I’m a professional ruminator. I’m so good at it, in fact, I often pre-ruminate — stress about conversations I haven’t even had.
If you’ve ever rehearsed an argument or tough conversation in your head ten different ways, you know what I mean. We imagine every worst-case response, every possible misinterpretation and misrepresentation. We script the whole thing like we’re prepping for trial instead of a human conversation.
Years ago, I had one of those conversations. I was a leader in an organization tasked with resolving a conflict that had dragged on for months. Three parties were involved, which made things even messier. When it came time to make a decision, I made the wrong one.
To be fair, I did the best I could with the information I had, but I was close friends with one of the parties. Unfortunately, they were the ones hurt most by my decision.
I spent several nights lying awake, playing out a hundred different versions of the conversation I needed to have with them. In my head, they were furious. Betrayed. I imagined every word they might say, on repeat.
When the time came, the conversation didn’t go like that at all. They were hurt, sure, but they were also gracious. Forgiving. They reminded me our friendship mattered more than one bad call.
I wish I could say that realization helped me stop the pre- and post-rumination spiral, but it hasn’t. What it did do was help me notice that not every thought was negative, just that most of them weren’t grounded in real listening. I wasn’t making space for truth: that my friends cared deeply about me, and I cared deeply about them. I ignored the years of trust and the dozens of ways we’d shown up for each other. Instead, I absorbed fear, spun it into fiction, and treated it like fact.
So what if the real problem isn’t overthinking — but poor listening?
Being honest, I often listen passively — nods, mhmms, a half-hearted attempt to absorb what someone’s saying without interrupting. That doesn’t qualify as active listening, but for a long time, that’s how I thought of it.
In his book Shy by Design, Michael Thompson wrote, “Rather than creating an empty space for people to bounce their own ideas around, bounce ideas back by asking thoughtful questions.”
He was referencing a study of active listening written about in Harvard Business Review by Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman. Michael’s thought and the HBR article completely reframed the concept of active listening for me.
They wrote:
While many of us have thought of being a good listener being like a sponge that accurately absorbs what the other person is saying, instead, what these findings show is that good listeners are like trampolines. They are someone you can bounce ideas off of and rather than absorbing your ideas and energy, they amplify, energize, and clarify your thinking. They make you feel better not merely passively absorbing, but by actively support-ing. This lets you gain energy and height, just like someone jumping on a trampoline.
A good listener doesn’t just hear you. They reshape your thoughts. They ask better questions. They give your words space to become more than they were.
My dad’s dad was like that. I lived with my grandparents for a time, and when I’d come home from school, Grandpa would ask thoughtful, probing questions about what I was learning. Even when the topics were outside his wheelhouse, he listened closely enough to ask something that made me think harder. He gave my thoughts more shape than they had when I spoke them out loud.
That quote made me think about those conversations — and that’s when it hit me: What if that kind of listening isn’t just something we offer others, but something we owe ourselves?
We’re often more generous with a friend than we are with ourselves. We reflect, reframe, and ask questions for them. But when it comes to our own inner voice, we let the harshest version win by default.
If bad self-talk is a sponge, maybe the answer isn’t to ignore it or shut it down — but to trampoline it. Let it bounce. Engage with it. Ask better questions. See what clears up in the process.
If you’ve ever helped a friend navigate something difficult, you listen carefully, ask questions, push gently on negative assumptions, and remind them of relevant truth they may have overlooked. We help them bounce around with care, not drive them deeper into the spiral.
So, when it comes to our own thoughts, why is it that we rarely offer ourselves the same generosity?
Instead, we absorb thoughts like:
- “I’m going to screw this up” or “I always screw this up.”
- “I’m just not as good at this as they are.”
- “I’m going to say something stupid in that interview, and I’m not going to get that job” or “I said something stupid in that interview, and that’s why I didn’t get that job.”
We accept them as fact. In reality, most of these thoughts would (and do) fall apart under even the smallest amount of curious questioning.
That’s where the trampoline comes in.
Instead of absorbing the thought and letting it drag you down, bounce it back with a question:
- “Is that actually true or just familiar?”
- “What else might be going on here?”
- “If a friend said this about themselves, what would I say?”
- “Is this thought helping me move forward or just punishing me?”
Trampolining thoughts isn’t about toxic positivity or pretending everything is fine. It’s about becoming an active participant in your own thought process, rather than the passive recipient and (sometimes) unwilling entertainer of whatever story shows up first.
Maybe being kind to ourselves starts with listening to ourselves better.
Good parents and teachers teach us how to talk to each other. In the current climate, sometimes the civil discourse isn’t so civil, which may feed the wrong-headed way we approach talking to ourselves and listening. If the idea of bounding your thoughts feels strange or even a little weird, that’s okay. Fluency in self-criticism seems innate for most of us but curiosity takes practice.
You don’t need a perfect system, really just a pattern to interrupt the mental autopilot.
Try this:
- Name the thought. Literally say it or write it down. Getting it out of your head shrinks its power.
- Ask one better question. Not ten. Just one that invites a second interpretation.
- Respond like you would to a friend. Say it out loud if you need to. “That was a tough thing, but it doesn’t have to define you.”
You don’t have to win the argument. You just have to stay in the conversation.
With time and practice, the inner voice starts to shift from the harsh narrator to the curious companion. I’m not sure it’s even good for us not to have an inner voice, but it’s so nice when it becomes less critical and more helpful.
Sometimes, the thoughts that shape us shout. Sometimes, they whisper. Often, it’s on repeat until even the lies sound like truth. Unless we learn to challenge them, to bounce them back and ask better questions, we risk letting the wrong stories define us.
That’s the real work of rewriting the stories we tell ourselves. It doesn’t happen by ignoring hard truths or drowning out doubt with blind optimism. It does, however, happen by offering ourselves the same kind of thoughtful attention we’d give a friend. Or a grandchild walking in the door after school, backpack heavy with questions.
Talking to my grandpa, I wasn’t looking for him to give me answers, just someone to listen, and he asked the kinds of questions that made the answers more apparent. He wasn’t trying to absorb everything I said. Instead, he helped me shape my own thoughts into something better.
That’s what I’m doing now with my own thoughts, assumptions, and spirals. I’m not shutting them down, but I’m also not letting them take over. I’m learning to bounce them gently, ask better questions, and see where they land. Sometimes, it’s okay to ask them to kindly get off the trampoline.
If the stories we tell ourselves shape the lives we live, don’t we owe it to ourselves to listen to ourselves like someone who cares?
We’re the ones who have to live with and inside these stories, right?
So let’s make them worth coming home to.
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