Overthinking Understood with Dr. Brandon Gibb

I want to start with something that might feel familiar: you replay a conversation in your head, you wonder if you said the wrong thing, or you think about something that happened hours ago, but you can’t seem to move on. That experience of getting stuck in your thoughts is something many teenagers go through, and while it may seem random, it is not. So for today’s episode, I wanted to explore: Why do teens overthink so much? What is rumination? How can young people begin to understand these patterns? To help us understand this, I’m really excited to welcome Dr. Brandon Gibb.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hey everyone, and welcome to Growing Forward. I am your host, Sadie Sunborn Malachy, a 16-year-old girl from Southern California, and I'm really glad that you're here with me today. I want to start this podcast off with something that might feel a little familiar to you. You replay a conversation in your head. You wonder if you said the wrong thing. You think about something that happened hours ago or even days ago, maybe months, yet you can't move on. And even when you know it's not helping to stay in that mindset and stay stuck to those thoughts, your mind still just keeps going. That experience of getting stuck in your head is something many teenagers and adolescents go through. But it's not random. There's an actual science behind why it happens and why it can feel so hard to stop. So for today's episode, I wanted to explore why teens think so much more than they do in some periods of time? Why do we overthink? What is rumination and how does it develop over time? And how can young people begin to understand and maybe even shift these patterns that occur? To help us understand this, I'm really excited to welcome Dr. Brandon Gibb. Dr. Gibb is a clinical psychologist and distinguished professor at Binghamton University, where he directs the Mode Disorders Institute. His research focuses on understanding why some children and adolescents are more vulnerable to developing depression, with a particular emphasis on cognitive patterns like rumination, stress reactivity, and how early life experiences shape emotional development. So without further ado and wasting any more time, Dr. Gibb, thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to be here with us.

SPEAKER_00 1:36

You're welcome.

SPEAKER_01 1:37

So before we begin, I want to learn a little bit more about you and so that our listeners get a better perspective on who you actually are. So to start, what led you to study rumination and overthinking, especially in adolescence?

SPEAKER_00 1:50

So what led me was an interest in depression, particularly in kids and teenagers. And so everybody gets sad from time to time. For some people, it's more than just sadness, and it turns into a depression that can be really, really impairing and really mess with different areas of your life. And so I got really interested in depression and how it goes from just normal sadness, which you should feel when something bad happens, into a depression. Really interested in the different cognitive factors that can play a role. It just always amazed me when I was first starting out that different ways of thinking can really influence how you respond to a situation, right? It can, you know, you can be really resilient and focus on, you know, um, this is making me stronger, or you can say this is horrible and this is going to ruin everything. And so that's when I started getting interested in rumination and other types of cognitive vulnerabilities.

SPEAKER_01 2:45

That's wonderful to hear how it does really all connect to one another and how it started in one place and it ventured into another field that I feel we don't always talk about or discuss in a regular conversation. Maybe in the medical field, it is brought up more. But rumination is something that isn't so common. Overthinking is sometimes stereotyped to be kind of a normal thing or something that we accept just because so many people are dealing with it. But today we're gonna uncover it and understand why it happens, what we can do to shift our perspective and all these different things. So thank you for giving that beginning introduction so that everyone can know and understand who you are. And as I said about rumination, we don't always know what it actually means. And what does it mean in a psychological perspective? So, in your opinion, what does rumination truly mean? And how is it different from just thinking deeply about something?

SPEAKER_00 3:37

So it is um there's a couple of different components of it. One, it's um really passive. So you're passively thinking about why you're upset and what caused the upset and how bad it is, right? So you're um you're thinking really passively. You're not thinking about how do I solve this problem or what should I do differently or how should I feel better? It's really focused on, wow, this is bad. This is still bad. It's also bad, it's very bad. And it's focused on negative things. And people just get stuck in these kind of thinking patterns and it builds on itself and um it can be really hard to get out of.

SPEAKER_01 4:11

And for that rumination that teenagers may feel, does it start developing during our adolescent years, or can it show up in younger people as well? Or is it mostly an older person thing?

SPEAKER_00 4:24

No, it it shows up kind of across ages. I mean, at least in, you know, younger kids. There are going to be genetic influences and environmental influences, like with everything. But there are um, you know, people do tend to differ. It tends to be pretty stable. We know that girls tend to ruminate more than boys. We don't exactly understand why, but um, you know, it it is something that certain people struggle with more than others.

SPEAKER_01 4:51

Okay. And on that perspective of girls versus boys, I don't want to really direct it to a specific audience because we like keeping it broad. But are you guys currently doing research on discovering why that happens? Are there assumptions in your community of why girls more than male uh counterparts are experiencing rumination more than their other people?

