In contrast, when you ruminate about something unpleasant, you cause fluctuations in your body budget. Rumination is a vicious cycle: each time you dwell on (say) a recent breakup of a relationship, you add another instance to predict with, which expands your opportunity to ruminate. Certain concepts about your breakup, such as your final shouting match, or the look on your lover’s face as he or she walked away for the last time, become entrenched in your model of the world. These concepts, as patterns of neural activity, get easier and easier for your brain to re-create, like well-trodden
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