“Rumination is often fueled by feelings of fear, shame, and inadequacy. Because self-compassion directly counters these insecurities, it can help unravel the knot of negative ruminations as surely as detangling spray.” Kristen Neff
When we don’t have the resources to relate to an unpleasant experience, we feel stress. And the stress triggers either the fight, flight or freeze response. We fight ourselves with self-criticism, flee from others by isolating ourselves or freeze with rumination. Each of these reactions gets us stuck as we try to move away from the unpleasant experience rather than through it. Our brain over thinks things in its effort to take control and keep us safe.
“What may start as an innocuous voice builds up over time until it becomes the loudest thing in your head and an incessant rumination, like a yapping dog constantly snapping at the heels of your goodness.” Mark Coleman
Rumination is being lost in thought, spinning in worries, resentments, regret, remorse, self-doubt or shame. Our brain overthinks things in its effort to take control and keep us safe. Rumination narrows our focus and exaggerates our experience. With rumination we get stuck in the story of “I am so bad.” Or “This is so horrible.”
Reviewing the story makes us feel like we are in control. It distracts us from the negative emotions we don’t want to feel. It is more comfortable to feel righteous indignation than to face grief or fear. The rumination does not help us to think or to plan, nor does it make the problem go away. You know it is rumination when there is no forward motion.
“As if when we think about it for the 57th time the problem is going to go away.” Kristen Neff
Think about what you are trying to accomplish when you ruminate. Chances are you are trying to create a better past. When we fight with reality, reality always wins. We use up a lot of energy ruminating about that past, that may be why it leads to depression.
We ruminate and obsess over the “shoulda, coulda, woulda” because it would be more pleasant to change the past than to confront the reality of the present. We cannot control what thoughts come up in our minds. But when we repress our anger, fear or anxiety, we end up playing whack a mole. We can use mindfulness to decouple the urge to go into fight, flight or freeze mode. Then we can turn toward our difficult feelings to see them for what they are. Looking deeply helps us see they are not so overwhelming. We can deal with them.
“Put differently, mindfulness is about seeing the world more clearly. If we get lost because our subjective biases keep us wandering around in circles, mindfulness brings awareness of these very biases so that we can see how we are leading ourselves astray. Once we see that we are not going anywhere, we can stop, drop the unnecessary baggage, and reorient ourselves. Metaphorically, mindfulness becomes the map that helps us navigate life’s terrain.” Judson Brewer
By coming home to the present moment, we can learn to stop regretting the past and worrying about the future. We can release ourselves from the tangled knot of self-judgement by acknowledging that these are simply thoughts and emotions arising in our minds. Our thoughts are simply words or images until we think they are so great and so exciting that we can’t get them out of our heads. That’s rumination, getting stuck at the surface story line.
“There is intellectual curiosity and there is experiential curiosity. We can say, “I wonder what is happening as I eat too much sugar,” and it’s kind of a disembodied curiosity, or we can really feel how it makes us feel, which is we probably feel like crap after eating a bunch of sugar. If I eat too much sugar, I get a rush that’s kind of like a restless feeling, and then I crash. And when I feel that clearly enough, I become less excited about eating sugar in the future.” Judson Brewer
It took many years for me to understand the difference between ruminating and investigating. I thought I was investigating when I was actually ruminating. Rumination is allowing our thoughts to spin out of control, getting stuck at the surface story line. We try to figure out why the past happened. Looking underneath the thoughts is what moves us from rumination to investigation; focusing on what is happening right now in the present moment. I have found the intellectual curiosity leads me back to rumination. I end up analyzing who said what and why over and over again. Experiential curiosity leads to investigation. I am curious about the sensations and emotions in my body and mind right now. I can’t change the past, but I can change the present so I can heal the suffering of the present moment.
Begin to investigate by asking yourself, “What is happening in this very moment? What are my senses taking in? What body sensations do I feel? What emotions? Your mind will keep trying to bring you back to thinking about the external experience as it thinks that will protect you from feeling pain. This is the time to ask yourself a question that redirects your attention to the present moment.
Much of the following content comes from Rick Hansen’s course Breaking Out of Rumination.
Worry
We often ruminate about our worries, our fear of what might happen in the future. But those fears are just stories we made up in our minds. The more we repeat those stories, the more we believe they will come true, the more anxious we get. We are spinning on the hamster wheel.
“If there’s chronic anxiety about something, it’s really important to antidote it with equally chronic feelings of reassurance, calming relief. tune in to your love for them. Love undermines worry.” Rick Hanson
Things to Do for Worry
- Ask yourself a question that redirects your attention to the present moment: Are you safe right now? What is happening right now? Notice whether you are overestimating the negative.
- Create a checklist for the future: What can you do? Who can help you? Write it down, taking it out of your head and onto paper. Trust that you have thought it through and made the best plan that you can.
- When it comes up again in your head, ask, “Do you have anything new to say? If not, thank you for your help. It is time to leave me alone now.”
- Remind yourself that you have coped before and you can do it again.
Resentments
Another thing we ruminate about is resentment. When we are mistreated or we see someone being mistreated, we feel resentful. This kind of behavior goes against our values. It is normal to think about what happened, what might happen, and what we are going to do about it.
When we go overboard and get caught up in a kind of loop of thinking without any forward movement, we are ruminating. We keep thinking if I just think about this, I will figure it out. But since we have turned off our thinking brain and are relying on our emotional brain, we never get there.
As we think about what happened, we want to be sure we don’t understate it or overstate it. It’s OK to have a sense of outrage or a healthy sense that they ought to be ashamed. But if we fall into feeling self-righteous, we will get on our hamster wheel and spin away.
Self-compassion immediately starts neutralizing resentment. And in all this is a very important
shift away from the rewards of resenting. Often the biggest reward of resenting is the feeling of anger.
Things to Do for Resentment
- See what actually happened. Notice whether you are overstating or understating the experience.
- See who the person is. Their action that led to your resentment may be all about their suffering and not about you. See that you did not cause the unskillful action, and you definitely did not deserve it.
- Talk with other people about it and get some clarity, not just to vent.
- Write the person a letter, whether you send it or not. Maybe multiple versions as you begin to release some of your resentment and anger.
- Disengage from that person or maintain a distance that feels safe for you.