SPEAKER_00 5:12

It is. Um, so there um there are stereotypical differences in how people respond to stress. And this goes along with gender roles and gender socialization and how you're taught to deal with stress. And so girls tend to be taught to focus on what happened and try to fix it. Boys tend to be taught to distract and move on to other things, right? And so that gets reinforced, you know, not for everybody, but you know, stereotypically, um, that's what ends up happening.

SPEAKER_01 5:41

And do you think we might go into this a little bit more deeper? Do you but do you think it's beneficial to swing one way or the another, or is it finding that equilibrium between reflecting on it and maybe taking a moment to realize what happened, but also kind of pushing it aside and toughening up in a way? Where is the balance in that?

SPEAKER_00 5:59

Yeah. So one thing we talk a lot about is how emotions are really important and they they're your body's way of telling you to pay attention to something, right? And so what sadness does for you is it's your body's way of saying, something just happened that I need to pay attention to. And so it's really good at getting you to slow down and think about what happened, right? And lots of times it's going to be stress with people around you, right? That's where a lot of people, you know, get sad. And so it's really good at uh having you take a moment and think, is there something that I should be doing differently in this situation? So that is absolutely perfect. The problem is when people just get stuck there, right? And they they can't move on to, well, I can do these different things. They get stuck at when this is really bad, and then it's going to keep getting bad and it won't ever get better, and now nobody likes me, you know, and so falling into a pit of it. That's what we want to watch out for.

SPEAKER_01 6:51

Definitely. And on previous episodes and things that we've discussed, we have brought up that same repetitive nature that occurs in a lot of different mental aspects, especially in adolescence, but throughout life. And overthinking or rumination can connect to anxiety and depression, as you stated earlier. So I do like to highlight that it is it is one thing, but now that we're focusing specifically on it, there is so much more to uncover. So I really, really do appreciate all of that perspective and kind of analysis around it. And before we got into everything, we kind of mentioned a little bit about younger kids and older. However, because we're discussing adolescence, why do teenagers seem especially prone to overthinking and rumination compared to younger children or older people? What is really changing during these years to influence adolescents to feel a different way than before?

SPEAKER_00 7:43

So much. There's so much that goes on that, you know, so adolescence is fabulous and there's just so much opportunity. And it's also got a lot of stress, right? So it's just got a whole lot of everything going on. So during adolescence, you have, you know, um, throughout development, you your brain is developing. It is developing at um different parts are developing at different rates. And so what happens is earlier on, emotional regions of your brain, the brain, the parts that respond to exciting things develop a lot earlier. And so that makes you um much more focused on what's going on around you, particularly what's going on around you with your friends, right, and your peers. Later is um the parts of your brain that help you evaluate things or pull back the thoughts or regulate your emotions, right? So you have this window where um just because of normal brain development, where you're just gonna be more vulnerable to things like rumination. In combination, you also have a lot more pure stress because peer relations are, you know, changing so much. You also have changes in sleep that happen during adolescence. People are um staying up later because that's what you know, that's just normal to do, but you still have to wake up early because that's when school starts. So that also makes it harder for your um to bring your brain to rein in these runaway thoughts.

SPEAKER_01 9:15

So it is an external and internal influence kind of balance between the two. And do you think one or the other influences the characteristics of rumination more? Or as you said, does it differ per person? Where does that kind of fit into the whole scheme of it?

SPEAKER_00 9:32

I think it's all of it. You know, and so that's why. So that's the tough part about it because it's influenced by so many things. It's also the good thing about it because it also means that there are different ways, you know, a lot of different ways you can intervene, right? So you know, a little bit of both.

SPEAKER_01 9:47

A little bit of both worlds really does have that contrasting and also helping side, which we see a lot in the different aspects of our lives, of just there is those two sides of the story and two different factors that may be contributing to the overall picture. So I do like that you provided that response of it can be a negative thing in some points in time, and it can feel a little consuming when you have both external and internal factors kind of relating to your rumination or your overthinking. However, you can also change things. There's a lot of differences that you can make in your day-to-day life so that those things don't feel as harmful anymore, which we will go into more later. However, we did talk about depression a little bit, but only on the base level. So your research shows that rumination can increase risk for depression, especially in adolescence. So, how does getting stuck in this thought loop or this process actually affect emotional well-being over time and lead to depression?

