movement instead of spiraling. If you’re tired of feeling stuck in your thoughts or carrying heartbreak into a new year, this episode is your reset point. Struggling in dating? Change the way you approach every potential match in 8 Weeks with Sabrina's Healthy Dating Foundation Course HERE! Get Ad free HERE! Want to work with Sabrina? HERE! Get merch for The Sabrina Zohar Show HERE! Don't forget to follow Sabrina and The Sabrina Zohar Show on Instagram and Sabrina on TikTok! Video now available on YOUTUBE! Disclaimer: The Sabrina Zohar Show, formerly known as Do The Work, is not affiliated with A. Z & associates LLC in any capacity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:27Speaker 01

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• 0:56Sabrina Zohar?

  Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to another episode of the Sabrina Zohar Show. My name is Sabrina Zohar and I am your host. Hi friends, welcome back. It's Friday, which means new episode time, which means we're starting a new series. Between now and the end of the year, welcome to the Clarity series Dating with Intention. I'm super stoked. Today is episode one and we're going to talk about are you actually processing or are you just ruminating and replaying the same shit over and over again? Because we are going to bring you through a trajectory. If you want to date with intention and clarity, then we got to do some stuff before we get there, which means process and understand what's happening, let go of some shit, and start to rebuild and focus on the intentionality that we're showing up with. So I'm really excited. Guys, don't forget, please listen to the episodes. I am really shocked sometimes when we do series that like one of the five

• 1:41Sabrina Zohar?

  episodes will crush it and then others won't. Please, please, listen to the entirety. There is a reason that I create a series. There's a reason that there's a flow. Even if you tell me I'm not in a relationship yet, you can learn something from these episodes. So guys, as always, don't forget rate and review, share it with a friend, leave a comment, no matter what episode you hear. I cannot tell you how that helps with us growing and getting the algorithm to love mama again. And please just know, I am so fucking grateful to have you here. I am so grateful that all of you are in this community with me. And you know what? Without further ado, let's get right the fuck on into it, shall we? So let me continue my thoughts. I'm really fucking grateful for all of you. But like I said, every episode I will tell you, I am learning more and more about myself and learning to ask for my needs and... You know, I'm learning even to like, I have to process things because I can get stuck

• 2:24Sabrina Zohar?

  in the rumination spiral. We are human and all of our brains work very similarly. And that's also kind of, I mean, obviously, if you're neurodivergent, you might have different divergences than the other, the average folk like me, right? Like I have ADHD, so my brain does work differently than other people. But I'm just really grateful for the community that we've built. I'm really grateful to have you guys here because this is how we keep it going. This is how, the only reason I'm here is because of you guys. If you guys stopped listening, I wouldn't have a show. So that's why I ask you and I sometimes will beg for your support and help and love because it's what I need to keep being here for you. And guys, as always, if you want ad free, you can subscribe. It's four bucks a month. Instead of complaining that there are ads, which happens because it's a free resource, you guys can subscribe or you don't have to listen. That's also okay

• 3:07Sabrina Zohar?

  too. I want to empower everybody here to do what feels right for them. And that's inclusive of knowing if you want to work one-on-one, you want to join a course, like all of these things are here. And if not, that's okay too. So let's give some updates. It's been a little rough for me. I'm not going to lie. Not like there's anything wrong or bad or anything detrimental. But you know me, I'm always like, I want to update you guys a little bit. And I think part of, part of doing this work and healing and growing is learning to detach from the outcome of things. And I have really, really worked through that because whether it be in relationships, dating, family, career, the amount of times I'm like, when this happens, it'll be great, or this person will help me do this and then I'll achieve my goal. And then it doesn't happen. And then what happens is you're devastated,

• 3:49Sabrina Zohar?

  you're disappointed. And I will be a hundred percent real and candid with you guys. Like me and Tech Guy had a really big talk the other day and we were trying to figure out if we're going to continue and if this relationship makes sense for us. We're still together. Don't worry. Everything's good. But I'm tired of having to pretend of like, everything's amazing and great. And it's like, that's not life. What's part of life is that like, we have really hard conversations. What's part of life is knowing that like, things that I need and things that he need might not match. What's really real is knowing that we're trying and we're evolving and we're growing and we're making a decision from a place of empowerment as two adults. And it's been, it's been hard. It's been interesting and a struggle and it's been all this amalgamation of feelings and emotions. But you know what I keep coming back to? That no matter what, I'm going to be okay. Like anytime I talk to my mom or my friends,

• 4:31Sabrina Zohar?

  I'm like, hey, I, I don't know what's gonna happen. I want the best. I want to be with my partner and all of those things, but I get really triggered by the inconsistency and sometimes he's in, sometimes he's out. And that's a really big struggle for me. And he's doing the work that he needs to do and I'm doing the shit that I need to do. And the reason I wanted to share that is like, I could sit here and pretend everything's amazing and fine, but then you're gonna feel even more disconnected. Because that was really part of my journey was I constantly felt there's something wrong with me. Everybody else hasn't figured out but me, so it must be me. And I'm here to let you know, it's not. That maybe you just have some shit that we gotta work through and we're gonna talk about that today. Cause today's episode, the reason I chose, I chose the structure, like I spent about, I spend like six to eight hours per episode. I like, I go through and I, I figure it out and I go through the studies and I build out this entire, this

• 5:15Sabrina Zohar?

