An oft misattributed piece of folk-wisdom goes: “Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.” In many cases, we don’t just do things repeatedly but think over the same topics repeatedly. People who ruminate are not often diagnosed as insane—most of us ruminate at some point in our lives—but it is a common behaviour underlying both depression and anxiety (Nolen-Hoeksema in J Abnorm Psychol 109(3):504, 2000). If rumination is something we all do at some time, what is it about ruminative thought that makes it ‘sticky’ and difficult to stop for the worst sufferers? In order to answer this question, I will present a plausible account of how ruminative behaviour becomes entrenched to the point where sufferers of anxiety and depression simply cannot make meaning from the world except in terms of the kinds of behaviours, actions and thoughts they have become reliant on. I develop my account from Barrett’s theory of constructed emotion (2006, 2011, 2014) using the work of Merleau-Ponty (Phenomenology of perception, Taylor and Francis Group. (Online), ProQuest Ebook Central, 2012. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ed/detail.action?docID=1433878. Accessed 29 Dec 2020) in order to bridge the gap between the explicit thought we experience—an important part of the lived experience of rumination. To conclude, I will apply my account to Wu and Dunning’s (Rev General Psychol 22(1):25–35, 2018; Hypocognitive mind: How lack of conceptual knowledge confines what people see and remember, 2019. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/29ryz) theory of hypocognition to further illuminate the particular cognitive qualities that can be experienced by ruminators, i.e. a prohibited access to particular emotion concepts.

一个经常被误解的民间智慧是：“疯狂就是做同样的事情，一遍又一遍，但期待不同的结果。” 在很多情况下，我们不只是重复做事情，而是重复思考相同的话题。反刍的人通常不会被诊断为精神错乱——我们大多数人在生活中的某个时刻都会反刍——但这是抑郁和焦虑的常见行为（Nolen-Hoeksema in J Abnorm Psychol 109(3):504, 2000）。如果沉思是我们所有人在某个时候都会做的事情，那么沉思的思想是什么让它变得“粘稠”并且很难让最严重的患者停下来？为了回答这个问题，我将提出一个合理的解释，说明沉思行为如何变得根深蒂固，以至于焦虑和抑郁的患者除了依赖于他们所依赖的行为、行动和想法之外，根本无法从世界中获得意义。我使用梅洛-庞蒂的工作（感知现象学，泰勒和弗朗西斯集团。（在线），ProQuest 电子书中心，2012 年。https://ebookcentral）根据巴雷特的建构情感理论（2006、2011、2014）发展了我的帐户。 proquest.com/lib/ed/detail.action?docID=1433878。访问时间为 2020 年 12 月 29 日）以弥合我们所体验到的外显思维之间的差距——这是沉思生活体验的重要组成部分。总而言之，我将把我的叙述应用到 Wu 和 Dunning 的 (Rev General Psychol 22(1):25–35, 2018; Hypocognitive mind: