July 8, 2025 • 48 mins
Does your brain seem to hit replay on that embarrassing memory, or go over the way that situationship ended in hopes you’ll find some kind of closure? From dissecting past conversations to catastrophising about what might happen, repetitive thinking can feel like a mental trap. In today's episode, we break down the psychology of rumination: why our minds get stuck in these unhelpful thought cycles, and how we can actively disengage to find mental clarity.
Things we discuss:
- What rumination truly is and what it isn't
- The distinctions between everyday rumination and OCD
- Metacognition: thinking about our thinking
- Cognitive diffusion and detaching from thoughts
- Using mindfulness and grounding techniques to anchor yourself in the present
- Taking back your attention from thought spirals
If you’re tired of your mind rerunning your “best and worst” moments, this episode is for you.
Listen to my NEW PODCAST, Mantra: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Ckds0BoJDDpODInN9cWcc?si=b6ad5d555c1940e0
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The Psychology of your 20s is not a substitute for professional mental health help. If you are struggling, distressed or require personalised advice, please reach out to your doctor or a licensed psychologist.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
Welcome back to the podcast. You guys know the deal.
New listeners, old listeners. Wherever you are in the world,
it is so great to have you here back for
another episode as we, of course break down the psychology
of our twenties. Have you ever found your mind constantly
replaying the same thoughts over and over again. Perhaps it's
(00:50):
dissecting a past conversation, re examining a decision that you made,
or just endlessly worrying about something that may or may
not happen in the future. In those moments, I think
it can truly feel like our mind is stuck. It's
cycling around the same things, the same loop, with no exit.
(01:12):
And this isn't just overthinking. It's a specific, often debilitating
form of thinking known as rumination, and that's what we're
going to be dissecting on today's episode. It's actually fairly
common for a lot of us to fall into these patterns,
often because we somehow think that by replaying certain uncomfortable
(01:37):
thoughts or moments, we are somehow going to find a
way out of it, or we're going to solve the problem,
gain some kind of clarity. Sometimes we even think of
rumination as a sign of intelligence, that you're very introspective
and reflective, which is probably true. But the rumination isn't
(01:58):
what's helping prove that point. It's actually doing the opposite.
It's what is getting us stuck in thought loops that
shrink our curiosity and shrink our perspective of the world.
Rumination often really intensifies negative emotions. It fuels anxiety. I know,
it can leave us feeling mentally exhausted. But the very
(02:22):
good news is that there is a way out of
this cycle. There is a way to turn left, I
guess when you've always turned right. And that is precisely
what I want to break down for you today. What
is rumination, what is it actually how is it connected
to intrusive thoughts things like OCD? What is your brain
(02:44):
actually trying to achieve and why can't you stop it
from doing so? And also how do we disengage? How
do we find the off switch for thoughts that are
just like not only frustrating, but genuinely very annoying when
they won't stop running through our head, stopping rumination. And
(03:04):
I know this better than most people. It isn't about
suppressing thoughts. It's not about trying to force yourself to
be more positive. I've tried that. I had such a
hard time last year with really depressing awful rumination and
trying to ignore it or suppress it or constantly distract
yourself really gets you nowhere. It's actually the only way
(03:26):
out is to really understand why it's happening, and to
kind of go further into the belly of the beast
of rumination and develop metacognitive awareness, develop a better way
of relating to your thoughts by staring them straight in
the face. And if that sounds weird and complicated in counterintuitive,
I felt the same way when I was introduced to
(03:48):
this way of approaching them. But I can personally promise
you that it has worked tremendously for me, and I
want to share whatever learned through that process and how
you can kind of help yourself when rumination just will
not turn itself off. So, without further ado, let's get
into it. I want to start by firstly just dissecting
(04:16):
my own experience with rumination, because me and Rumination have
been roommates for a while, We have been buddies for
a long time, and my brain does not discriminate. When
it comes down to what we decide to ruminate about,
it will do. It will take whatever comes through the
front door. It will include things like relationship, like my
(04:39):
relationship and is something wrong here? Did I say the
wrong thing? It includes things around my career, around the podcast,
ruminating around whether I did the correct episode, something that
I said on an episode, what people are going to
think about this or that, whether I know annoyed someone
by cutting them off on the road, something I did
when I was literally like six or seven years old. Rumination,
(05:02):
for me is just the way I think about it
is like a claw machine at like an arcade, where
as as soon as it turns on, it's just gonna
grab anything, like it doesn't care what it picks up.
It just wants to find a source for me to
spiral upon and for me to feel anxious about. Like,
(05:23):
as an example, something that I've been ruminating about so
much recently was like something that I did almost four
years ago now, and I just said something super awkward
in a conversation four years ago, and it wouldn't have
lasted more than five seconds. And right now my brain
is obsessing over it. I am up at night thinking
(05:43):
about it, I am having dreams about it. And the
irony for me within this is that there is like,
there is nothing I can do about that moment. I
can't take that moment back. I don't even know some
of the people who that moment was in front of.