  landscape so that you guys feel like there's something to it, right? There's a beginning, a middle and an end. And it's really important, especially this series, like to build on, or even the last series that we did, the self-worth series, every episode built on to the other. So please engage in it, listen to it. Let me know what you think. If you want different, like I'm here, but it's only, this, this podcast is gonna only be in the community is only as engaged as if we have you guys part of it. And so for me, like, I'll be honest, I used to ruminate. Ruminating was my baseline. Like how much can I stay on the same thing? Because for me, it was easier than using my prefrontal cortex, right? Like we've gone over that, that it takes 10 times almost, about 10x the amount of time for that part of your brain to, to, to switch on so that you could be a little bit more present and start to challenge your thoughts and be in the moment and things

• 6:00Sabrina Zohar?

  like that. And so when we're not in that space and we're ruminating, what we're actually doing is we're just rehearsing the pain over and over and over again. Because there is a difference between processing your emotions, which actually moves you forward, and ruminating, which keeps you stuck in a mental prison, essentially of your own design. And I know that you might be looking at this being like, Sabrina, I don't want this. None of this is malice and none of this is oftentimes a choice. This is how our brain work. And the reason I wanted to do this is because we're nearing the end of the year, which is fucking insane. I feel like just yesterday, just yesterday, Ryan and I were going to LA and found out the fires happened and all of a sudden we were like, wait, what is going on? Just yesterday, it feels like that. And here we are today being like, it's the end of the year. And so I want to ask you this, what are you still replaying from 2025? Or honestly, for 2020, for that fucking matter?

• 6:44Sabrina Zohar?

  What is happening and what are we staying stuck on? Some of you guys had written in, again, if you want to write in, it's the Sabrina Zohar Show on Instagram. Feel free, I put on question boxes like two or three times a week, just to know what you guys want in an episode. So follow along. And the questions you had asked are, been broken up for eight months, and I still dream about him. And when I wake up, I get sad. Why? I'm in no contact for three plus months, and I can't stop thinking about her. Why do I keep trying to find where it all went wrong after it ended? And another one that I saw so many times, how do you know if you're making progress with spiraling or ruminating? These are really real questions, and these are what you guys are going through. And the thing that nobody really tells you about the like, processing your feelings is that most of us aren't actually doing it right, or even doing it for the most part.

• 7:29Sabrina Zohar?

  You think you're healing, but you're just running the same mental footage on loop, over and over and over again, whether it be from fucking January, March, September, I don't care, wherever it happened. And you're about to carry that exact same fucking loop into 2026, unless we do something, which is, understand the difference between processing our emotions and ruminating on them. And that's why this is the first episode of the Clarity series, Dating with Intention. We're starting with the foundation. How do you actually close the chapter instead of rereading it 500 times? How can we actually help you move forward? And again, why I made the foundation course, which I think we might rename it, because a lot of people I don't think really understand the point of the foundation course. So the foundation course is there to lay the solid foundation so that you know, what are my triggers? What are my patterns? What is things that I use to like and don't like? What are that I need?

• 8:13Sabrina Zohar?

  What are my boundaries? It's important to lay a solid foundation. Here's a harsh reality. No one's going to be there with you when you're sitting on the couch at 2:00 in the morning, spiraling and freaking out and going down the rabbit hole. You might be able to call a friend. You might be able to call somebody, but there's no guarantee that anyone's going to be there with you, inclusive of me. And the main difference, I really had to sit down. And I said, okay, I'm going to be really, really realistic. Between me and the people that are in my audience, right? The people I work with, what's the difference? Nothing. There's no difference between any of us. We're all humans, we all have experiences. But I kept trying to say, what did I do that was different? What was I doing that was helping me get to where I needed to go? And you want to know the honest truth? Do you want to know the real truth as to why you're not healing? Why you're not growing and why you're not evolving? The truth is because you're not actually processing.

• 8:58Sabrina Zohar?

  You're sitting in the same shit. When I was in my heyday and I had people that were ghosting me or people that were being inconsistent, I had to make a choice. No one was there to make the choice for me. I had to choose. This doesn't work for me. I had to choose to do things differently. I had to implement the tools. It wasn't like I had this fucking fairy godmother that came down and waved her wand and my anxiety was gone. And I think that's really the reality here is if you want to start to make changes, I need you to be the person that makes the fucking changes. So let's go over what rumination is. So what rumination actually is, is not that you're thinking about your feelings. You're thinking around them, which is why we don't process. So rumination is repetitive, passive, abstract thinking about problems without moving towards a solution.

• 9:43Sabrina Zohar?

  And it's funny, one thing about me that I've noticed even with being a business owner, I'm very solution oriented. I go into like, okay, here's the problem, right? So the problem might be X, Y, and Z. This video got fucked up or this deal didn't. Instead, I don't focus on where are, what happened? And how did we lose and what went wrong? No, no, no, that's a waste of my fucking time. It's a futile effort. If there's obviously something where you're like, okay, can I learn from this? Like, did we say the wrong thing? Right, of course, take, take feedback. But processing it is where you actually start to challenge it, where you sit with it. And so when you're ruminating, it's the same thoughts on loop with no forward movement. And when you ask, why did this happen to me? Instead of what do I do now? And I get this all the time. Why do you think I always say, stop with the why? Why, why, why, why?

• 10:27Sabrina Zohar?

  It's like, that's just your brain's way of trying to understand what went wrong. But learning the why isn't going to make it feel any better. So there was a study done in 2008. Rumination predicts longer and more severe episodes of depression. It's not cathartic, it's corrosive. You are not sitting there being like, oh, wow, I'm doing such a great job. Look at me, I'm just thinking about this person 24/7 and just ruminating and just staying stuck on the same thoughts. When you start to notice the same thoughts, the same feelings, the same, then you're ruminating, you're staying on it. And when you ruminate, you activate the default mode network, the DMN in your brain. And that's the same network that lights up during depression, which is really, really interesting. But here's the scary part. Ruminati in realtà si forzano i cammini neurali di pensiero negativo. Quindi, stai praticando letteralmente il tuo cervello a rimanere fermato.

• 11:10Sabrina Zohar?

  Ogni volta che ripeti quel discorso, ogni volta che circondi il "che se" e guardi il testo e cerci di capirlo, stai facendo più facile per il tuo cervello di andare di nuovo. E questo è parte della stessa cosa che dico: nessuno vi fermerà. Ogni volta che lo fai e sei in... perché io non sono con te, nessuno è con te in questo. È per questo che continuo a dire che la relazione con te stesso sarà la più lunga e più forte che avrai, perché è la lunga che sarai mai andando a avere. E perché sembra che il processamento, è la trappola. Il rumore sente produttivo perché perché? Stai lavorando a pensare, e se stai lavorando a pensare, sembra di fare qualcosa. Stai urlando e sentendo emozioni, quindi senti che stai rilasciando. Stai cercando di capire, quindi senti che stai crescendo. Ma nessuno vi porta in qualcosa o in nessuna nuova.

• 11:53Sabrina Zohar?

  Non stai salendo dal mezzo, stai rilassando il dirt e chiamandolo un ambiente differente. E quindi dobbiamo guardare e dire: quali sono le tue scelte? Il rumore non è pensare a tue emozioni, ma pensare attorno a loro. Perché quando ruminavi, stavi chiedendo: perché è successo a me? Perché hanno fatto questo, ripetendo? Ma quando processi, stai chiedendo: cosa sto imparando a me stesso? E come posso crescere e evolvere? Uno è un cerchio e l'altro è un cammino avanti. Quindi, se continui a chiedere le stesse domande che hai fatto tre mesi fa, non stai guarendo, sei fermato. Se vuoi davvero andare avanti, voglio che inizi a rilasciare e rifare cosa è che stai cercando di capire, perché più ci provi a capirli, meno ti capisci tu stesso. Quindi, una delle domande dell'audience era: perché continuo a cercare di trovare dove tutto è andato male dopo che l'hanno finito?

• 12:37Sabrina Zohar?

  Perché pensi, e il tuo cervello pensa che se puoi trovare il momento esatto in cui è rotto, allora puoi retroattivamente farlo in mente, o che hai la percezione di controllo. Stai cercando il grande "ahah" momento, il momento che farà che tutto abbia senso. Ma ecco la cosa, anche se lo trovi, anche se ti pinpointi la cosa esatta che è andata male, non cambia ciò che è successo. Non stai cercando di capire, vero? Sei non stai cercando di davvero cercare di capirlo, stai cercando di controlare qualcosa che è già andato male. Questo è il rumore perché è focalizzato verso l'indirizzo indietro. Il rumore è indirizzato verso l'indirizzo indietro senza movimento avanti. Non puoi cambiare ciò che è successo. La domanda non è: dove è andata male? La domanda è: cosa mi insegnano a fare su cosa devo fare per andare avanti? And that's what I mean by if you want to stay in the same shit, go ahead.

• 13:22Sabrina Zohar?

  I don't really care. But if you've told yourself the same story about what happened more than five times, you are not processing, you are just reliving the experience and re-traumatizing yourself, my babies. That's all you're doing. So when you keep asking those same questions, why did they do this? And why, and why, and why, and why? You're ruminating, you are stuck on the same cycle. That's why you're not feeling better. And that's why I wanted to start the series with this. Because this was a standalone episode I had had because I was like, I think this is really important. And that's the funny thing. I have noticed, that's actually the irony of it. I have noticed that when I make episodes that are like genuinely beneficial, that I'm like, this is the shit that's going to change your dating life. Those usually don't even necessarily get seen as much. Because I think that there is a reality. Everyone that's here right now, you're making a choice and I'm really fucking proud of you.

• 14:04Sabrina Zohar?

  Though people that show up every day, that do the work, that implement this stuff that are like, I am fucking learning, I'm growing, I'm a, fuck yeah. But if you are one, if you're coming and listening to one episode and then bopping off for six months and then coming back and then going, but I don't get it, why am I not feeling better? It's like, what are you doing with the time? What are you doing with the experiences? What are you doing with the narratives? What are you doing with the stories? Well, that's why we're here. Because I really want us to understand now, what does processing actually look like? Because now you know what it's not. Now you know that every time you start to get on the why and the what, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, we're on a loop when there's no forward momentum. Because here's the reality. You trying to figure out why it went wrong, why they don't want you and why they don't like you is a waste of your fucking time. Because you're just getting more disconnected from yourself, trying to understand them. Because it's the perception of control.

• 14:49Sabrina Zohar?

