3 Painless Ways to Reduce Rumination

How to reduce repetitive overthinking to minimise distress.

Our thoughts and perceptions affect our behaviour and emotions.

If you think negatively, such as thinking you’re going to fail a job interview, chances are you’re going to feel like crap and you’ll underperform.

On the flip side, if you perceive yourself to be able to deal with a task put in front of you, you’re more likely to tackle the task confidently and perform well.

Rumination, which means consistently dwelling on thoughts and/or problems is a habitual thinking pattern we are all guilty of because:

• It happens automatically.
• It can occur due to personality traits such as perfectionism, explains Dr Nolen-Hoeksema.
• Often, we feel we are gaining insight into our thoughts/problems by ruminating.

This means it’s hard to stop ruminating completely because it’s so automatic, especially when we feel anxious or low in mood.

As an assistant psychologist, I’ve noticed the pandemic has definitely increased rumination as we are now thinking about the impact the pandemic is going to have on us, our family, friends, and the economy.

While it is extremely tough to eradicate rumination, there are simple strategies to implement that can help decrease rumination to help minimise distress.

Let’s take a look!

1. Identify Your Triggers

The first step to reducing rumination is understanding what causes it.

Enhancing your awareness of the situations or triggers that lead you to ruminate will help you reduce the amount of time you spend dwelling on problems or different thoughts.

By noticing your triggers, you’re able to take action before you begin to ruminate.

Research conducted on 32,827 people found that rumination and self-blame were huge predictors of anxiety and depression.

It’s evident that the tendency to ruminate has an enormous impact on our emotions and distress levels.

So, if we’re able to understand more about why we ruminate and the situations that increase rumination, this can help with improving the way we feel and behave. We will be able to take action against our ruminative thoughts and detach ourselves from dwelling over thoughts and problems.

How to implement:

1. Identify stressful or worrying situations that make you ruminate — think about your work life, your personal life, your family and friends. What results in you overthinking and constantly dwelling on situations? Write them down.
2. Make note of your emotions — Do you feel anxious, stressed, worried, low in mood, annoyed or angry? Write down the emotions that occur when you think about these stressful or worrying events.
3. Utilise the strategies below to tackle rumination — now you know the situations that are likely to cause you to ruminate, you can take action against them by using the techniques below.

For example:

I know that something that makes me ruminate is when I have a build-up of work. I know that this build-up will make me think about all the work I have to do. I know that it makes me feel stressed and I find it difficult to concentrate. Because I know this, when these situations arise, I’m aware I’m more likely to ruminate, so I’ll implement distraction techniques such as exercising, to help reduce my rumination.

Find out what causes you to ruminate. Then, you’ll be able to take action against these situations.

2. Implement Distraction Techniques

A classic study, published in 1993, in the Journal of Brain and Cognition split individuals dealing with depression into a rumination condition or a distraction condition, that involved focusing attention on geographic locations and objects.

They found that those in the distraction condition had a greater improvement in their mood and depression scores, compared to those in the rumination condition.

Studies have also shown that when rumination is induced in people, distraction is the best strategy to help cope with rumination.

This epitomises the power that simple distraction techniques can have on our well-being and rumination.

How to implement:

1. Identify different activities that can help distract you — Psychiatrist and Psychoanalyst, Dr Carrie Barron says, “Distract with books, movies, magazines, museums, a busy street or bustling park. Once you are involved your mind has a chance to take another path.” If you figure out the things that you enjoy and can help take your mind off your thoughts, it’s going to be a lot easier to utilise distraction as a tool against rumination.
2. Whenever a trigger is present, engage in your distraction activity — finding different distraction activities is vital. That way, whenever different rumination triggers are present, you’ll be able to immediately engage in your distraction activity to reduce any distress.

As an example:

If you’re at work and you know that the workload is going to make you ruminate or you have started to ruminate, you aren’t going to be able to get up and go to a museum for a distraction. Instead, reading a book for five minutes or making a coffee might be best in that scenario.

In contrast, if you’re at home and something in your personal life is going to or has triggered rumination, it might be best to go out for a walk or watch TV.

Knowing that you have different distraction activities in place will help you engage in them immediately.

“You can always find a distraction if you’re looking for one.” — Tom Kite

3. Think Of Positive Memories

When we ruminate, we tend to dwell and overthink life events, people, and most commonly, negative situations.

If your boss comes up to you and isn’t happy with a report that you handed in, you might think, “I’m no good. This is so unfair. I put all my effort into that project.”

You’re dwelling on a negative event.

Studies have shown that ruminating about feelings and personal characteristics can induce more negative interpretations of situations.

Clinical Psychologist, Dr Margaret Wehrenberg notes this as the “negative neural network” and exiting this negative network through positive memories is a great strategy to break down rumination.

“Positivity always wins… Always.” — Gary Vaynerchuk

How to implement:

1. Look at pictures of happy memories — by looking at actual positive memories, it’s much easier to trigger positive emotions. Dr Wehrenberg says, “As you look them over, try to recall not just what you were thinking then but what your body felt like.” Involve all your senses to stimulate positive feelings to reduce any distress from your rumination.
2. Make a list of the positives in your life — there is always something to be thankful for or something that makes you feel better. List them. If a trigger is present or you’ve started to ruminate, look back at this list to remind yourself of the positives.
3. Ask for help — Use your family and friends to help you recall positive moments. “Conversation with encouraging others can shift your attention to a different memory network,” says Dr Wehrenberg.

Final Thoughts

Repetitively thinking and worrying about situations can create a huge amount of distress.

Often, dwelling on these negative situations is so automatic that they occur instantly.

Instead of letting these ruminating thoughts affect you, you can implement different strategies to help reduce rumination.

Utilise these three strategies to help stop rumination and reduce the effect it has on you if it occurs:

Identify the triggers that result in rumination. Utilise different distraction methods. Don’t forget the positive memories in your life.