I recently experienced an intense episode of getting stuck in a thought loop. I was involved in a relatively minor situation, which was unresolved and causing me some annoyance. For about two days, I became completely stuck in thinking about what I wanted to say to the person responsible, repeating the same short sentence internally, hundreds of times.

I knew it made no logical sense, and the lack of sleep and stress it caused me was far worse than the issue itself. But I couldn't get out of the loop. When I tried to—by doing something distracting, talking about other things, or focusing on work—I was immediately pulled back into the exhausting, relentless, repetitive thought pattern.

I experience this sense of being stuck far less often than I used to, partly because I try to avoid getting involved in "messy" situations as much as possible and partly because I've gotten more skilled at deploying helpful management tools. But my recent experience reminded me how badly I used to be affected.

Perseverative cognition is a "rigid pattern that involves habitual engagement of circular, looping thoughts"1 and is more common in autistic people than in the general population.2 Perseverative cognition often involves rumination, worry, or becoming stuck on a topic or idea.

Perseverative cognition is not necessarily negative. Autistic people are renowned for being tenacious and seeing through ideas others might give up on.

When it falls into the "rumination" or "worry" camp, however, it can cause extreme stress and is linked to mental and physical health issues.

"Inhibitory control" refers to our ability to control our behaviours, attention, thoughts, and emotion. The prefrontal cortex is the more rational, reasoning part of the brain that filters out what is relevant and important in a given moment and is responsible for inhibitory control.3

In contrast, the limbic system can be considered our emotional brain centre. The "thinking" and "emotional" brains constantly "check in" with one another. For instance, if the emotional brain responds to an unexpected noise in a fearful manner, by........

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