From Rumination to Resilience: How Mindfulness and the Nourishing/Depleting Practice Break the Cycle of Low Mood

Learn how to integrate the "Nourishing and Depleting Activities" framework into clinical or coaching sessions to help clients interrupt rumination, rebalance daily habits, and build sustainable emotional well-being.

Rumination and low mood are deeply intertwined. Efforts to think our way out of distress often backfire, reinforcing fatigue and narrowing perspective. These loops are sustained not only by thought patterns but by behavior — overwork, withdrawal, and overstimulation that quietly deplete energy and limit recovery. Without ways to rebalance, clients can become acutely aware of the problem yet feel unable to shift it.

“Rumination isn’t just in the mind — it’s in how we move through our days. When we respond with awareness instead of avoidance, we begin to build resilience.” — Michael Apollo

Michael Apollo, MHSc, RP, licensed therapist, mindfulness teacher, and founder of the Mindful Institute, introduces the “Nourishing and Depleting Activities” exercise from Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT). This framework helps clients and practitioners identify which daily activities restore energy and which drain it, transforming abstract cognitive insight into embodied behavioral awareness. When approached through mindfulness, it becomes a powerful lens for guiding clients to notice early warning signs of low mood, rebalance energy, and cultivate resilience.

In our workshop, Preventing Depressive Relapse: Using the “Nourishing and Depleting Activities” Structured Approach with Clients, Michael leads participants through experiential exercises and reflection prompts that bring the framework to life. Through mindful mapping, SMART action planning, and guided inquiry, both practitioners and clients learn to recognize the behavioral loops that sustain rumination — and how small, compassionate shifts can disrupt them.

This article draws on Michael’s teachings, exploring how the “Nourishing and Depleting Activities” framework bridges mindfulness and behavior change to prevent relapse, restore balance, and strengthen resilience. You’ll find clinical insights, reflection practices, and tools to support both your professional work and your own well-being.

Contents:

1. Understanding Rumination Through Daily Life
2. The Role of Awareness: Reconnecting Mind and Activity
3. Practice: Mapping the Path from Rumination to Resilience
4. Integrating Mindfulness and Behavior for Sustained Change

Understanding Rumination Through Daily Life

Rumination is repetitive, self-focused thinking that feels like problem-solving but deepens low mood instead. It locks attention in the past or future and pulls awareness away from direct sensory experience. Neuroscience helps explain why. Research by Judson Brewer and Norman Farb shows that rumination activates the brain’s narrative network — regions such as the medial prefrontal cortex and posterior cingulate cortex — responsible for story-making and self-referential thought. When this network dominates, the experiential network that supports present-moment awareness grows quiet. The more the mind operates in this narrative mode, the more easily anxiety and depression take hold.

When awareness is absorbed in this mental storytelling — the “why me” and “what if” loops — we lose touch with immediate experience. That disconnection fuels both anxiety and low mood, creating a self-reinforcing cycle: depleted energy makes nourishing activities harder to begin, and avoidance behaviors such as withdrawal, overwork, or passive scrolling quietly sustain depletion.

This cycle often starts subtly — a stressful event triggers negative thinking, mood declines, and familiar patterns of rumination reappear. But the repetition isn’t only cognitive; it’s behavioral. The ways we spend our days, from skipping meals to neglecting rest or connection, can unknowingly feed rumination and erode resilience.

Key Point: Rumination isn’t just a mental loop — it’s a behavioral one. Recognizing how daily habits sustain depletion allows clients to begin shifting the ecology of their days toward balance and renewal.

The Role of Awareness: Reconnecting Mind and Activity

Awareness is the bridge between thought and behavior. In Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), mindfulness restores access to the experiential mode — the capacity to sense, feel, and inhabit the present moment. From this mode, clients can observe their inner experience without being pulled into the storyline of their thoughts.

The “Nourishing and Depleting Activities” framework brings this principle into everyday life. Clients learn to notice how their actions shape their mood — which activities replenish energy and which quietly drain it. Over time, this awareness moves beyond formal practice into the natural flow of daily living: waking, working, resting, and relating.

Clients and clinicians alike can begin with a simple inquiry: What nourishes me? What drains me? Noticing these subtle energy shifts interrupts automatic pilot and reveals early signs of stress or low mood.

Practice Invitation

Take a mindful pause and mentally map a typical day. Identify activities that feel nourishing (N), depleting (D), or neutral (0). Observe, without judgment, how these moments balance across your day. Even this brief reflection often uncovers small but powerful opportunities for change.

Through this simple mapping, clients begin to see that low mood rarely arises by chance. It’s often the cumulative effect of unnoticed depletion — and restoring balance doesn’t require sweeping change, but steady, mindful adjustment.

Practice: Mapping the Path from Rumination to Resilience

The “Nourishing and Depleting Activities” exercise is deceptively simple yet deeply transformative. Michael guides clients through it step-by-step, blending mindful reflection with behavioral activation — a cornerstone of cognitive therapy. Each phase helps translate insight into small, achievable actions that support emotional balance.