SPEAKER_00 10:42

So, like I said before, when you get a little sad, that's your body telling you to slow down and think about things, right? So that's what you're supposed to do. The um rumination, when that kicks in, that's what turns the sadness into a depression. So, where you just get stuck emotionally. And then it can keep you from pulling out of it because you know, instead of going out and being with your friends and doing fun things or getting your work done or other things, um, you're just stuck thinking about how, you know, why did this happen to me?

SPEAKER_01 11:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:14

And so it can also compound the stress too, right? So if you're so distracted that you can't focus on the conversation you're in or the class you're in, or the, you know, what you're supposed to be doing, then stress will build up even more. So um it can definitely feed on itself.

SPEAKER_01 11:31

And I think the dilemma for a lot of adolescents is that they don't always realize when that stress is getting to the consuming part or the extent where it doesn't feel like they have control over it. And because it's such an internal thing and an external thing, yes, when you're depressed, you may start having your grades flunk and you may address your relationships a little differently. However, all of the thoughts are going on in your head and that repetitive loop, repetitive loop that you're constantly thinking about, okay, I need to do this or this, or I'm thinking past on this, it becomes consuming in a way that is internalized. So a lot of the times adolescents learn to live with it or don't realize that it's happening. So, what are little things or little kind of structures or processes that adolescents can apply to their own lives before the rumination or overthinking may lead to these depressive thoughts or anxiety? How can they realize that they're going down that path earlier?

SPEAKER_00 12:24

I think the um one big part is just recognizing that it's a bit of a trap, right? And so, you know, when you um find yourself still thinking about this thing, and especially if you find that you can't, you know, you can't stop thinking about something, right? There's something that's um going on that um is making you feel bad and you can't stop thinking about it. That's when you know that it's a problem. And the the biggest things that people do, you know, to to pull out of it is to instead of, you know, so rumination is passive, it's just um you sitting around kind of just going over and over and over these thoughts, do something active. Find a way to distract yourself if you need to, go be with friends, be with family, find a way to do something that gives you a sense of accomplishment. So get some exercise if you can or whatever, get some work done. The the trick is that if you're really upset, so telling someone that's really upset and feeling down and is constantly ruminating, oh, you just need to do school work instead, that probably won't work, right? So do something that will distract you first, that will improve your mood, get you out of this kind of loop of ruminating, and then have the energy and the motivation and the focus to get your work done or do other things.

SPEAKER_01 13:35

And in some of those periods of times where adolescents feel like they're consumed by these thoughts, they don't always know anymore what does make them happy, what makes them outside of that loop at that point. So, how do adolescents realign themselves with those things that truly do take them out of the loop and take them out of that box that they've put themselves into?

SPEAKER_00 13:56

Yeah, we run into this with um adults as well, you know, that sometimes you can just forget what used to make you happy. Right. And so that would be part of it, right? Is thinking about even if I'm not motivated for this, I know I used to do this thing and it used to cheer me up. I used to enjoy this thing. So try it again, you know, and you may have to try it more than once just to pull out. Yeah. Or um, you know, or find people that you care about to be around, whether it's your friends or family or your pets or whatever, um, to pull yourself out.

SPEAKER_01 14:27

And sometimes for other adolescents, in another perspective, asking for help or asking to be around their family more or their friends more for that support is also difficult because they don't want to feel vulnerable. In the society that we're currently in, just for a number of factors, it is really difficult for some adolescents to realize that they are struggling and to tell people that they're that, because every day kind of feels that everyone's got their stuff together, whether it's from social media, the news, or just in-person contact, it really does feel like everyone's presenting them best selves right now, even if that isn't always the case. So, how do adolescents take that bravery deep with inside of them during these kind of processes or during these thoughts when they're so consuming and apply them to ask for support and help and to get back into what makes them happy?

SPEAKER_00 15:16

Yeah, it um it just takes one person, right? So hopefully you have one friend that you feel comfortable enough around to be a more vulnerable, or you have that one family member or coach or teacher or something. And it just really takes one person that you think will be supportive enough for you to take the risk.

SPEAKER_01 15:36

Yeah. And for a lot of individuals, there is that one person out there, even if it doesn't feel like it for the moment, whether, as you said, that is your parent or your teacher or even your coach, because many adolescents are participating in hobbies day to day that, again, make you happy. All of those different pieces and all of those different people truly can make the biggest of differences. But utilizing them is where adolescents really need to fall into line to realize how important they can be. And on the note of friends, there is also something called co-rumination where people repeatedly talk through problems with friends. This can be a benefit, but it can also be a negative. So why can co-rumination sometimes make things worse instead of better in the case of adolescents?