Nothing can change what happened. And yet the amount that
(06:04):
I feel myself thinking about it, you would think that
I had a solution. You would think that I had
a game plan or I could find one, And the
answer is that I don't. And yet this is a
thought pattern I cannot seem to switch off. I'm sure
that you have experienced this. I'm sure that you are
(06:26):
listening to me talk about this and be like, yeah,
I could apply this as a blueprint to my own
life and it would look exactly the same. Rumination is
this very interesting thing whereby it's so internal and only
we can really see it and hear it and experience it.
And yet there are so many people out there who
(06:48):
are having a similar rollercoaster spiral whirlpool going on in
the head, and we never talk about it. The thing
that has really helped me, though, is just having a
word to explain what kind of thought this is, because
a thought that is based in rumination, a ruminating thought
is so much different to any other kind of thought
(07:11):
that I have. Just knowing that there is a difference,
Knowing that these thoughts are special in a way has
really really helped me. Knowing that they are a symptom
of how my brain works, they're not anything more than
that has really allowed me to integrate them better into
I guess my day to day routine. And I know
(07:32):
that sounds weird, but it's allowed me to better look
at a thought and say, this is challenging, this is frustrating,
this is annoying, I can't stop thinking about it. That
doesn't necessarily mean that it's significant, and that doesn't necessarily
mean that the only way through this thought pattern is
by finding a solution. I think the thing I've really
(07:52):
come to peace with is that ninety nine percent of
the time you are not going to solve a rumination.
You know, you're not going to solve an obsessive thought
by magically coming up with some way to fix it.
It's about coming up with a different way to relate
to that thought. Rumination is simply put, getting caught up
(08:13):
in the why of a problem without moving towards the
what now. Rumination wants you to believe that the more
you think about something, the closer you'll get to figuring
it out. But almost everything we ruminate about, you know,
almost everything, like I said, doesn't have a solution. And
(08:33):
that's actually the very reason why we ruminate about it.
That's why our brain is so obsessive about it. That's
why it gets stuck, because it is endlessly troubled and
endlessly puzzled by this thing that we can't sort out.
It's endlessly fascinated by that. A two thousand paper that
I was reading on the role of rumination actually found
(08:54):
that repetitive thinking very rarely results or improves problem solving. Instead,
in almost every single individual they looked at, rumination hindered
effective problem solving. It actually gave individuals and participants the
illusion of control over a situation, but that illusion actually
(09:15):
turned into nothing. They didn't solve problems faster, they weren't
more efficient, they didn't find different sides or perspectives on
the problem. They often just got stuck in or on
one path. This passive and cyclical focus. It really depletes
your mental resources. It makes it harder for you to
(09:37):
think clearly, to think creatively. It's like stirring muddy water.
The more you stir, the less clear it becomes. And
yet it convinces us time and time again that no,
just one more second thinking about it, just one more day,
and the solution will become clear. It's honestly, it's like
a scam. It's like a pyramid scheme where we're told, like,
(09:58):
the more you invest, the more you're gonna get out.
One more time you think about me, the closer you'll
get to a solution. And every day you're waiting for
like you're waiting for the payout. You're waiting for like
all the money to rain down on you, and it
never does. Rumination is like the most elite scam artist
there is. So the question that is probably on your
(10:20):
mind is if it is so bad, why do I
do it in the first place. Well, I don't think
it will come as a surprise that this is often
not a deliberate thing. We often genuinely believe that what
we are doing is productive, and that's because our brains
are built to solve problems. They're built to learn from experience.
(10:43):
This is one of the ways that it does it
successfully and healthily is by looking at a moment, looking
at an experience that was uncomfortable, and learning from it,
but then moving past it. Rumination occurs when we can't
move past it, essentially, and so the act becomes less
about solving and more about problem dissecting, without that actually
(11:05):
leading to any kind of outcome. Another reason that we
ruminate is that we're trying to cope with difficult emotions.
When we're feeling sad, anxious, angry, whatever it is, our
brains look for ways to manage that discomfort. Obviously, they
don't want to have the unpleasant feeling. Sometimes rumination becomes
a default strategy, even if it's not effective, because at
(11:26):
least it feels comfortable, and it's a way to stay
internally focused rather than face the discomfort directly or by
engaging with the outside world. It allows us to deal
with the problem completely within us, and that means we
don't have to face, you know, perhaps a feeling of
embarrassment or shame, with sharing our anxieties, we don't have
(11:47):
to face yeah, whatever the outside world has to say
about our problem. Of course, another reason why we ruminate
is that a lot of us really struggle with uncertainty.
