Psychology says people who constantly replay conversations in their head are not overthinking, they are re-scanning for emotional safety - Silicon Canals

"What looks like obsessive replay is often the brain performing a very specific function: checking whether you are emotionally safe in your relationships. It's not rumination in the clinical sense - it's a retrospective threat assessment, and it's rooted in our deepest wiring for social survival."

"Dr. Ethan Kross, a psychologist at the University of Michigan and author of Chatter, has studied the inner voice extensively. His research shows that the mind's tendency to revisit social interactions isn't a malfunction - it's the brain's attempt to process ambiguity and reduce uncertainty in interpersonal contexts."

Replaying social interactions in your mind is often dismissed as overthinking, but psychological research reveals it serves a specific purpose: the brain performs retrospective threat assessment to evaluate emotional safety in relationships. Dr. Ethan Kross's research demonstrates that the mind revisits social interactions to process ambiguity and reduce uncertainty when emotional data from an interaction is unclear. Rather than a malfunction, this mental replay functions like a detective returning to a crime scene to gather information. The intensity of this behavior varies among individuals, with differences rooted in childhood experiences and how people learned to interpret emotional cues from others.

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