Rumination isn't only an annoyance, it's a predisposing factor for psychopathology. Here are 5 research-backed tips for changing the chronic thought pattern.
summary
In this ep we talk about practical strategies for managing cyclical thoughts. The discussion emphasizes the importance of visualization techniques, cognitive restructuring, and unfortunately self-acceptance, to break the torture of continual negative thinking. We provide actionable tips to help navigate ruminatory patterns and foster a chronically healthier mindset.
takeaways
Rumination is linked to trauma, anxiety, and depression.
Setting a timer for ruminating thoughts can reinforce them through ironic control processes.
Visualizing to create your own inhibitory signal can help interrupt negative thought patterns.
Mapping the brain's rumintory circuit and tracking inner expeirence through it can aid in managing rumination.
Re-calibrating obsessive view of one event within the context of an entire existence can shift attention.
Avoid thinking about personal memories or predictions before bed to prevent insomnia.
Using "cognitive bridges" can help connect conflicting thoughts so the mind can hold both.
Self-forgiveness and esteem are (unfortunately) crucial for overcoming ruminatory thinking.
A realistic lens assists with rumination: Life is unpredictable, and we have limited control over events.
keywords
rumination, mental health, anxiety, cognitive control, self-acceptance, coping strategies, visualization, brain circuits, insomnia, self-forgiveness, the unpredictable nature of the universe and your realistic place in it
Transcript
Considering all the overlap with trauma, anxiety, and depression… I thought it would be a good idea to do a separate bonus mini sode on tips for dealing with rumination.
Let’s do it.
1- Visualize a stop sign
Since what we’re lacking is inhibition of our thoughts, causing them to spiral indefinitely, it can help to add a “stop sign” to your own inner processes.
Do so, by visualizing a massive stop sign or red light or waving red flag right in front of the backs of your eyes, blocking out all other visuals, or literally striking you with impact.
When you realize your thoughts are getting away with you or have passed the point of being helpful or constructive… throw up that stop sign. And switch attention to another task or object or your inner state. If you can sit with your feelings without applying words to them, this is the platinum option.
Related tip: to have your feelings without mentalizing about them, it helps me to imagine a paintbrush moving along inside of myself, through the core of my body from my throat to my BH. Where the paintbrush touches? I try to feel. And this visualization, feeling, combo helps me stay with emotions without trying to explain or fix them with words, which ultimately turn into ruminatory hellholes.
2- Imagine the amygdala-hippo-PFC-DMN circuit. Insert your own pause. Reassure yourself.
You also might want to visualize the neurobiological circuit behind rumination.
The amygdala pumps up negative emotion, the hippocampus brings up negative memories, the prefrontal cortex elaborates on those memories as it questions how they relate to your identity and safety, and DOESN’T provide the stop sign that you need, and the DMN keeps bringing up wordy memories disjointed from the rest of your experiences.
Visualize it as you track your inner behaviors.
Insert the stop sign that the PFC isn’t issuing.
Talk to the amygdala, reassuring it and sitting with the feelings instead of reacting to them.
Use the hippocampus to try to elicit more neutral memories. Place a big X over the negative ones that need to take a timeout. Pull up some happy ones, perhaps with photographic triggers, and have them in a separate green check pile that you return to.
You can also visualize feeding the hippocampus – a seahorse-like structure – these memories. Or gently patting him on the head to encourage fond recollections.
And the PFC? You can imagine trying to talk it down from a predictory ledge. “We don’t need to know or understand everything right now, that’s not even a possibility, I don’t need to perfectly comprehend my place on earth at this moment, that’s also not even possible.” Uncertainty is okay. Ambiguity is the way of life. Let’s focus on what we’re feeling, not what we can estimate about ourselves, prefrontal cortex.
Use knowledge of the brain circuit. Try to end the vicious cycle at any of the stops along the track.
In line with this, you might want to:
3- visualtize “popping out” of a single point or cluster of points in your mind. Visualize a the scatterdrop or continual line instead. And then take ten steps back.
What I mean by this is, rumination tends to get highly specific and redundant, right? You begin cycling through one experience or grouping of them and get lost in the details – what doesn’t add up, what’s missing, what does this mean, what about that?
Realize that this feels like a large, constructive, web of thoughts… but it’s really all focused on one central point. One single data drop on your timeline of life that’s appearing to be EVERYTHING.
Visualize it.
One dot.
If you zoomed out, you’d see that it’s surrounded by trillions of other dots. All the OTHER moments and events in your life. That you haven’t been seeing.
Maybe those dots are on a straight line, together forming the autobiographical description of your life.
Or maybe those dots are scattered. Not exactly “all over the place.” If you zoomed out again you’d probably see that they have a general trend to them, even if they aren’t linearly arranged. But, sure, they wander a bit.
Seeing that one single point in the context of alllllllll the others, however you visualize them being arranged…. Can you free your attention from that one black hole of a dot, and pay some attention to all the rest? Not actively engaging with them, necessarily, but simply noticing they exist, they have diverse and nuanced meanings, and the weight of them is probably more significant than this single drop on the page.
