Mental reviewing is the process of repeatedly going over thoughts, memories, conversations, mistakes, worries, or imagined scenarios in your mind. It maybe intentional and useful, or repetitive and distressing.
There could be different forms of mental reviewing:
- Healthy reflection: thinking through an experience to learn from it, solve a problem, or prepare for the future.
- Rumination: repeatedly replaying upsetting thoughts or events without reaching resolution. Often linked to anxiety or depression.
- Checking/reviewing compulsions: mentally reviewing events to make sure something bad did not happen, or to gain certainty. This is common in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.
- Trauma-related reviewing: replaying memories or “what if” scenarios connected to distressing events, sometimes seen in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Examples:
- Replaying a conversation to check whether you offended someone.
- Mentally reviewing actions to make sure you did not make a mistake.
- Rehearsing future interactions over and over.
- Going through memories trying to “figure out” why something happened.
Signs it may be becoming unhealthy:
- It feels difficult to stop.
- You do it to reduce anxiety or gain certainty.
- It consumes large amounts of time.
- It increases distress instead of helping.
- It interferes with sleep, focus, or daily life.
Helpful approaches may include:
- Distinguishing productive reflection from repetitive looping.
- Grounding attention in the present moment.
- Limiting reassurance seeking and mental checking.
- Writing thoughts down instead of endlessly replaying them mentally.
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) or Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), especially when the reviewing is compulsive.
Shervan K Shahhian
LIBERTY PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION 