When I saw that Susan Nolen-Hoeksema had a new book out, I had to take a look.  Dr. Nolen-Hoeksema is well known to me from studying the biology and psychology of depression about ten years ago. 

She has done research on “ruminative thinking”, which she describes as “the tendency to respond to distress by focusing on the causes and consequences of your problems, without moving into active problem-solving.”  To put it more plainly—and less appetizingly—ruminative thinkers chew on thoughts excessively, like a cow chewing its cud.   

Overthinking in this way can lead, in turn, to excess depression and anxiety.  Then, to feel better, ruminators turn to food and alcohol.  And then the process starts over, as overthinking about the overeating and drinking can occur. 

Nolen-Hoeksema, along with a number of other eminent psychologists, has found that women suffer through this type of thinking at a much higher rate than men, which is at least partly responsible for women having double the rates of depression than men. 

Since a lot of people are just getting over—or not getting over—the “holiday blues”, I thought her book might provide particularly helpful advice for starting off the New Year.  And after reading through the main premises of the book, I must say I was happy to have taken the time.  Though the book is meant for women, it’s also possible for men to suffer through this “toxic triangle” of eating, drinking, and overthinking, so I can recommend it to anyone who feels they may go through this damaging process, which puts tremendous strain on our bodies and can lead to heart disease, diabetes, and other disorders.

The most interesting piece of the puzzle for me is how overthinking can start a very physical stress process.  Early in her career, Nolen-Hoeksema wrote many papers with Martin Seligman on the phenomenon of “explanatory style”.  This relates to how people explain positive or negative events to themselves.   

Pessimists largely believe that they are primarily responsible for the bad things that happen to them, that it won’t ever change, and that it applies to everything they do.  Optimists believe the bad thing that happen to them are other people’s fault, that it will go away quickly, and that the event is isolated and doesn’t bleed over into other areas of their lives.

And for positive occurrences, the exact opposite happens.  Pessimists believe other people had more of a role than they did, that it’s short-lived, and that it won’t happen to them again.  Optimists believe they were directly responsible for the positive occurrence, that it will occur every time, and that it is an indication of the fact that they’re good at just about everything.

(For more on this, read Seligman’s Learned Optimism.  The results this team produced are immensely powerful and predictive, and they have been used, for instance, to win money betting on basketball games and to accurately predict political races based upon single speeches.) 

With a pessimistic explanatory style and a ruminant thinking personality, the “pity party” just goes on and on and starts to relate to every area of a life.  Nolen-Hoeksema presents stream of consciousness ruminations that most people can relate to by starting with a particular, isolated problem and blowing it up to be a life consuming weakness. 

With her long history as an experimental psychologist, she shows exactly how this can lead to overeating and excessive drinking quite easily.  She provides a mental model of how this happens that is perfectly matched to the current biological mechanisms believed to cause these harmful binges.  Though cortisol is mentioned as a cause, not too much time is spent on it, and I believe the book came out just before the research breakthrough that shows how cortisol directly affects the body’s self “protective” eating and drinking. 

One of the weaknesses of books by long-time psychologists is that they are heavy on the problems and light on the solutions.  This offering by Nolen-Hoeksema makes a great attempt to shed light on some solutions; however, more could be done.

The first step in any recovery, though, is to recognize that a problem exists—in this case, a misdirected and harmful thinking pattern.  And Nolen-Hoeksema very clearly shows how to recognize the overthinking problem.  I highly recommend the book for those who think (over overthink) that they may have this affliction.

You can buy the book here:

Eating, Drinking, Overthinking: The Toxic Triangle of Food, Alcohol, and Depression—and How Women Can Break Free