So maybe you see one red dot, engulfed by a dizzying number of black ones. Or one black dot in a sea of rainbow colors.
And then, with that context, try to reframe that solitary point with the startling contrast. Realizing “this isn’t so fucking important, is it? I can think about this one point FOREVER, perhaps, but… why am I ascribing it so much importance?”
Great. Once you do that…. Visualize taking ten more steps back from the scene.
All the dots get even smaller and ten billion more enter the picture.
Maybe they even start to look like stars, amongst which must be the earth, with you riding atop, filled with your own universe of pinpointed lights gathered through the years.
This is your existence.
Where’s it going? Who knows!
What does it mean? Can’t say!
But with so many experiences that you have and will be going through… there’s a lot of logical and emotional reason not to get trapped staring at one piece of sand on a vast beach.
Visualize the timeline as dots – perhaps it’s looping, bucking, and circuitous – but that’s your life. And it takes time for events to unfold so you can understand how each point relates to the rest. You can’t force it by thinking extra hard.
Something that might come in handy if you tend to get ruminatory at night.
Next point:
4- Insomnia? Imagine a story that doesn’t involve you. Don’t think about your life.
Anytime I’m running my brain (or, really, my brain is running me)instead of sleeping, it’s because I’m experiencing fear and shame responses in response to some stories that are usually 3% truth, 97% elaboration.
What works for falling asleep?
Not thinking about yourself or your life. Not even in positive terms. Not even fanaticizing about your partner or crush.
Because all of these are points of potential anxiety or unsafety or ambiguity that light up the ruminatory circuit and keep you churning for hours. Stay away from considering your social world at all costs, especially if you have RSD or anxious attachment.
Instead, this is where visualizing sheep, reading a book, or imagining cartoonish characters helps. Get into THEIR story. Keep your thoughts on inert material that doesn’t suggest you are doomed or a fuckup. And elaborate on THAT.
Sure, some of us also like to watch tv for this purpose of self-escapism. Just be aware that the mind can still wander when you’re only passively engaged on the streaming sites.
And, of course, stay the fuck off social media. Which can only make you think about yourself, your social success, and your life in comparison to others.
Ruminatory problems?
Imagine external stories, stay out of your own, let your overthinking circuit calm down, fall asleep.
And when you CAN’T stay out of your own thoughts, let’s use the bases of rumination to help ourselves help ourselves. Such as with this point:
5- Use “yeah, but” as well as “and, also” bridges.
As we learned recently, rumination often is provoked by stressful life events, interpersonal stressors, and anything that causes a gap between what was anticipated and what actually happened.
The mind gets stuck trying to understand how expectation and outcome don’t align. How intent and reality mismatch.
And, of course, how the self is somehow responsible for this discrepancy. Because that suggests the self cannot be trusted. And if we can’t rely on our perception of us, then we are in mortal danger 24/7.
It causes a brain to cycle between what was supposed to happen and what DID happen, endlessly, attempting to understand what went wrong. And this is where negativity becomes us.
So, to go back to a tip given about four years ago….
Use “yeah, but” as well as “and, also” bridges between the thoughts that don’t align, so that the mind doesn’t HAVE to sort out the incongruent factor or identify the missing piece of information that makes it all align. In other words, it doesn’t HAVE to obsessively throw you under the bus just to create an explanation. It can, instead, create an all-encompassing story that allows diverse details to cohabitate.
Here’s how you use the bridges.
You have a thought “I was doing so well, I was functioning like a motherfucker, I was finally on the right track, life was finally turning around and good things were coming my way.”
And another thought kicks up “AND THEN none of that happened, I wound up back where I started, and the future now looks very bleak.”
An individual can get stuck here, unable to rectify the two diverse experiences, assuming they must have fucked everything up to cause their own suffering and counting ALL the ways…
OR, an individual can wisely provide an overarching bridge between the thoughts that satisfies the mind’s detective so they can take a break.
Like this:
I was doing great and everything appeared to be on the up and up
“yeah, but”
I never could have anticipated… getting sick, losing my family member, the economy swinging another direction, the massive layoffs at work, my depression returning and limiting my cognitive capacity…. Etc. Which led to the downturn I’m now experiencing.
And with that, two or more discrepant points in personal history have been sewn together with enough of a narrative that the brain can settle down nah. But without requiring blame, shame, regret, or tearing down one’s self esteem to make the pieces align.
These things happened. I didn’t expect both of them. “Yeah but” a thing happened. Life took a rapid turn I wasn’t predicting.
And that’s it. That IS what happened, if I narrow it down to one simple explanation, and accept it as my experiential recall so I don’t have to keep looking for more data. This is the meaning I can make of these events – at least for now.
The same can be done with the “and, also” bridge.
As in:
“I thought I was doing great, this relationship was a lifelong keeper, we were destined to be together, everything was so loving and promising.”
