In her new book, “The Ideological Brain,” the neuroscientist Leor Zmigrod outlines what makes some people prone to rigid ...

Spontaneous thoughts can be broadly divided into two categories, namely "free" thoughts, which are flexible and fluid, and "stuck" thoughts, which tend to be rigid, repetitive or intrusive.

Rigid thinking can function as a survival mechanism ... my body will not change” provide an illusion of stability. These cognitive patterns, while initially adaptive, can become maladaptive ...