A new client started with me recently, and he came with a very common outlook: he wanted my help with “moving forward,” but his attention kept pulling him into the past.
He came for clarity about the future, but continued to make old arguments. He wanted to build momentum, but kept wanting to fight with someone who is no longer a part of the conversation.
Although he sought me out as a coach, he really seemed to want a witness who would join him on “his side” of a conflict that was already over.
He’s not alone in falling into this pattern. When something as foundational as divorce crumbles, it can destabilize our identity. So we look for certainty where we can find it. Looking at the past provides detail: it gives us a sense of what “should” have happened, and tells us who (we think) was right and who was wrong.
Psychologists call this rumination. More specifically, brooding rumination– the repetitive, past- focused replay of negative experiences and perceived injustices.
Rumination isn’t just a misdirected reflection. It’s a self-reinforcing loop that narrows attention, keeps people focused on what they cannot change, and erodes joy over time. Research suggests that this habit is not emotionally neutral.
A study examining how people think about the past and future in daily life found that individuals high in brooding rumination spend more time mentally oriented toward the past and have significantly less vivid imagery when picturing the future, even when controlling for depressive symptoms. The authors describe the mechanism clearly:
“Although future thinking relies on past experience, projecting into the future also requires a partial break from the past to successfully construct new simulations of what one has yet to experience. This process may therefore be disrupted by an inability to move beyond past experience—in other words, getting ‘stuck’ in a recursive loop of past-oriented thought (e.g., ruminating) should yield greater challenges in shifting attention towards the future.”
That phrase, a partial break from the past, is doing a lot of work here.
It says that imagining a future is not just an extension of remembering. A vision requires distance. A loosening of attention from what has already happened. When someone remains locked in a loop of past-oriented thinking, the future not only feels uncertain, but becomes cognitively harder to access.
This explains another common pattern in new clients: People who are deeply ruminating often describe themselves as overwhelmed or simply exhausted. But they also feel like they’re not getting anywhere. All of that effort, the constant thinking, results in little to no real change.
A related concept related to this stress is perseverative cognition, the tendency for the mind to remain fixated on unresolved stressors even long after the immediate threat has passed. This ongoing mental replay continues to trigger emotional and physiological stress responses, even when the situation itself can no longer be changed.
From a coaching perspective, this is where progress stalls, and tough conversations are necessary.
I can’t help someone build a future vision while their attention is still on trying to “win” the past. The cognitive bandwidth simply isn’t there. Their nervous system is still playing defense.
The client from above spent much of our early work litigating his divorce again and again. He wanted my reassurance that he was justified. He wanted me to know how badly he was wronged. He wanted to know that his fears about potentially losing his children were rational. Our conversations centered around fairness, what he had sacrificed, and how things should have gone. He wanted to be right.
When I changed the direction of the conversation to look forward, he often reverted quickly into fear. We lost ground on previous progress. The future became something to protect against rather than something to build through alignment with his values.
I’d love to say that my brilliant questions or stone-solid frameworks helped him flip a switch, but his work is rarely that tidy. Instead, he began to work with a therapist whose primary role was to help him process his emotions around what had already happened. To feel them, rather than to rehash the old arguments.
At the same time, I began introducing him to small, novel actions. I’ve always appreciated Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard’s blunt approach:
“The cure for depression is action.”
So we got busy.
We met for a hike.
I sent him on a thrift store scavenger hunt, and out to create a nighttime photography “blog.”
He started a small journaling practice.
None of these activities are lifelong commitments, but they all matter. Novelty and creativity demand presence. We were able to interrupt the pattern of rumination by keeping his attention on the present. These small acts helped create the conditions for that small break from the past that the research describes.
Sometimes it really is that simple.
Not easy, but simple.
I don’t mean that as a dismissal of the importance of therapy, reflection, and self-work. My client would not have had this progress without all of those. But movement matters, especially when the mind has become stuck arguing with itself
Action becomes an interruption, a way of signaling to the nervous system that a new set of conditions exists. It’s a way of loosening the perseverative cognition just enough to make room for imagination.
Sometimes the bravest step during transition is creating that space. If you’re curious, or know someone who remains perpetually “stuck,” I’ve created the Life Adventure Compass Assessment to help identify the underlying patterns that keep people oriented toward reaction rather than direction. It’s a structured way to see where attention, energy, and unresolved stress may be limiting your ability to move forward.
For many, this is the first real step toward imagining a future that doesn’t involve winning an argument with the past.
