Rumination and How to Stop It
Lately, I’ve been ruminating more than I’d care to admit. I often find myself caught up in thoughts about the past or future — feeling into those daydreams as if they were my reality.
It’s generally a sign of my overall mental state — which has been low, as of late. Indeed, negative mental states and rumination are intertwined with studies and scientists speaking often to the correlation between the two.
But why is it do we feel so drawn to ruminate, and how exactly does rumination lead us to self-sabotaging our own happiness?
The Thinking Mind
To understand rumination we have to understand one of the key reasons we’re able to think so critically in the first place…
Problem-solving.
Our brains are puzzles solving machines. They love nothing more than to sink their teeth into a big issue. Why? Because unresolved issues bring with them consequences to our physical and mental wellbeing.
Humans are far from the fastest, strongest, or biggest animals on the planet but what we do have above all other living creatures is intelligence — even if it doesn’t seem like it, sometimes.
You see, our brains have evolved over time to seek out problems and solve them. If you didn’t think over your relationship issues and didn’t approach your partner with a solution, you’d risk turmoil and your emotional wellbeing. Likewise, if you didn’t evaluate how heavy you could squat in the gym you’d crush yourself — not an ideal outcome.
Above all else, we think to solve.
Except not all problems can be solved.
That’s where rumination comes in.
When Problem Solving Goes Astray
Many of us ruminate out of an attempt to problem-solve in places we cannot control. Instead of mulling over a problem and finding a solution we simply mull with no end to the torture.
Take a breakup, for example. Heartbroken people can spend hours of their time replaying and ruminating on a dead relationship — meandering tirelessly over past memories and how they could have done things differently.
In truth, the brain sees the breakup as a threat to the individual’s emotional stability and pushes them to think it over to try and solve it. If they succeed in thinking their way out of it, the threat is removed and their mood is fixed.
Only, in this scenario, there is no solution to be found.
As I said, some things can’t be fixed.
Maladaptive is the term that described behaviors that serve a function in one area but can’t in another. Rumination can be effective when we have solvable problems but when we don’t, it will nosedive us into the ground.
Where Rumination Causes Us Harm
Each time we ruminate we expose ourselves to the feelings we’ve associated with the event in question. This is because our minds can’t distinguish between what is reality and what is imagination.
Think about that for a moment. We feel what we imagine.
This inability to distinguish fantasy from truth makes ruminating a place where trauma can be relived — time and time again. To go back to the relationship example, I myself have found myself hung up on people way longer than I should have because of this tendency to ruminate. It’s difficult to get over people when you’re constantly digging up the past.
This goes the same for any scenario and is likely a contributor to why depressed people continue to be depressed. So long as they’re ruminating on all the ways they’re not good enough, they’re feeling not good enough. A perpetual cycle then forms in which negative feelings drive ruminations and ruminations contribute to negative moods.
This is why I’m trying to break my current cycle of ruminating — it’s a downward spiral.
A Skewed Fantasy
Whilst we may like to think our memories of the past, or assumptions about the future are accurate they’re actually very far from it. Ruminations pose an additional threat to us in that they’re highly likely to be skewed and irrational.
For example, one person may suffer from low self-worth and see a mistake they made as evidence of the fact whilst another person sees it as a human experience that facilitates growth. The event is neutral prior to the placement of our own beliefs and we have to have to ask ourselves through which lens are we engaging in our ruminations.
Inevitably these images we conjure up are going to make us feel a certain way so it’s important to be aware of where we’re misguiding ourselves. Otherwise, we’re only exposing ourselves to make-believe trauma.
Stopping Rumination
If you’re an avid ruminator yourself it’s highly likely it is now a habit of yours. As is the case with anything we do, if we do it enough times, it will become ingrained in our psyche and will become habitual.
Breaking free from rumination, therefore, means being proactive in your approach to stopping it. You have to be aware of when you are ruminating and you have to pull yourself out of those cycles. I’d highly recommend anyone reading this who feels stuck in a ruminative loop to consider mindfulness meditation.
It’s also important to learn to be comfortable with not being in control. As I said, one of the reasons we turn to rumination is for problem-solving purposes — except not all things can be solved. I use the words “ be comfortable” here as breaking free from rumination requires us to learn to self-regulate our emotions in healthier ways.
Finally, we know that rumination is correlated with anxiety and depression. Engaging in self-help practices or seeking help from a professional will inadvertently curb rumination whilst you learn to enjoy life and be happier.
That’s all from me in this article. Thanks for reading! I’d appreciate it if you could give the article a few *claps* and give the page a follow, too. I post 3 times a week on subjects relating to personal development, mental health, and authentic living.
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