Rumination:
What it is and how to control it

Rumination is negative self talk on repeat. It's a thought pattern in which people obsess over something, such as a negative event or a perceived flaw. Some people seem to be more prone to this than others, but a tendency to overthink and obsess over problems is pretty common. It tends to be a bit more brooding in people who are depressed, and a bit more panicked in people who are anxious, but the obsessive, overthinking qualities are similar.

This is not the same as sorting out a problem in your head. Rumination leads you in circles (or worse, in a downward spiral) without reaching any sort of positive conclusion. It doesn't lead you to take action to improve your situation, it just makes you feel worse and worse until the only action you want to take is to find some way to get rid of your pain or stress.

People who ruminate also tend to have problems with emotional dysregulation - feeling like your emotions are out of control and alternating between trying to suppress feelings and becoming overwhelmed by them. This can maintain distress, make you feel depressed and hopeless, and seriously impact emotional health, so it's really important to tackle this thought pattern if you recognize yourself in the following list.

Photo credit mgaffney

Do you have a tendency to ruminate?

• When something bad happens, you find it hard to think about anything else for a long time – unless it's other bad things
• You often find yourself just sitting and thinking about upsetting events or your own depression/anxiety, and you might be unsure about what started the train of thought or how long you've been stuck thinking about it
• You have a tendency to catastrophize – any negative event leads you to think about other negative things until you feel like your life (or your job or relationship, etc) is completely horrible
• It seems like your thoughts have minds of their own – you don't think that you can control them and once you start thinking something (e.g. that you're a worthless person or that you made a fool of yourself) you're stuck thinking about it
• You spend a lot of time thinking about your problems and/or symptoms, but struggle to take any action to fix them

What does rumination sound like?

It can sound like 'reminding' yourself about how stressed/worried/ depressed/etc you feel:

"I'm so stressed. I don't want to go out because I'm so stressed. I'm too stressed to be social. I'm too stressed to do my work. My stomach hurts because I'm so stressed. I feel so terrible and the stress is just getting worse."

It can also be more like a downward spiral:

"She doesn't want to get together because she doesn't like me. I'm such an unlikable person. Why would anyone like me? There's nothing good about me. I'm a worthless person. I deserve to die."

Just like with any self talk, these steps will help get rumination under control, even for chronic ruminators. Try those first.

Here are some things you can try to help stop chronic rumination:

• You have to give yourself permission to stop. Maybe you think 'of course I want to stop!' but you have to remember that this is changing deeply ingrained thought patterns and it does feel weird and uncomfortable to change your thinking this much. Lots of people also have some kind of vague guilt or feeling of obligation around rumination - you feel that you have to think about bad things for some reason, and you'll need to give yourself permission to let this go or you'll get nowhere
• Sometimes, arguing with yourself will just make it worse. So you have to be careful that challenging your thoughts (as recommended in my self talk article) doesn’t lead into another circle! Recognize when that happens and try the next tip
• Get into the habit of breaking the chain of thoughts. It can be really helpful to just tell yourself to stop and cut off the chain of thoughts, especially if it's a thought chain that you often get trapped in. Yell it to yourself if you need to, but don't let yourself get stuck. Recognize that your ruminative thoughts are not useful and sometimes the best thing you can do is cut them off if challenging them makes them worse
• You can also try to distract yourself until you feel less emotional, and then challenge your self talk. Anything engaging will work as long as you don't use it as an excuse to avoid dealing with the problem – distraction is a short term strategy!
• Then, when you feel a bit more in control of the thoughts, start challenging them and substituting more accurate and positive thoughts
• Practice! Practice all the time. It will only get easier with practice. Depending on how long you've been a chronic ruminator, it can take a bit of time before you really start to see results... but you will see results if you keep going
• Building your emotional resilience can help you to avoid getting stuck in rumination in the first place, and lessen its hold on you

Suppressing your thoughts doesn't work. The only way to get rid of brooding thoughts is to change your thought patterns. You can break the rumination cycle and end its damaging effect on your emotional health.

People who ruminate constantly may really benefit from cognitive behavioral therapy or dialectical behavior therapy. These therapies go into much greater depth than I can cover here, but the principles are similar. If you need more help getting control of your thoughts, or if your negative self talk makes you want to harm yourself, I urge you to contact a local mental health agency or your family doctor and find a cognitive behavioral therapist or a dialectical behavioral therapist.

Return from Rumination to Self Talk

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