Rumination or mental gum

[Brother]

Ruminations are repetitive thoughts about a situation that triggered strong negative experiences. Over and over again, a person replays unpleasant events or conversations in his head, trying to find something that he could say or do differently, better. It would seem, what is wrong with the fact that a person is trying to draw useful conclusions from the situation for the future? The problem is that ruminations do not lead a person to a productive decision, they only consume his time and mental resources in fruitless regrets about the past.

Rumination, or Thoughts that oppress all day and do not allow you to sleep at night.

Rumination is different from worrying about the future. Worry about the future is the mental component of anxiety. It usually starts with the words “what if” and starts a chain of assumptions from which the person tries to find a way out in order to reduce anxiety about possible events. Such anxiety on a certain, let's say, normal scale does a person a good service, as it motivates him to better prepare for the upcoming event, to calculate the probable difficulties.

Rumination, in contrast to worry about the future, is entirely devoted to events that have already happened, in which nothing can be changed. A person asks himself questions, full of criticism, why he did not behave differently, why he did not prepare better, why he is such a failure. Such experiences addictive and over time turn into a bad habit , repeated in a state of sadness or anxiety, or arising in certain situations or places, for example, every night before going to bed or before meeting new people.

Rumination negatively affects the emotional state of a person, as they constantly return him to negative experiences about an unpleasant event. Ruminative thinking is often combined with pessimism, feelings of hopelessness, excessive criticism and an increased need for support and help from the people around. Rumination also makes it difficult to find social support and communicate with loved ones who get tired of fruitlessly discussing the same problem over and over again.

In recent decades, many studies have shown a link between rumination and diseases such as depression, anxiety, eating disorders, and various forms of addiction. In 2012, a study was conducted, according to which rumination is associated with an increase in the level of the hormone cortisol. Elevated blood cortisol levels, in turn, are correlated with a higher risk of diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Why does a person continue to ruminate about a painful situation for him, if there is no sense from this? The answer is simple. Rumination gives a person the illusion that he is looking for a solution to a problem situation. A person is looking for what is “wrong” with him. And, you know, there is something "wrong" with each of us. But fixation on the search for all their mistakes and shortcomings does not give a person the opportunity for improvement, but only leads to a decrease in self-esteem and an increase in negative thinking, and sometimes to depression.

The reasons for ruminative thinking, according to S. Nolem-Hoeksema, lie in the so-called learned helplessness and stressful life events .

Learned helplessness is a state of a person in which he does not try to improve or change the situation, even if he has the means to do so. Learned helplessness is formed as a result of a person's long-term feeling that the surrounding situation does not depend on his actions. Overprotective parents who prevent their child from gaining experience on their own may develop a habit of passively reacting to circumstances and a tendency to obsessive ruminative thinking as a means of coping with their learned helplessness. Stressful events such as divorce, moving, losing and looking for a new job are perceived as uncontrollable by a person and often trigger ruminative thinking.

There are simple tips and tricks that can help you cope on your own, or at least reduce the intensity of ruminative thinking. First, a person prone to ruminations needs to share what in his life is subject to his control and what is not. A person can change his behavior, but does not control the reactions of other people. So worrying about what is out of your control is of no use. Then you should analyze your own weaknesses and start looking for a productive solution.

If they fail to break the cycle of negative thinking, the person should try to distract themselves. Exercise, walking in the park, and meditation are best suited for this. It is helpful for a person prone to ruminations to know when they are most likely to engage in negative thinking so that they can be distracted by exercise, walking, or meditation. I would like to emphasize once again that ruminative thinking is a habit that takes time and hard work to overcome.

In the event that the above tips did not give the desired effect, it would be most reasonable to seek help from a cognitive-behavioral therapist. Since it is cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy, or rather the practice of conscious mindfulness, that is the most effective method of dealing with ruminative thinking. Conscious mindfulness will teach a person to voluntarily switch attention from obsessive thoughts and unproductive analysis of past events, freeing up mental resources to search for a real solution to a problem situation.