Loading practices
Loading practices
Areas › Worry and anxiety › Breaking the worry loop
If someone in your house goes quiet, spends longer alone, or seems flat rather than agitated, that can be worry rather than indifference. You will not spot it by watching, so ask, and ask about the inside rather than the outside: what goes through your head at night, how long has that been happening. Give them a slow moment to answer, since a person who has never said it before will not say it quickly.
who whispers into the hearts of people (Quran 114:5). The place it happens is inside, where nobody watching can see it.
الناس
ٱلَّذِي يُوَسۡوِسُ فِي صُدُورِ ٱلنَّاسِ
who whispers into the hearts of people––
Qur’an 114:5read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A systematic review of brain imaging studies found altered patterns of connectivity associated with rumination, though the methods and findings vary a lot between studies. Researchers have had to look with scanners in part because there is so little to see from the outside. Given how mixed the findings are, this is best read as confirmation that the loop is real and hidden, not as anything you could measure in a person.
Mısır E, Alıcı YH, Kocak OM. (2023). Functional connectivity in rumination: a systematic review of magnetic resonance imaging studies.. Journal of clinical and experimental neuropsychology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
A loop that runs entirely inside leaves nothing on the outside to notice.
Online you can edit, delete, mute and leave. People who have done most of their socialising that way often find ordinary company unbearable, because ordinary company cannot be controlled.
Some people never ask for help because they assume everyone's head is like theirs. If yours has been running like this since you were small, it does not feel like a condition. It feels like being you.
Sometimes there really is evidence for the fear. Say so. The balance comes from the other column being fuller, not from pretending the first column is empty.