  If I could figure out where it went wrong, I could have controlled it and then I have control of how this shapes up. You know what you have control over? You. You don't have control over other fucking people. So instead of trying to understand why they did something, maybe we can look and say, how did that impact you? So, what is processing? So processing has a direction and an endpoint. Ruminati is circular. That's why we keep saying a circle versus path. So real processing involves, one, emotional awareness. I feel angry, not, why did they do that? The second thing, a body connection. Where do you feel it physically? That's why I'm always saying, connect back to your body, come back home into your physicality. Then we have meaning-making. What does this tell me about what I need or value? Then we go into integration. How does this fit into my larger story? And now we have action orientation. What do I do with this information?

• 15:33Sabrina Zohar?

  Do you notice how that is an entire cycle versus, why don't they like me? There's something wrong with me. Ah, of course, there's something wrong with me. You're reaffirming your core beliefs. And instead, what we want to do is understand how did this impact you? So here was some research done in 1997 that actually shows that writing is really fucking important. So writing about traumatic events for 15 to 20 minutes improves mental and physical health. But this is critical. It only works when it includes meaning making, not just venting. So when you just complain about what happened, that doesn't actually help you. Finding meaning in what happens actually does. So it's called emotional labeling. Simply naming emotions reduces amygdala response. And we've said it, name it to tame it, and it allows you to turn your prefrontal cortex on. I know a lot of you guys are like, really? That's it?

• 16:18Sabrina Zohar?

  That's all I have to do? It's like, yes, but it's a compound effect. You do that, plus you do all these other things, and then we start to see change. It's not just simply naming it and then being like, I'm just going to ruminate on what I'm naming right now. So simply naming emotions reduces the amygdala response. Your brain calms down when you can name what you feel. But ruminating about those emotions, that increases the amygdala response. So you're literally re-traumatizing yourself every time you go through the loop. The Zygarnik effect, your brain holds on to unfinished business. So processing gives you closure. Rumination keeps the loop open. So I'll give you something practical and instead of being ethereal. Rumination sounds, why don't they like me? What's wrong with me? Why do I always pick the wrong person? Maybe if I'd said things differently. Maybe if I had been less needy. Maybe if I hadn't texted him. What if I text them one more time?

• 17:01Sabrina Zohar?

  What if it, do you notice how it's all stuck on the past? What's wrong with me? Why didn't they want me? We're trying to fill in the blanks so that our brain, because you want to close the loop. Your brain struggles to close the loop when we don't have anything to close it with. Versus if we're processing, and this is where I say, you create your own closure. So what does processing sound like? I feel rejected, and that activates my abandonment wound. This relationship showed me that I'm still giving away my power to emotionally unavailable people. So what do I need to understand? Why I'm drawn to this dynamic? What am I trying to heal through by choosing people who can't choose me back? Do you see the difference? One is a spiral and one is a path forward. One is a being very genuine of like, okay, what's the pattern? What's in my control? What was my part? That's what I have control over.

• 17:45Sabrina Zohar?

  The other is, let me figure them out, because if I could have controlled the outcome and them, I could have won. Did that work with your parents? I didn't think it did because it didn't work with mine. So somebody had asked, been broken up for eight months and I still dream about them. And when I wake up, I get sad. Why? Well, because you're not done processing and that's the reality. Your subconscious knows it, our brain, our desire. You could sit here all day and consciously be like, I'm good. Your subconscious is not going to play that fucking game. Dreams are your brain's way of trying to make sense of unresolved emotional material. Even after, I can't even tell, after my ex and I broke up, I would dream about him all the time. I would dream about him, I'd wait, I would dream about us having a different relationship, that he would come over and apologize, all of those things. Because I was trying to make sense of what had happened.

• 18:28Sabrina Zohar?

  But when you wake up sad, that means you're re-entering the same emotional loop instead of completing it. When you wake up from these dreams, what do you do? Do you lie there replaying the dream and sitting there being like, oh my God, that would have been amazing? Do you think about what you miss? Spiraling into like, but why did this happen? That's ruminating. But versus what would processing look like instead? Maybe that would look like, I had that dream again. My brain is still working through this. That's okay. I'm a fucking human. What am I actually grieving? What part of that relationship am I holding on to? The real version of the fucking fantasy of them? Then write it down. Grab a, have your notebook by your desk. That's why I'm like, have a journal anywhere with a, and you could just turn your little nightstand on. And then write it down. Feel the sadness for 10 minutes. Put your alarm on and do not do this with your phone.

• 19:11Sabrina Zohar?

  Doing it with your journal actually activates a different part of your brain. So don't just pull your cellphone out. And then you deliberately shift your focus to your actual life today. The dreams might not stop immediately, but the waking up sad loop will if you stop feeding in with rumination when you wake up. And I know you might sit and be like, but that's easier said than done. It's like, no fucking shit. No shit. And I just, I have to call attention to this. The amount of times I get like, that's just so easy to say, but it's so hard. No shit. I'm sorry, what in life is easy? Is waking up every morning easy for you? Cause good, kudos. Is going to work easy for you? Cause for a lot of people, it's not. Is taking care of your kids easy? Cause for a lot of people, it's not. Is showering sometimes easy? No, cause for a lot of people, it's not. This isn't about, oh, well, that's so hard.

• 19:55Sabrina Zohar?

  What are you going to do with it? I was you. That's why I'm trying to explain. None of this is different of my journey versus yours. Really where we're coming down to, what are your choices? So one of you guys had written in and asked, "No contact for three plus months and I still can't stop thinking about this person. Eight months and I'm still sad. What's going on?" All right, you want to know what's really going on? You think time is healing you. It's not. You can spend a year, a month, a day asking, "Why didn't this person choose me?" and make zero progress. Or you can spend one month asking, "What did this activate in me?" and actually fucking heal. Stop counting the days since it ended, or since you went no contact, and start noticing if your questions are different. Because if you're asking the same thing you asked in week fucking one, time isn't your problem, baby. It's what you're doing with it.

• 20:40Sabrina Zohar?

  The reality is, time passing doesn't equal healing if you've spent three months or eight months ruminating. You can be a year out of it and still stuck in the same mental loop if you haven't actually processed. It's not about the time. It's about what you're doing with the time. And that's why I always say, "Take the shine off of them." Right? That's why like, when something ends, or if it doesn't work out, the more you try, "My avoidant this, my avoidant that." They are not a fucking Tamagotchi. This is a human being with an experience. Stop putting everybody in a fucking box of like, "Well, they're avoidant, so they do all of these things." You're not allowing people to be people. And at the end of the day, it doesn't matter. What was your part in it? I want you to start getting really clear about that. Because you can have three months of rumination with zero progress, or you can have one month of actual processing and have momentum that's forward.

• 21:24Sabrina Zohar?

  So stop measuring your healing by the calendar and start measuring it by whether your thoughts are different than they were last week, the week before, or the week that you got broken up. Are you asking new questions? Are you gaining new insights? Or are you having the same fucking thoughts you had in the first week? Now, here's the thing. If you're stuck in rumination and you don't know how to shift to processing, this is exactly what we work on in depth. Because breaking this pattern and trying to understand requires more than an episode that can give you. It requires real-time pattern recognition, emotional regulation tools, and the support as you practice doing it differently. But first, if you need to know if you're actually making progress, let's talk about that. If you guys want more, you know I got you. There's the Foundation course. We're starting our New Going Slow course. We're gonna have new things in the new year.

• 22:08Sabrina Zohar?

  We have the book coming out. We have all these amazing things. Everything, as you guys know, is in the link in bio or that's sprintizora.com. So please know. But let's talk about on this episode, right? Because you might just need, you might need more than that. Or you might listen to this and go, "Oh, my God, that's everything I needed." Awesome. I'm fucking here for that. So let's talk about the breakthrough. Let's go over what is it actually going to look like? So how do you know if you're making progress with spiraling and ruminating? That was something that you guys had asked. To me, that's the question. The answer isn't what most people want to hear, and that's going to be a reality. You're making progress when the questions you're asking change. That's when you know you're making progress. Signs you're still ruminating? You're asking the same fucking questions you asked one day, a week, a month, a year after.

• 22:52Sabrina Zohar?

  Your thoughts feel urgent and repetitive, like, I need to figure this out now. I need to, because I need to get rid of this. This is too heavy. You feel worse after thinking about it, not different. You're not processing it and being like, okay, wow, thank you. I just, I think I just needed to get to hash that out, which like happens all the time on sessions. People will come spiraling in the end. They're like, man, thank you. I just like, I needed, because we processed. I didn't let, I don't let people sit on the same fucking loop. Right? Because otherwise you're not helping it. You can't identify anything new that you've learned because you're just on the same loop. Your friends are fucking tired of hearing the same story. And I know I've been that friend. I've been on both sides of the coin. I have been the friend that's like, hey dude, like I had one friend, I had to actually tell her. I was like, I can't do this anymore. It was every, it was the same thing, the same thing, the same thing, the same thing. And I was like, we're not moving. It's been six months, dude.

• 23:35Sabrina Zohar?

  I'm like, we're not changing. Nothing is changing. I was like, I can't do this. You keep having the same conversation with yourself. Those are all signs you're ruminating. You want to know if you're actually processing and what that looks like? The questions evolve. So maybe the week, the first week was, why did this person leave me? But then maybe by week four, you're like, what was I avoiding by staying? You notice the patterns you didn't necessarily see before. You can still feel heavy and sad because you're a human, but not panicked. There's sadness, but there's also clarity, right? Of the like, I might care about this person, but I also know that like, my needs just weren't met. You can talk about it without re-traumatizing yourself because you're not holding on to core beliefs. It's not about there's something wrong with you and why did they leave me? And everybody doesn't want me. You're connecting dots to bigger patterns in your life. And you're learning something about yourself. It's not just about them.

• 24:18Sabrina Zohar?

  And that's the biggest thing when we talk about ruminating or spiraling is what are you learning about you? So when we think about progress, I don't want you to think of, do I still think about them? That's not the point of this because you might, but are my thoughts teaching me something new? Because if you're having the same thought for the fucking 47th time, you're spiraling, you're ruminating, you're in the same thing. But if you're discovering something about yourself of like, no shit, I didn't see that before, you're processing, you're actually able to expand, you're looking at things differently. Something that you guys had asked quite a bit was, how do I avoid ruining the present moment by focusing on the hypotheticals, right? What if they do this? And what if they do that? And what? I get it, right? What I hear from that is like, do you trust yourself? But the first thing I want you to recognize are, what are those hypotheticals doing?

• 25:01Sabrina Zohar?