SPEAKER_00 16:21

Yeah. So this is um referred to as um an interpersonal form of rumination. And so talking with your friends and getting support from your friends is super important and super helpful. If it becomes passive, though, and just talking about how bad things are and how bad things are and how bad things are and how bad things are, that's where it stops being helpful, right? And that's what we um call co-rumination, is just bouncing back and forth, right? And you feel heard from your friend and that's good. And they, you know, it feels supportive, but it still makes both of you feel worse in the long term.

SPEAKER_01 16:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:53

So that's something to watch out for, you know. And so just like with rumination, make sure it's fine to talk about what's been stressful and what's been going on, but then move on to other things too, right? Instead of just getting sucked into it.

SPEAKER_01 17:06

It is a balance of multiple different sides of a relationship and a friendship because you don't always have to dwell on the past. If you are confiding in your friend, find a moment to talk about the good things in life and don't go onto this, again, kind of a loop about all of the things that are negative, because there is that feed off one another. As we are social beings, we are going to want to communicate, we're gonna want to interact and develop those relationships that are around us. And yes, they can be so beneficial. And if they're used in the right way, they can even bring us so much happiness. However, as we stated, there is a different side to the story. And there is this point in time where it can feel consuming if you don't get yourself out of that loop and realize, oh, maybe this conversation isn't making me feel better. But by setting boundaries and doing different things to enable the conversation more beneficially and not make it down that negative pathway, it really can change it. However, adolescents don't always know when their conversations are drifting down those pathways or when to stop maybe their friends from saying things that are making them uncomfortable. So are there different things that adolescents can do to comfortably just acknowledge that maybe their conversation is getting down a pathway that doesn't feel healthy anymore? How can they do that with their friends when it doesn't always feel the best?

SPEAKER_00 18:20

I think it's um one is just paying attention, right? And you know, just like with other things, you know, pay attention to what you're doing and is it making you feel better or worse? And if it's making you feel worse, then um try to find other things, right? So shift topics in the conversation or suggest, hey, why don't we go do this thing, right? And again, um anything you can do to shift away from just talking about how bad things are to either coming up, you know, coming up with a solution. So just, you know, um in the middle of the conversation. So what, you know, what should I do about this or what can we do about this automatically moves you toward more kind of strategies and you know, thinking about solutions rather than just how how bad things are.

SPEAKER_01 19:02

Yeah, it's definitely starting with like the little things and just maybe you guys going on a walk or doing something small like watching a movie can distract you from those conversations. It just again is about taking that chance and taking that bravery deep within you to set up those boundaries and being willing to just set up that guard so that you feel comfortable and the conversations do become more beneficial. And on that note, sometimes adolescents in the society we are in compare each other. And that can sometimes lead to thoughts where, oh, maybe I'm struggling more than this person. Maybe there's something wrong with me, and that can lead to a whole other web of things. However, are there factors within certain adolescents that make them more vulnerable to rumination than others? Things like personality, stress, or family environments, and what specifically is highlighted within those different categories as indicators of possible rumination.

SPEAKER_00 19:56

Yeah. So we don't know a lot about how rumination develops. And like I said before, it's going to be a combination of genetics and environmental influences, so nature and nurture. Yeah. Um, we know that it's a um a fairly normal response when you're feeling depressed. And so people who've had more experiences with depression will be more likely to ruminate when they start feeling a little sad, right? People who've had um more stressful lives will probably be more likely to ruminate because they've just had more stuff that they've had to think through. You know, so those are the those are the the things that we we know so far. Or like I was saying before, honestly, if you've been grown up in an environment where this is this is just how we deal with stress, right? We sit and focus on it and um and you know talk about it or co-ruminate about it. Those will be the risk factors as well.

SPEAKER_01 20:43

And are there different things that adolescents can do to maybe make those different external factors? As you said, it is nature and nurture. And the nature part of it, we can't change. It is genetically intertwined and who we are. However, the nurture part, are there things that adolescents can do to make those factors a little less impactful? Or to realize earlier on how am I going to make maybe my parent is in a depressive state, or maybe my parent has attributes of overthinking. But how do I make sure that I don't get into that cycle and do those things when I'm around them 24-7?

SPEAKER_00 21:19

Yeah. I think it's the same things that we've been talking about of first be aware of what's happening and when it's happening, right? And make the um the decision to do something different, even if it's hard and even if it's just some of the time. Um, and even if it's just with some people, I think that's the step you want to try to make.

SPEAKER_01 21:38

And it truly is such a simple process. Yet people yet again, overthink about it. They don't realize that getting yourself out of that loop and that cycle can be super easy by just taking the moments to realize and take a deep breath. And we've talked about journaling and we've talked about reflecting and how beneficial it can be. And I think it applies to this as well because. Taking those moments in time to just stop your brain. Cause when we are as adolescents doing so many different things, whether that's hobbies or school or dealing with parental figures or siblings and whatnot, it does feel like we're kind of just going on the sleep of wake up, school, do this, do this, do this. And then we realize, wait, what if I didn't do this? And because of that cycle, we go into other things. However, finding the moments in time to just take a deep breath and realize that, okay, what do I truly need to do? What do I truly need to focus on? What matters to me? Because in such a busy world, there are priorities that have to be made. And we can't always try to do every single thing because it's going to lead to that overthinking and that rumination about the past and the future and the present. So is the goal to stop these thoughts completely or to change how we respond to them? Are there different ways and processes to completely remove overthinking from our lives? Or is it just to work with them to make it feel more effective?

SPEAKER_00 23:03

Yeah. So it's always to um moderation, right? So it's always a question of how do I make sure that this doesn't become overwhelming? Because again, right, if you're thinking about something, it's because something has upset you, right? So you should be thinking about it a little bit and see is there something I can do to avoid this in the future, right? Or to deal with this now. It's when you just get caught in the pit of thinking and thinking and thinking and thinking to where you're not doing other things, right? So just balancing it.

SPEAKER_01 23:32

And through this discussion, we're emphasizing the idea that it's not just happening to one person, it's happening to a bunch of different individuals. Research doesn't just get started from one individual thing, it gets started from this repetitive kind of characteristics that we see throughout society. So if an adolescent is listening right now and realizing, okay, that is how I feel, but maybe that's how the person feels next to me. And I never realized it. Having this discussion is really amplifying the idea that there are so many simple things we can do. And as a side society, if we work together to eliminate things like co-rumination and do slow things or moderate it, not eliminate it, because as you said, moderation is key in this situation. It can become so much more beneficial for everyone. Because a society where we're working together instead of working apart or feeding onto one another in through those cycles will truly be so wonderful. And as a final thought, I really want to close out with what's one thing you want to tell teenagers or adolescents that they need to understand about overthinking to make it feel less overwhelming or to make sure that it doesn't feel as frustrating to them? What is one thing you want to say to kind of wrap up this entire conversation into a couple of sentences?

SPEAKER_00 24:47

So it's a habit just like most other things, right? And it in when you're in the middle of it, it feels like there's no way I can get out of this. So practicing the types of things that we've been talking about will make it easier over time, right? And just recognizing what's happening and um taking steps to talk to someone you can, distract yourself when you need to and break the cycles, I think is um hugely important.

SPEAKER_01 25:12

And it really does just start with all of you. It starts with the bravery that you have inside to realize that maybe I am getting into a cycle or a loop that isn't healthy for me anymore. Maybe the overthinking is becoming consuming. However, I need to realize that I'm gonna make a difference in my life. I'm gonna make a change to make sure that these thoughts don't overwhelm me anymore and don't become a thing that I fear by doing simple actions like thinking about the past, but moving on from it, by having a conversation with your friend, but taking a walk afterwards so it doesn't feel consuming anymore really does make the biggest of differences. And it's small things that we all can do. None of these things are like taking a leap off of a cliff. It's like taking a small step onto the grass outside, or taking just a deep breath. Doing those simple actions does make a difference. And amplifying that idea is exactly what I wanted to see on this podcast today. So, Gib, thank you so much for sharing your insights with us. Conversations like these really help explain to teenagers something that can feel so frustrating and consuming. And even when it feels isolating, giving clarification of why and what we can do to get out of it is so wonderful. So thank you for joining us today.

SPEAKER_00 26:29

Oh, you're welcome. Thank you for doing this.

SPEAKER_01 26:32

That is wonderful. And to everybody listening, overthinking doesn't mean something is wrong with you. In many ways, it reflects on how much you care about your relationships, your past, your future, but making sure it doesn't get to the extent where it feels consuming or gets in that loop is also really important. So finding that equilibrium through a lot of simple steps is the best thing to do. And I just want to say thank you once more to Dr. Gibb, to the listeners, and to everybody else for joining for this episode of Growing Forward. It truly means a lot to take a step back and to notice these patterns and to amplify it through a conversation. If you're gonna join us next time, be sure to come back in a week and realize that maybe the next conversation will also relate back to what you're struggling with or what's going on in your life. Signing off with loads of positivity, like always, your host, Sadie Sunborn Malachy.