AND ALSO
“I didn’t realize that I still had a lot of unconscious behaviors that would undermine a successful relationship that I needed to work on. Through this relationship, I’ve now identified more of my personal wounds through the tumult that transpired. It’s sad, but that’s what happened and it’s no one’s fault.”
Boom. Done thinking about it.
Take the story, put it in the past, sew it up with as few words as possible, noting the complexities and unpredictable events that… just sortof happen sometimes… explain it to yourself the way that you’ll eventually explain it to others in about 5 years, when the feelings and obsessive thoughts aren’t driving you nuts anymore.
It can help a mind settle down.
And you can even stack the “yeah buts” with “and alsos” for more complex, radically simplified, stories.
“that relationship didn’t work out”
And also
“it’s not game over for me or us”
Yeah but
“I have some hard work to do to integrate this knowledge before we can be together, which is painful to experience in the moment.”
Boom, emotions, history, present, and future, resolved into one coherent narrative that doesn’t damn or demean anyone. Or open a door to endlessly beating yourself up.
Leaving little detail for a brain to spin out about while still sharing the tale. Simply providing a clarification of what’s happened and hope for what still can.
“Yeah, but” and “and also” bridges. Try them.
And remember:
Not a tip, just an unfortunate fact- Self-forgiveness and confidence are key
If rumination is ultimately about self-fear of self-concept and self-doubt of self-capacity to self-support, survive, and thrive…
And I believe it is.
Then the final solution? The thing that REALLY ends rumination? And not just this one spell of it, but the overarching propensity towards this thinking pattern?
Is to get off your own ass. To acknowledge when events are simply the happenings of the universe around you or aspects of yourself that needed to be brought to light. And then have faith that booty can handle life, in general.
If you can stop freaking out about your own specific ability to deal with the world and stop trying to find evidence that works against you….
The rumination will decrease or subside. As you learn to accept what comes as it comes, without elaborating on what it all means.
So.
Be imperfect.
Do your best.
Forgive yourself when that doesn’t end ideally. Or there’s a slipup.
Acknowledge how little control any of us actually have over our lives.
You can plan for 30 years, do everything perfectly, and still get knocked off course year 29, day 364, of your grand scheme… because of weather, illness, the economy, or any other event that’s outside your locus of control.
It’s okay, it happens.
Admit you are also a human, in these same circumstances as every other human. And how many of them do you think CAUSED the entirety of their own misfortune or pain?
Not many.
You deserve the same grace for what you’re dealing with. And even what you HAVE possibly made mistakes around.
Lean into fucking up.
Take it as a source of pride, as long as it’s used to learn lessons and keep trying.
Focus not on perfection, but on being adaptable – on your capacity to flexibly respond to life and figure things out as they come in the future –
And rest assured that these are skills you have.
You make good decisions. You put in effort. You gather evidence and analyze and learn. You figure things out.
You do a good job. You are a good human. And you have you.
Any past hiccups? Were just the efforts of an animal, learning, under chronic unpredictable stress known as “earth living.”
Not a big deal. Not a mortal offense. Not a moral sin. Not sign of what you can handle or experience in the future.
Sometimes events are just events. Sometimes events have greater meaning, but it takes months and years and decades to understand it. And sometimes shit happens that has nothing to do with your capacity or quality or value.
Regardless, thinking about it indefinitely won’t clear the fog.
Life is a crapshoot and you’re just a being, experiencing it, and eventually understanding it (maybe), like all the others.
But, ya know… if you’re here… learning, reflecting, and changing as a result…. you honestly probably have a better grasp and stronger aptitudes in this game than a lot of them.
And let the mind believe that, without seeking contradictory evidence to chew up, half swallow, and regurgitate again.
You don’t deserve that puddle of cud.
You deserve inner peace and self-acceptance.
And so does your potentially very tired, overwrought, ruminatory, brain.
So, these have been…. our ruminatory tips!
- Insert your own stop sign
- Visualize the amygdala-hippocampus-PFC-DMN circuit and speak to the neurological structures
- Don’t think about yourself before bed, imagine others’ stories
- “Pop out” of the data point you’re obsessing about, and recontextualize it on a timeline or scatterplot of your life
- Use “yeah but,” “and also” bridges to allow more cognitive complexity
And, truth no one wants to hear: - Realistically assess yourself as just a human, getting thrown around by the universe, with stronger self-supporting tools than most of the rest of them. It’s not your fault when things don’t go perfectly. And you are equipped to handle more than you believe.
Put these tools into practice, while also practicing feeling your feelings without elaborating or explaining them….
And you might just be able to beat this unfortunately cognitive pattern of ruminatory thinking, which underlies so many mental disorderings.
It’s an important point to tackle and tamp down, for the sake of so many other comorbid cognitive challenges. And, your overall experience on earth.
You’ll notice it more honestly and vibrantly if you can convince that brain to quiet down and look forward to what comes next.
Til we speak again next, Fuckers?
Take care out there.
Hail yourself – realistically realizing you’re amazing and also not in control of this fucking ship, so… calm down with the self-harassment.
And cheers.