My mind never stops. If my family / country / boss / school / work were not like this, I would not be like this. Other people's life is fine, but mine is not. I am very angry with myself for not being able to change anything. I wish I could turn back the time and fix everything. My struggle with an inner voice drove me to this test. Rumination, which manifests itself, is defined as the repetitive spinning of thoughts in the mind or mental occupation with a negative content. In other words, rumination is a constant state of mental preoccupation by reconsidering your emotions, possible causes and consequences, without taking action to solve your problem by sticking to the past.
While rumination, you usually isolate ourselves from our environment and focus on your own problems and negative emotions caused by the problem. Thus, you cannot stop rumination because you think you will find a solution to your problem. Because it is very difficult to let go of something that you think has a function in your life.
Problems to be solved in daily life and problems you experience with other people may be stressing you out. How you evaluate the stressful event and how you deal with it determines your emotional response to the event. These coping styles can also lead to the rumination that keeps turning in your mind. Difficulties in life, stressful situations and traumatic experiences are the main causes of rumination.
Traumatic experiences lead to rumination as they shake basic beliefs. These kinds of experiences create radical changes in your cognitive structure that divides life into two as before and after like a "knife", and helps to make sense of yourself and the world. Many approaches that explain post-traumatic reactions explain this shock and change through the concept of “hypothetical world” (Janoff-Bulman, 1992).
The hypothetical world contains your core beliefs about how to act, how things happen, and your ability to influence events. These assumptions provide a structure within your subjective world and allow you to perceive, interpret, anticipate and plan other people and events. However, traumatic experiences can shatter and shake this internal hypothetical world.
This inner world, which basically includes your beliefs about yourself, the outside world, and the interactions between the two, contains the assumptions of "the good of the world", "the meaningfulness of the world" and "self-value". Accordingly, it is believed that the events in the world have a certain logic and significance (meaningfulness of the world), including the knowledge of why events happen and why some events happen to some people; You basically have beliefs that the world is a good place and that other people are good, helpful and kind (the good of the world assumption) and that people will not be hurt in a just world (self-worth) due to the fact that people see themselves as valued, honest, and good.
These assumptions about the world provide you with a reality that makes you feel safe, that even though you know that there are bad things "out there", "your own world" is good and safe, that evil will not find you. However, after traumatic experiences, this hypothetical world unfortunately falls apart and this perception of vulnerability is lost and people face their own vulnerabilities. This sudden change leads to post-traumatic stress symptoms, depression, and decreased psychological functioning, as well as providing an opportunity for positive changes such as post-traumatic growth.
Nowadays, it seems unlikely that someone who watches a little news and uses social media will not be traumatized. Being traumatized causes the mind to be lost in the negative thinking cycle (rumination), unhappiness and psychological problems. One of the reasons why you get stuck in this thinking cycle is that you think you will solve the problem by rumination, and the second is that you have some dysfunctional beliefs and attitudes about yourself and the world. So the way out of this cycle is to realize that rumination doesn't work and to become aware of these attitudes and beliefs. If you want to get online support from a psychological counselor in this regard, you can write somewhere to get information about the process. Stay with love.