  They're keeping you in the past, or they're projecting into a future that doesn't exist. Either way, you're not in the fucking present. You're not actually thinking about the past or the future, you're avoiding the present. What if I had this? What if they had that? Hypotheticals feel safer than reality. What if feels better than it's over. You know why? Because you have to face reality. You're not in your life, you're in your fucking head. The present feels empty because you're not actually here. And that's why you feel so disconnected. Healing doesn't happen in imagination. Healing doesn't happen in what ifs. It happens in the present moment, when you finally take up space and say, this didn't work for me, and I have every right to fucking own that. When you start to do the, what if I had said this? Ruminating on the past. What if they come back? Ruminating on the future. Both are forms of not accepting what is. And here's what to do.

• 25:46Sabrina Zohar?

  When you catch yourself in this hypothetical spiral, I want you to ask yourself, what am I avoiding feeling right now? Usually, the hypotheticals are protecting you from the reality that you don't want to face. That's also why I will continue to say, just because you're anxious, doesn't mean you're not emotionally unavailable. For a lot of people, we have to avoid vulnerability, we avoid going deeper, we avoid understanding, what did I avoid by staying in this? And a lot of, what if I had done X differently? Feel safer than it's over and I can't change that. What if they come back? Feel safer than I have to rebuild a life without them. The present feels ruined because you're not actually in the fucking present. You're in your head, you're creating these narratives, and you're reaffirming your core beliefs. So here's the work. When you notice the hypothetical thoughts, when you start to go into that, I want you

• 26:30Sabrina Zohar?

  to literally say out loud, I'm doing it again. That's what I mean by thought interruption. You can drop your phone, you can like slap your legs and be like, whoa, I'm in this again. I do that, I'll be like, Sabrina, you're looping. You're on the same loop. Then I want you to ground yourself. My favorite thing is to scan for safety. We've talked about this, where you scan and you look at five things you can see right now. So if I were in right now, I'd be like, oh, my podcast room. Yay, there's my camera. Oh, I love the pink XLR cables. Ooh, there's my little heart guy. Because what that does is it brings me back into the present moment. I'm in this moment. Then you can take a couple of deep breaths. Remember that activates the vagus nerve and you can bring your body back. And then I want you to ask, what is happening in this moment? And the hard part is, the present might actually feel boring or sad compared to the fantasy scenarios

• 27:15Sabrina Zohar?

  that you've made in your head. That's why we want those fantasy. But that's where healing happens, in the reality of what is now, not in the imagination of what could happen and what if. My mama has been saying that to me for years. I would always say, but what if, what if? And she goes, but Sabrina, if that were the case, then it would be what is. Then you wouldn't have these issues. Could it be like, but why don't they do this? And what if they did this? And what if they did that? And she's like, but then you wouldn't have these problems. You would be in the relationship you want. So every time I go to what if, I start, I stop and ask myself, yeah, but what is? Someone asks, I feel like I did make peace that it's over, but recently it's been coming back up. Why? Baby, healing isn't linear. Sometimes your brain needs another pass at it. You didn't fail at healing. There is no fucking metric here. You processed one layer and now there's another one showing up.

• 27:58Sabrina Zohar?

  I want you to think of it as like peeling a can onion, right? We're ogres here. You've processed the surface layer, maybe the immediate pain, like the logistics of the breakup, the initial grief, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you're not going to hit a deeper layer. Maybe the meaning of it had for your identity. Maybe it was triggering something that reminded you of something that was unresolved. Maybe you're finally safe enough to feel something you couldn't feel before. And that's okay. That's normal. This is actually a sign of progress. It's not regression. Where it would be regression is if you just do it all over again. But what matters is when it comes back up, are you asking the same questions or are you asking different ones? If you're back to, why did this happen to me? Maybe you skipped a part of the processing. Or if you're asking, what is this bringing up for me now? You're still processing.

• 28:43Sabrina Zohar?

  It's just a deeper level. I have had that. I have, please don't panic when waves like that come. Just notice it, right? Is it the same wave or is this a new fucking drink of water? Because I've had that with even friends like I've told you guys about the friend that goes to me. By the way, still haven't heard from this person. It's been now two months officially. And I'm like, well, by the time this comes out, three months. And I'm like, okay, that's just what it is. And instead of being like, why did she do this? And what did I do wrong? Which was the first week. Now I'm going, all right, what's this bringing up in me? Is there another part that's feeling triggered or is it the same part? Is maybe that part of me just feeling really sad? That's okay. Right? Because I went through the initial of like, all right, fuck this person. What are you gonna do? They're not your friend. Move on with your life. That's the initial. But then there was a deeper wave of like, oh, but what is this bringing up in me now?

• 29:26Sabrina Zohar?

  So I want you to be able to tell the difference. Let's start to ask yourself these four questions. The first one, have my thoughts changed or evolved? If it's the same loop, we're in rumination. But if you could start even that of like, I went from what did I do wrong? And did I piss this person off and everything? To now going, I can't change that. I can only just say, what is this bringing up within me? The second thing, am I asking questions I can answer? Not why did they ghost you? No, you can't fucking answer that. I mean, you can, you can make up shit, right? But why did this person do this? Why did they do that? We don't have the answer for that. But you know what you can answer? What boundary did I miss? What was my part in this? The third question, do I feel worse or different after thinking? Worse is you're ruminating, different, processing. Maybe you say, I feel a little lighter, right? Can I take action from this thought? No action possible is ruminating.

• 30:10Sabrina Zohar?

  But the reality is sometimes you're ruminating because you're not ready to let go. And I get that. I had that all the time. Like when I was in my dating phase, I have people that I was like, I'm just not ready to accept the reality. Because rumination gives you the illusion of control and it keeps the person or situation alive in your mind. So you keep saying, if I can actually figure this out, then I can get them. I can change the situation. I can change the environment. I can change the outcome. And I can get them to love me and want me and be with me and all of those things. Processing means accepting it's over and moving forward. That's why it's scarier. That's why it feels really uncomfortable is because we have to acknowledge, oh, this is the reality. And for a lot of us, here's the thing. When I was a kid, fantasy kept me safe because if I had to acknowledge the reality, I had to acknowledge that my father was a piece of shit and wasn't going to be there for me. That was really, really tough for me. My dad, I saw him a few weeks ago.

• 30:54Sabrina Zohar?

  And it was really tough because there are the parts of me that I'm like, I love my father and he's so sweet and lovely. And then he does one thing or he says one thing and you're like, nope, there he is. There he is. And that's what was really a struggle for me. And I don't shame or blame myself for having these thoughts. I just look and say like, I'm really proud of you for acknowledging that. Because I don't need to fantasize about the father that I wish I had. I don't. It's, I can grieve now the one that I didn't have, but as a kid, the fantasy kept me a lot safer because if I had to face reality, that meant I had to face that my parents and my caregivers weren't there for me and that my siblings weren't really there for me and that I might have been fucked. So, let's talk about a tool, the five-minute rule. I want you to set a timer. And I want you to think about the situation for five minutes with one rule. Every thought must move you forward, not sideways. So if you find yourself circling,

• 31:39Sabrina Zohar?

  again, on the "what if I had?", "maybe I should have", "I wonder if they?", I need you to stop because you're ruminating. And that's a big part. Otherwise, you're just gonna keep doing the same thing. But instead, maybe what we can do, and we're gonna now go into like, what can you actually do? But in that moment, maybe you can stop and say, because like, I'll do that. Sometimes I'll be on something and I'm like, whoa, Sabrina, you're just complaining. And one minute of complaining adds like two to three hours of cortisol to your day. It's not worth it. It's not worth it. That's why I'm like venting, eh, maybe with a therapist that you're processing, but just calling your friend and bitching and moaning for fucking three hours and going and understanding, you're not processing, you're ruminating. Someone had asked, "Why does it get worse before it gets better?" You wanna know why no contact by itself doesn't do anything? Because you're not actually processing with that no contact, you're ruminating.

• 32:22Sabrina Zohar?

  And when you start to process, you finally feel what you've been avoiding. When you stop ruminating and you actually start the processing, you're no longer numbing yourself with mental distraction. You're sitting with the actual emotions instead of thinking and intellectualizing about the emotions. Rumination is a protection mechanism. It keeps you so fucking busy so that you don't have to feel the full weight of the loss and actually grieve. When you shift to processing, that protection comes down. And it hurts more at first because you're finally letting yourself feel it and you're not distracting, numbing, or trying to get away from it. I want you to think of it this way. You've had a wound. And rumination is like obsessively touching the bandage, checking it and talking about it, but never actually cleaning the fucking wound. Processing is when you finally take the bandage off and clean it out.

• 33:03Sabrina Zohar?

  That's when it really stings, but that's also when you actually start to see healing. Now then, the getting worse phase is temporary. It's the valley you have to walk through to get the other side. But most people give up there. They think like, "It's not working. It's not working. I feel worse." But feeling worse is temporary, baby. It's a sign that it might be working because you're cleaning out the infection. But that's why I'm saying, it doesn't feel different. Because if you're like, "No, it feels worse because it's all the same", then you're ruminating, you're just in the same shit. So how do you actually move from rumination to processing? So here is a short framework. That I want you to start to implement. And again, if you need more, join the fucking courses. But this is just a start for you guys. Or talk to your therapist about it. Whoever you're working with, I don't really care. But the first one, notice the loop. I'm ruminating right now. Don't judge it. Remember, name it to fucking tame it. Awareness

• 33:48Sabrina Zohar?

  breaks the automatic pattern. Say it. Then, second thing, name the core emotion beneath the feelings. What do you actually feel? Sad, mad, angry, rejected, ashamed, not, I feel like they didn't care about me. That's a thought. But what's the actual feeling under that? Because maybe it's, I feel like they didn't care about me. I'm really sad because I feel like people constantly leave me and I'm not important. Got it. That's what this is about. Then the third, ask a forward facing question. What do I need right now? Not, why did this happen to me? Not, what if, what is, what is the, no. What am I learning about myself right now? Not, what did I do wrong? What do I value that I wasn't getting? Not, how do I get them back? Because then you're just stuck on the same shit. You want to fucking control what happened. And the fourth thing, create an endpoint. I'm giving myself until

• 34:32Sabrina Zohar?

  Friday to feel this fully. Then I'm choosing differently. Give yourself permission to feel it and permission to be done with it. That was a huge thing for me. After my breakups, instead of spiraling and noodle and I allowed myself to feel, but I would even tell myself, I'm like, all right, girl, this was a two monther. I'm giving you until the end of the week. And then after that, baby, you get to choose differently here. Because I get to choose what I focus on. I get to choose how long I'm going to stay in something. I get to choose what my brain focuses on. So when you catch yourself ruminating, maybe here's like the practical part of it. Stop mid thought. Put your hand on your chest and say it out loud. I am ruminating. What am I actually feeling right now? What is actually coming up with me? Sit with the feeling, not the thought, for 60 seconds. That's why

• 35:15Sabrina Zohar?

