How Can We Reduce Or Stop Ruminating?

Rumination is something we see a lot of in personal, professional and spiritual growth literature. It happens when we replay a conversation, an argument, a tough situation over and over in our heads with no justification for doing so. We're trying to make sense of it with our own head and that never works. Ruminating isn't just an example of our inability to let go.

There's also an emotional component to ruminating, which contributes to its negative consequences. Ruminating means, that we are constantly thinking over and over about the same thing. It's not just the cliché, that we're constantly focusing on the past. Sometimes, we might be thinking about the past or worrying about the future. We often do it in a negative way, like we try to make the most out of the moment, or we get caught up in the domino effect of the depressing thought.

The Roots Of Rumination

The first step in breaking the cycle of rumination is to identify its cause. The most obvious cause of rumination is a painful or emotional experience. Many of us have gone through experiences, that have caused us pain and/or have made us upset. These are the types of experiences, that tend to make us ruminate.

Sometimes, rumination can also be a learned behavior. As children, we might not have been taught this behavior, but as we grow up, this is often the type of behavior that we are socialized into, through one form or another. We learn through imitation and with the encouragement of those around us. So even if you have no memories of ever being taught to do something, there are still traces of this learned behavior in your body and in your mind.

Regardless of how we learned it, it's possible to unlearn it. Just like any other learned behavior, we can decide not to do it, or to do it in a different way. Another important aspect of rumination is the effect it has on our mood. Rumination can be a downward spiraling behavior. It can make us feel worse about ourselves and life in general. This is why we see a lot of people with mental health issues and why so many of us go through difficult personal experiences.

How Does Rumination Affect Us?

As rumination takes hold of us, it can have a variety of effects on our mood, our ability to perform certain tasks and even our physical health. It's not just our well-being that suffers. The people around us might also be affected. As rumination becomes more normalized, we become desensitized to the things, that used to bother us and that's not good for us, those around us, or the world at large.

People who ruminate are less happy. Research shows, that rumination tends to be linked to a negative mood. When we are in a negative mood, we are more likely to think poorly about other things, like ourselves, which can lead to further unhappiness.

Rumination also tends to decrease our ability to learn and remember. It's not just that we learn less. It's like the experience itself has a way of fading from our minds. In short, rumination erases any good stuff, that might have happened. Our bodies might also suffer from rumination.

Consequences Of Rumination

As rumination continues, it has a way of becoming a habit. It becomes easier to indulge in this unhealthy practice. This means, that we will feel the effects of it for a longer period of time.

In a recent study, researchers found that the more often a person ruminates, the worse that person's physical health gets. In other words, the more your thinking is affected by rumination, the more you will feel and the more your body will suffer.

This vicious cycle can lead to a lot of different negative consequences, such as anxiety, depression, fatigue and a decreased quality of life. The good news is that there are ways to intervene!

How Can You Tell If You Are Ruminating?

In general, there are a few ways, that you can tell if you are ruminating. The most obvious way is when you find yourself obsessing over something. You might be thinking about something that happened yesterday, or something that might happen tomorrow, or something that might happen 10 years from now. This is not a good way to live life. You are not using your thoughts in a way, that is going to serve you.

Another way that you can tell is when you are noticing the same patterns in your thought process over and over again. For example, you might notice that you are thinking about yourself a lot, or you might notice that you are thinking about a past disappointment a lot.

Again, these are not good things to be thinking about a lot. So it's best to try and change the subject or, if that isn't possible, to notice the pattern and change it.

How Can We Stop Ruminating?

As with most things in life, the first step to breaking a cycle is to identify the problem. The reason that we are ruminating is because we are having a negative experience. When we stop having those negative experiences, then the cycle stops.

For example, if we are having thoughts about past disappointments or images of possible future struggles, then we are dwelling on those things and thus, turning them into rumination. That is why the solution is to change the things that we can and simply ignore the things, that we can't. We can't change the past, therefore, we shouldn't worry about it.

Life has a way of constantly reminding us, that we can't do something and when we try, we usually end up feeling worse about ourselves as a result. When we are feeling down or depressed, we might as well stop. It's probably just a period of the day, where we are feeling down and it will pass. We might not feel like this for an extended period of time, but we will get over it.

If you find that you are worrying too much about a particular situation, then you can try to change it. You can try to focus on something else for a change. If it doesn't work, then you can get professional help.

Thank you for reading.