As 2024 is wrapping up, we may start to reflect back on the year. Do you find yourself often thinking destructively about yourself and your life situation? Are you finding yourself using this repetitive, downward spiral of thoughts as a coping mechanism to deal with a difficult issue or struggle?
Have you heard of rumination?
While we are prone to repetitive thoughts every so often, rumination can magnify our stress to where it can create additional issues. Undesirable effects on the mind and body are sometimes associated with rumination.
These repetitive thoughts are easy to sneak into our minds when we are stressed. The pattern starts with our need to solve the problems we are experiencing.
Fortunately, rumination doesn’t have to completely control your life. There are evidence-based therapy methods that can help, which we go over in our latest guide about rumination 101. Keep reading to learn more about what rumination is, who it affects the most, and how therapy can help.
What is Rumination?
Rumination is a thought process involving repetitive and passive thoughts that focus on the causes and effects of your own distress. These harmful thoughts do not lead us toward engaging in active coping mechanisms or problem-solving strategies that would help to relieve our distress and improve our mood. Rather, such thoughts worsen any existing conditions we may have or contribute to the development of depression and anxiety.
When someone with a depressed mood ruminates, they tend to recall undesirable things or unresolved events from the past that happened to them and view their current circumstances in a more pessimistic or discouraged way, feeling both regret about their past and hopeless about their future. When you become obsessed with thinking about your problems, it becomes more difficult to move past them, to focus on solving them.
Even people without depression or anxiety can experience negative emotions through rumination. It can become a cycle where the more you ruminate, the worse you feel, which then will contribute to more rumination.
Common Examples of Rumination Phrases:
- “I can’t believe I just said that.”
- “I need to do better.”
- “I look stupid wearing these clothes.”
- “Why didn’t I do something? Why did I just stand there?”
- “I can’t believe I keep letting them speak to me that way.”
Signs of Rumination
When you have a repeated thought that you cannot stop thinking about, this is the biggest sign of rumination. Other signs can include changes in behaviour, such as eating, sleeping, or reliving upsetting memories vividly. Even further are these signs:
- Repeated mood swings
- Frequent discussion of painful memories, emotions, and topics
- Recurrent thoughts triggered by tangential things
- Low energy or interest in activities
- Low self-esteem
- Changes in sleeping and eating patterns
These signs can take a toll on our mental health. While we are prone to ruminating every so often, it can magnify our stress and worries.
Side Effects of Rumination
Rumination is taking a thought or set of thoughts and causing them to grow bigger, thus blowing them out of proportion. When we focus on these thoughts so deeply, it is hard to escape them. This especially makes finding the solutions to them via problem-solving become difficult.
When we ruminate, it becomes a downward spiral/pattern that can cause other issues which can lead to intensified:
- Sadness and depression
- Anxiety
- Mood swings
- Irritability
- Sleeping issues
- Issues with appetite
- Fatigue
- Loss of interest and motivation
- Feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, and worthlessness
- Strain on relationships
- Blood pressure increase
- Memory loss
- Stress and chronic stress reactions in your body
- Chronic pain and other health conditions with poorer outcomes
When Does Rumination Become an Issue?
What if you feel that because you don’t suffer from anxiety or depression, you can ruminate and be okay?
Rumination can be a normal and expected response to certain situations we may experience. Though, like many other coping skills we use and experience, too much can become an issue.
If you experience any of the following, you may have an issue with rumination:
- You have no control over your looping thoughts; you have a hard time keeping them quiet.
- You ruminate for most of the day.
- You have a hard time staying focused on the present moment.
- You have difficulty maintaining even simple tasks, because ruminating gets in the way.
- You feel more anxious or upset on a daily basis.
- You have become more distant or are always distracted, and the people in your life have taken notice.
When the harmful effects of rumination turn chronic and dominate a person’s thoughts, then it becomes an issue. But who does rumination affect most? And are there people more prone over others?
Who Rumination Affects the Most
Rumination can be associated with several mental health conditions, including anxiety and depression. These conditions can influence ruminating thoughts, and when we experience repetitive negative thoughts, they can contribute or worsen the symptoms of these conditions.
Eating Disorders: can cause a person to ruminate about exercising, dieting, and food.
OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder): causes upsetting, obsessive thoughts that can lead toward compulsive behaviours as a coping mechanism to relieve distress.
PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder): will often involve ruminating about traumatic memories.
People with these mental health conditions aren’t the only ones who are affected by rumination. People with autism and ADHD, among other neurodivergent people, will experience a heightened sensitivity to their environments and internal conditions.
Neurodivergent Rumination
Neurodivergent people, such as those with autism or ADHD, struggle with letting go of past unpleasant experiences. Their minds frequently replay these distressing events in their minds, leading them to live lives filled with pessimistic emotions that make it hard to move forward from their past. Rumination increases anxiety, depression, and that sense of overwhelm.
In repetitive thinking, preservation is when a particular behaviour, word, or topic is repeated beyond what is typical or necessary, getting stuck on a particular thought or topic and having trouble moving away from it. Neurodivergent people often find themselves stuck on a specific interest, idea, or worry, which can result in repetitive thinking and struggle in shifting their focus.
How Therapy Can Help with Rumination
If you catch yourself in a cycle of rumination, and find that you’re often caught inside of this loop of intensely unpleasant thought patterns, then it may be time to seek professional help and support.
When stressful thoughts dominate your life and occupy your mind during the day or keep you up at night, you may consider seeing a therapist for help in working toward personal change and growth. It’s a challenge to deal with the effects of rumination on your own. If you are experiencing intense rumination, therapy can be quite helpful to learn new coping mechanisms.
If you are already experiencing mental health challenges such as OCD, anxiety, and depression, using therapy to address and navigate the root cause of your issue can help in breaking free from rumination. If you identify as neurodivergent and find yourself with ruminating habits, therapy can help you to break away from those habits.
At Hopewoods, we can assist in identifying and reframing those ruminating, even catastrophic thought patterns so that you start to think of more encouraging, less destructive ones. Our therapists can provide a personalized treatment plan which can include therapies such as CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy), DBT (dialectical behavioural therapy), and others that target excessive rumination. Together, we can help you in viewing that this behaviour can be changed and establish new ways of coping with stress or other difficult emotions.
If you have any questions or concerns regarding our psychotherapy sessions, any assessments, or other services that we offer, contact us today or book a free 30-minute consultation.
by