  Jill Bolte Taylor takes 90 seconds for an emotion to run its course. But you guys are sitting with the thoughts. They don't like me. They don't want me. They don't think I'm pretty enough. They don't think I'm strong enough. They think I'm this. They think I'm that. That's the thought, not the feeling. I feel less than. I feel really shitty. Sit with that. Oof, this feels like shit. Then I want you to ask, what do I need to do next that moves me forward? This breaks the neural pathway. Because what you're doing is you're teaching your brain, there is a different option besides this loop. There is a different option besides just going on the same fucking thing. Because you do have a choice, but I need you to regulate and access that place of choice. When you're dysregulated, it feels like you don't have any because you're in survival. So I want you this week to catch yourself ruminating three times if you can. Don't judge yourself, just notice and say it out loud like, whoa, I'm ruminating.

• 35:59Sabrina Zohar?

  Then ask, what am I actually afraid to feel or accept? And then journal in the answer and be honest. Be fucking honest. You're not ruminating because you love them so much. You're ruminating because you're scared of what happens when you stop and what you're gonna have to feel and what you're gonna have to face, all of those aspects. And that's really human, but what are your choices? So now, part one, right? We have four parts. What are you going to bring into 2026? Because before we end, I want to get really clear on something. What are you carrying into the new year? The same mental loop from 2025, from 2024, for me, 1990? Are you finally ready to close it? Because here's what I know. If you don't shift from ruminatiion to processing, you're going to be having the same conversation with yourself on New Year's Day, on fucking Valentine's Day, on summertime, at the end.

• 36:44Sabrina Zohar?

  You're gonna be having this conversation all year. But the difference between processing and ruminating is the difference between moving on and staying stuck. You get to choose. You finally get to make a choice for yourself that works. So now, now that you know the difference between ruminating and spiraling, here's what we're gonna be tackling next. And I think I chose this one very specifically because I think you're secretly hoping as the year ends, maybe this new year, they'll realize what they lost and they'll come back. And bitch, don't even try to tell me that you don't. So let's talk about that fantasy and why it keeps you stuck. And so that's what's gonna be next week is do they always come back? And here's the thing, some do, some don't, but that's not actually the question that you should be asking. So we're gonna go into, why do they? Why don't they? What does that mean about us? And how do you actually move on?

• 37:29Sabrina Zohar?

  Because I really, really wanted this series leading up to New Year's Eve. I really, really wanted this to create a container where you actually feel like you're you're doing what you need to do in order to get to where you want to go. I can say things ethereally, I can talk about stuff, but I really want you to focus on, what are my choices? Until the next episode comes, I want you to catch yourself ruminating even once and name it and ask yourself what you're actually avoiding. That's where the work begins. It doesn't begin because after this episode, you have this huge come to Jesus moment. And all of a sudden now you're like, oh, I'm never gonna spiral again. Yes, you will, because you're a human. And that's okay. I give you 100% permission to be a human. But maybe we can ask and say, what am I doing with these tools? What am I implementing? How am I showing up? And what are my choices?

• 38:13Sabrina Zohar?

  Because you deserve better in the new fucking year. But this is also the thing, we're gonna do this gradually. Because if I were to say, In 2026, you're never going to ruminate and spiral again. Your brain's like, get fucked, lady. That's definitely not going to happen. Because like any New Year's resolutions, when they're too greg and too large, you're not going to be able to tackle it. So maybe what we can say is, this is the first step. We're taking one step to the top of the mountain. That mountain's really scary and overwhelming. It is fucking, I'm on that side of TikTok. I have been getting all this Everest content of all these people dying on Mount Everest. Now all of a sudden, I'm like in Everest TikTok. But that mountain's terrifying. We're on one step, baby. We're not trying to get to the top. That's okay. I, I don't need to go that high. The fall is really great. I just want to get to a place where the view feels really beautiful for me. I don't need to be where everybody else is. So this is the first step. And I want you to make this promise to yourself now.

• 38:58Sabrina Zohar?

  Whatever happens from this point on, you're going to treat yourself with compassion and grace because you're a human and you deserve nothing fucking less. And I don't want you to forget that. All right, babes, this is a bit of a longer episode, but I hope you loved it. We had a lot of science, a lot of stuff to get through. And I really wanted to make sure that you felt supported throughout. Guys, as always, if you need anything, let me know. Pop them into the comments. Let me know what you think. If you like this series or if you want a different one, whatever you guys need. Don't forget, we've got the foundation course. You could work one-on-one, ask a question, join, download some free guides, whatever you guys need. Everything's on link in bio. And in the new year, we're going to have so much more stuff because my book comes out and I'm so excited. Guys, I love you. Thank you for rating or reviewing the show. Thank you for listening. Even if you don't listen to the whole thing, Mark is finished. It just helps us to grow.

• 39:40Sabrina Zohar?

  Auto-download the episodes, all the fun shit that comes with being part of the podcast community. And as always, thank you. Thank you for showing up as you and allowing me to show up as me. So baby, until next week, which I'm really stoked for part two. You got this, baby.

• 40:04Speaker 03

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