A Complete Guide to Rumination – What it is, Causes, and How to Get Better
Rumination can be a stressful thing to deal with, especially when you don’t know how to put a stop to it. It is draining and has very detrimental effects on mental and physical health.
What is rumination, what are the causes, and how can you get through it? Find out everything you need to know in this guide today.
What is Rumination
So what is rumination? It is defined as going over thoughts again and again in your mind. While this can sometimes be slow or casual, the detriment of rumination is that it usually consists of negative thoughts. This causes you to become stuck in a negative cycle, with repetition of harmful and distressing inner talk.
Rumination can happen from time to time naturally. You may go over a certain event or think about a situation and try to workshop solving it. However, sometimes these thoughts become detrimental and unhelpful, which can actually reduce your ability to problem solve or feel better.
Rumination does not tend to lead to solutions due to its effect on physical and mental health. It may be that you start to focus on a problem for a couple of minutes, then you start to feel worse about the situation at hand. You might have the same thought over and over again with no progress made towards accepting the situation or solving it.
Causes
Causes of this type of negative thought process involve difficulties in life, problems that frustrate or threaten, or past regrets. It may be a mechanism for us to try to figure out the situation, learn from it, make sense of what’s going on, or regret it even happening in the first place. This type of thought process leads to us becoming more and more upset, focusing on the negative of the situation, and is very unhelpful in problem-solving.
We tend to overthink if we believe that thinking about a situation will help us figure it out. It may also be due to things outside of our control where we try to explain things reasonably. Individuals who suffer from anxiety, low self-esteem, and perfectionism also tend to ruminate more than others.
Symptoms
Too much rumination can lead to many negative health consequences. It can cause depression to occur or worsen. This type of negative thought process also tends to reduce your ability to problem-solve and work through emotions. Insomnia or other sleep issues may also occur due to rumination, especially if you tend to ruminate at night. Anxiety is also worsened as well. Some physical health problems that arise are in response to stress. Chronic stress plays a big role in increasing the risk of chronic inflammation, which can be detrimental and cause many illnesses.
How to Get Better
So, how do you get out of the vicious cycle that rumination causes? Luckily for us, there are many tips and techniques that we can utilize to get out of a negative spiral. Contrary to popular belief, we can control our thoughts and emotions in healthy ways that can make us act and react better to difficulties in life. Use these tips to cultivate habits that can help you get out of a situation in which you feel stuck overthinking again and again.
Plan Action
The biggest issue that comes from rumination is that it is an unhelpful negative thought spiral. This can make you feel helpless, worried, and guilty. One thing you can do to help stop this is to write things out, plan them, and take action.
Take a journal or a piece of paper and instead of thinking negative thoughts again and again, write down those thoughts and break them down into things you can actually do to improve the situation. Write down all the steps you need, breaking down goals into smaller more achievable parts. Be very specific and try to be realistic when making your action plan. After writing this, take action to address the issue, moving forward one step at a time. This will help stop your negative thoughts and put your energy into problems. If your rumination tends to be about past regrets, check out a guide here on how to work through those as well!
Distract Yourself
Rumination often occurs when we feel stuck. Noting that you are going through a negative thought process is important. When you notice it, it can help to distract yourself. This can be something like doing a different activity such as exercising, reading, drawing, or watching a TV show. You may find it helpful to reach out to your loved ones or do some chores around the house.
No matter what it is, try to physically distance yourself from the negative thoughts by concentrating your mind on other things. After that, you may feel better, so much so that you can go back to the negative thoughts that were worrying you and with a fresh mind sort through it and process it in a healthy way.
Calm the Mind
Calming the mind can help get you out of a cycle that you feel stuck in. If you feel overwhelmed with your negative thoughts, it may be helpful to notice that, and choose a soothing activity that can help slow your thoughts down. This can be something as simple as deep breaths. When we overthink and feel distressed, this tends to activate the sympathetic nervous system, fight or flight. This spikes the body with adrenaline and cortisol, which just causes panic and anxiety.
Breathing deeply activates the parasympathetic nervous system, the part of the body that helps us slow down and return to normal baseline function. Another good activity to try is meditation. Don’t know where to start with your meditation practice? Check out this guide here to make meditation simple.
Focus on Control
One of the biggest reasons we tend to ruminate is because we are focusing on things we cannot control. This includes something that happened in the past since it’s very easy to regret and feel distressed about not being able to change something that happened. We may also ruminate over future worries or a situation that we find challenging or frustrating. No matter what, there tend to be areas in our life that we cannot control.
What is very helpful is to focus on what we can control. This ties into making an action plan to work through negative emotions and situations. You cannot control the actions of others, you cannot change what happened in the past, etc. All you can do is focus on yourself, your own actions, and your reactions.
Change of Scenery
A change of scenery can do wonders for mental health. If you feel rumination taking hold, try out a change in location. This can be going outside to clear your mind and taking a thoughtful walk. You can also go to places you’ve been happy before such as your favorite cafe, a store to window shop, or a friend’s place.
Try going for a walk in nature. Being outside in nature tends to improve mood and mental health greatly. This is a good way to stop negative thoughts and ground you in the present moment. Later on, when you come back to your situation, it may feel less bleak and distressing than before.
Get Perspective
We tend to be our worst critics. That’s why it may be very helpful to get an outside perspective on the situation. Reach out to another person that is not involved and work through your thoughts with them. This can also help you feel less alone, which is a great boost in morale.
Try to talk to someone trusted. They can help you work through an action plan or give you a clearer picture of the situation. It’s also helpful to identify why you’re ruminating in the first place and how to address the problems, and speaking to a friend may shed light on something that was evading you.
Work on Self Talk
Self-talk refers to the way we talk to ourselves and interact with the world around us in our heads. It could be something as simple as I need a haircut when you first look in the mirror when you wake up, or something more harmful such as, I don’t think I can do this when faced with a challenge at work.
Self-talk determines whether or not you are solution-driven or focused on the problem. People with more positive self-talk tend to look at the bright side of things, learn from challenges, believe in themselves, and grow. Practicing positive self-talk can help you stop ruminating and start problem-solving and processing situations in a healthy way. Here is a full guide on how to improve self-talk easily.
Rumination vs Processing
While rumination is detrimental, a thought process that helps you accept and solve problems is much different. How can you tell the difference between ruminating on an issue or processing your emotions? For these key differences in rumination versus emotional processing.
First of all, ruminating often leads to shame, worry, blame, and guilt while processing healthily leads to acceptance. Ruminating does not solve the problem and tends to be very negative while processing tends to produce solutions and even insights into a situation. Emotional processing can help people look for the positive in a negative situation and will offer a chance to learn, grow, and adjust.
The Takeaway
Rumination stops her energy, increases stress, causes anxiety, increases depression, and can lead to physical health concerns like inflammation and illness. It is important for us to, first of all, recognize rumination in ourselves, and secondly work to stop the cycle. These tips are a great way for us to work through our problems or past regrets in a way that is healthy and can allow us to emotionally process situations better.
Remember that health comes from within. Eat nutrient-dense meals, exercise when you can, at least 3 times a week, and take care of your mental health. Daily habits become the building blocks for emotional, mental, and physical health. Take care of your gut health too! Learn everything you need to know about gut microbiota today for free here.
