Put the Glass Down
Feb 16, 2026
Put the Glass Down
There’s an old saying that holding onto anger is like drinking poison and hoping the other person gets sick. And yet we do it all the time.
Sometimes it’s a single interaction or event that won’t leave your head. You feel wronged, convinced an injustice was done, and you keep returning to it, replaying what happened, analysing the situation and allowing it to occupy far more of your time and emotional energy than it deserves.
Sometimes it’s a person who consistently triggers you. It may be one particular exchange you keep replaying, or it may simply be them in general occupying more space in your thinking than they should. Either way, you find yourself anticipating the next interaction, revisiting the last one and allocating far more cognitive bandwidth to them than is remotely productive.
The event itself may have been brief. The mental occupation can stretch into days.
After all, who needs sleep when you can replay the same interaction 300 times in your head? Solid strategy.
Meanwhile, the person you’re directing all of this attention towards is completely oblivious. Probably off somewhere getting on with their life, perhaps ordering coffee and not giving it (or you) a second thought.
Who’s winning here?
Whether you’re 20 and feel wronged by someone, or 50 and working alongside a colleague who consistently irritates you, the pattern is remarkably similar. What starts as a moment turns into mental real estate you never meant to lease out. And the longer it stays, the more it quietly drains your attention and energy whilst giving you nothing in return.
That ongoing mental occupation isn’t harmless.
The research on rumination is clear. It drags out negative mood, makes it harder to think clearly and quietly increases mistakes. In short, it doesn’t just affect how you feel. It lowers the quality of your thinking and makes you less effective. It’s a losing strategy.
There is a well-known story that may help here.
A teacher walks into a classroom holding a glass of water. She holds it up and asks, “How heavy is this glass of water?”
Students call out answers: “200 grams!” “300 grams!” “Half a kg!”
The teacher smiles.
“The absolute weight doesn’t matter. What matters is how long I hold it.”
“If I hold it for a minute, it’s no problem. If I hold it for an hour, my arm will ache. If I hold it for a day straight, my arm will feel numb and paralyzed. In each case, the weight of the glass doesn’t change, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes.”
She continues:
“The stresses and worries in life are like this glass of water. Think about them for a while and nothing happens. Think about them a bit longer and they begin to hurt. And if you think about them all day long, you’ll feel paralysed, incapable of doing anything.”
The lesson:
It’s not the weight of what happened that breaks you. It’s how long you’ve been carrying it.
Put the glass down.
Most everyday slights are like that glass. What happened may not be insignificant, but it rarely justifies the amount of time we give it.
There’s also something interesting going on psychologically. The more we focus on ourselves, how we were treated, what it says about us, how unfair it was, the worse we tend to feel. Excessive self-focus amplifies anxiety and low mood. Rumination feeds itself. What started as irritation can quietly become something much bigger.
In fact, rumination is now recognised as one of the strongest predictors of anxiety and depression, not just a symptom of them.
So what actually helps?
Six practical things.
- Name it to tame it (an oldie but a goodie).
Not “I feel disrespected.” That’s an interpretation. Try “I feel hurt,” “I feel embarrassed,” or “I feel overlooked.” Accurately labelling an emotion reduces its intensity because it activates the regulatory parts of the brain. - Ask whether this thought actually serves you.
When you catch yourself replaying it for the tenth time, pause and ask, “Is this thought helping me in any way?” Most of the time the honest answer is no. If your thinking isn’t leading to clear action, it’s probably rumination, not problem-solving. - Ask how significant this will be in five years.
Most of the time the honest answer is, “It won’t be.” Perspective is a powerful regulator. - Interrupt the obsession loop.
Tell yourself you’ll think about it at a set time later in the day. Schedule it. You’ll often find that when the time arrives, the charge has dropped. - Reset your physiology before analysing the situation.
Walk. Move. Change your state. Play a game. If you can, get outside. Even a short walk in nature has been shown to reduce rumination and quiet the brain’s stress circuitry. You cannot reason your way out of a stress response while your nervous system is still activated. - Add context and choose curiosity.
Everyone’s behaviour tends to make sense once you understand the context. That colleague who frustrates you may have grown up in chaos, in hyper-competitive environments, or simply never learned emotional regulation. Understanding that does not excuse poor behaviour. It doesn’t mean you tolerate the unacceptable. Boundaries and difficult conversations are still important where needed. And where behaviour is consistently draining or inappropriate, reducing unnecessary exposure to the person is a smart play. But asking, “I wonder what in their background makes them operate this way?” shifts you from anger to curiosity. And curiosity is far less corrosive.
Talking to a friend can help, but only if the conversation moves you forward. A short processing conversation followed by “What’s my next best move?” can lower stress.
The danger is when your friend joins you in grievance land.
If they amplify the injustice, validate every negative interpretation and happily jump into the storm with you, neither of you moves forward. You just deepen the groove. Empathy without direction can turn into shared rumination. And turning rumination into a team sport has shown to increase anxiety and depression for both people involved.
Compassion is different. Compassion is holding the umbrella for someone in the storm. It acknowledges the discomfort without encouraging you to build a house there. A good friend listens, validates the emotion and then gently nudges you toward perspective, action or acceptance.
If you leave the conversation more inflamed than when you entered it, you’ve probably just extended the series to season two. And who wants to be part of that show?
For all of us, whether we’re still developing emotional regulation or refining it, the skill is the same. The better we become at managing our emotional responses, the more cognitive capacity we preserve for things that actually matter. And when our time, effort and attention are aligned with our values, there is simply less room available for unproductive rumination.
You cannot control whether someone behaves poorly. You can control how long you hold onto it.
And while you’re replaying it for the fifteenth time, remember they’re still at the café deciding between almond milk and oat milk.