Step 1: List Daily Activities

Begin by making a detailed list of 10–15 activities from a typical day — morning to night.
If your days vary, imagine what a “usual” one might look like. Include personal, professional, and self-care routines: waking, meals, work, transitions, downtime, and sleep.
The aim is to capture how your energy is spent, not to judge how well you spend it.

Step 2: Label Energy Impact and Nourishment Type

Next, go through your list and mark each activity according to its impact:

• N (Nourishing): Gives you energy or a sense of vitality.
• D (Depleting): Drains or diminishes your energy.
• 0 (Neutral): Neither gives nor takes energy.

Then, for each nourishing activity, note what kind of benefit it provides:

• M (Mastery): Offers a sense of growth, purpose, or skill-building.
• P (Pleasure): Brings enjoyment, comfort, or sensory satisfaction.

These distinctions help clarify not just what supports mood, but how it does so.

Step 3: Reflect

Pause to review your list. What do you notice? Are there more depleting activities than you expected — or fewer? Are your nourishing activities mostly pleasure-based, mastery-based, or a mix of both? Notice any patterns, surprises, or emotional responses that arise. This reflection helps clients see that their mood is shaped by the small, repeated choices that fill each day.

Step 4: Choose One Change

Identify one depleting activity that you’d like to shift. The goal isn’t dramatic overhaul — it’s gentle experimentation. Meaningful change begins with something small and realistic.

There are two main ways to bring change:

• Behavioral Shift: Adjust or replace the activity itself — for example, limiting late-night screen time, scheduling a short walk between meetings, or adding a nourishing task before or after a draining one.
  
• Relational Shift: If the activity can’t be changed (like caregiving or essential work), experiment with how you relate to it. Approaching it with mindful presence, kindness, or pacing can soften its impact.

Step 5: Create an Action Plan

Turn your intention into a clear, actionable plan. Write it down using the SMART framework:

• Specific: What exactly will you do?
• Measurable: How will you know it’s complete?
• Actionable: Is it something you can realistically do?
• Realistic: Is it achievable right now?
• Timely: When will you begin?

Keep it small — one step that feels doable this week. For instance:

• Add a nourishing break before or after a depleting task.
• Adjust the timing of a routine to when you have more energy.
• Modify how you approach a necessary but draining responsibility to make it more neutral or balanced.

After completing your plan, take a moment to reflect:

• How do your nourishing activities support your mood?
• When are you most vulnerable to rumination?
• What small adjustment could help rebalance your day?
  

This simple structure turns awareness into action, allowing clients to see their emotional landscape not as fixed, but as something that can be shaped — one intentional choice at a time.

Integrating Mindfulness and Behavior for Sustained Change 

Therapists can guide clients through this process in session, allowing space for reflection, questions, and emotional insight. Doing it together ensures clarity and accountability. As Michael notes, “The goal isn’t judgment but curiosity — exploring the relationship with our activities and what supports well-being.”

What makes the “Nourishing and Depleting Activities” framework so effective is its integration of mindful awareness with behavioral activation. It reflects the broader aim of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT): helping clients recognize early warning signs of low mood and respond with intentional awareness and action.

The “Nourishing/Depleting” reflection can be revisited every few weeks — not as a task to complete, but as a well-being check-in. Like tuning an instrument, this regular pause helps keep the system balanced and responsive. Over time, individuals begin to notice the first signals of rumination or fatigue and self-correct before those patterns deepen.

For clinicians, coaches, and educators, this practice also serves as a form of professional nourishment. Engaging in it alongside clients models the shared human experience of balancing depletion and renewal. It reinforces that resilience is not a fixed state, but an ongoing process of attention and care.

When practiced regularly, mindfulness extends beyond meditation and into daily life. Clients begin to live with awareness rather than on autopilot, transforming ordinary activities into opportunities for regulation, restoration, and resilience.

Interested in learning more? Deepen your understanding of compassionate relapse prevention in our workshop: Preventing Depressive Relapse: Using the “Nourishing and Depleting Activities” Structured Approach with Clients with Michael Apollo, MHSc, RP.

You’ll explore how to translate awareness into action using the “Nourishing and Depleting Activities” framework. You’ll engage in guided reflections and mapping exercises that help clients notice how daily habits affect energy and mood, identify patterns of nourishment and depletion, and create small, realistic shifts that support well-being. This workshop includes high-definition video lessons with professional transcripts, a printable client worksheet, and step-by-step guidance for integrating the framework into therapy, coaching, or self-care in ways that are accessible, flexible, and empowering.

Feel free to share this post with friends, family, or colleagues. Thanks for your ongoing interest and support!

 Michael Apollo MHSc RP, is a licensed clinician, mindfulness educator, and Founder of the Mindful Institute. With over 15 years of experience, he specializes in practical, evidence-based mindfulness training for helping professionals. Formerly Director of Mindfulness Programs at the University of Toronto, Michael has collaborated with organizations like the World Health Organization, the UK NHS, and the Canadian Parliament to support mental well-being and resilience in diverse settings.

Sarah Kraftchuk, MSc, RP (qualifying), is Head of Learning at the Mindful Institute. She is a licensed clinician, certified mindfulness facilitator, art therapist, and children’s book author.   

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Disclaimer

The content in our blogs is not intended to substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your health provider with any questions you may have regarding your mental health.