I know I do, right. I think it's one of
my biggest flaw. It's like, genuinely, it's my biggest flaw.
It's a huge reason why I think I'm so impatient.
If something feels unresolved or ambiguous, our mind might ruminate
(12:12):
in an endless loop to try and find some kind
of definitive answer or a feeling of closure that will
give us something concrete, to end with, something resolute, to
put a stop to the spiral. What we don't realize
is that very rarely will that answer actually be satisfying
once we get it. It's basically just a proxy. The
(12:35):
pursuit of an answer is a lie. There normally, isn't one.
Consider the example of someone being cheated on, you might
become You might obsessively ruminate about why. You want to
know why, why did you do that to me? Why
wasn't I enough? Why was this person better than me?
(12:56):
Whatever answer your ex gives you for why they did it,
why it happened. Why it wasn't your fault. It's still
going to hurt the same amount because the pain isn't
in the reason, it's in the fact that it happened. Right,
But whilst there's still this possibility of an answer and
of closure, we hold onto that idea. It's kind of
(13:16):
like a life buoy, like a life vest We hold
onto the idea that all the pain we're going through
could simply be explained away because that seems like a
much nicer idea than the real outcome and the real
thing that will happen, which is that we have to
work through this on our own, and we have to
work through this knowing that no answer is ever going
(13:38):
to satisfy the fact that what happened to us was
just painful. You know, an answer is always going to
be futile, but we can't give up on the fantasy
of an easy solution. You know, like any behavior, the
more we engage in something, the more we practice it,
the better our brain gets at it. You know, the
(14:01):
more you practice pitching a ball, the more you practice painting,
the more you practice solving a Rubik's cue. These are
all very weird examples, but you get what I mean,
the better our brain gets doing it. Same with rumination,
the neural pathways associated with these repetitive thoughts just gets
stronger and stronger over time. It's a very famous saying.
(14:22):
Neurons that fire together wire together. It's called long term potentiation.
This is what is happening when you can't stop ruminating,
when it feels like that is the first line of
defense against any problem that you do. You think about
it enough until hopefully it doesn't hurt anymore. Over time,
it can become an automatic response to stress, to a
(14:44):
negative mood, to minute challenges. You don't even consciously choose
to do it. It's just your brain going down the most
well worn path that it can because that is the
easiest way to move forward. So whilst rumination often starts
with seemingly good intentions to solve, to cope, to find closure,
to understand, it quickly turns into a self perpetuating cycle
(15:07):
that keeps us really stuck. You've really got to recognize
these underlying motivations that our brain is rolling out in
order to be able to gently redirect your thoughts in
the future. Something I haven't mentioned that I think is
really crucial just to quickly add in here. Rumination and
OCD are often very linked as well. Rumination can sometimes
(15:32):
manifest in a particularly intense form under OCD. In OCD,
rumination isn't just you're not just dwelling on everyday worries.
The thoughts become intrusive, they become unwanted, and they're highly distressing.
And these thoughts often clash with someone's deeply held values
(15:53):
and their sense of self. For example, someone with OCD,
you know, they might endlessly ruminate, obsessive ruminate over whether
they've caused someone harm, if they've left the stove on.
They might be plagued by really disturbing, unwonted thoughts of
a violent nature, of a sexual nature, despite having no
(16:13):
desire to act on them, they just can't help themselves.
A key distinction in OCD compared to just plain old
rumination is this compulsive element. An intrusive thought is often
followed by an action that attempts to soothe, so seeking reassurance,
double checking every single switch in your house, washing your hands.
(16:35):
But rumination itself could actually become the mental compulsion. Right.
Rumination is both the beginning and the end of a
mental and unhealthy mental loop. So the only way that
you find yourself being able to feel less distressed by
the fact that you can't stop thinking about something is
(16:56):
by thinking about it more. This is often known as
pure oh purely obsessional OCD as well, the thought is
both the obsession and ironically, it's also the compulsion. It's
kind of like what we were talking about before, you know,
thinking about something constantly might actually be kind of soothing.
(17:17):
It kind of offers temporary relief, even if later down
the line it becomes incredibly difficult to undo, even if
later down the line it becomes incredibly painful. So rumination
has a lot of ties to OCD. It also has
a lot of ties to depression. There is a specific
(17:39):
form of rumination known as depressive rumination that is a
core feature in the onset, maintenance, and recurrence of a
depressive episode. Basically, depressive rumination really focuses on self blame.
It focuses on perceived inadequacies, past failures, feelings of hopelessness,
and Unlike general rumination, which is often about a specific problem,
(18:01):
depressive rumination often has a very broad focus. It's dwelling
on questions like am I a bad person? What's wrong
with me? Why don't things go right for me? My
life is pointless? You know, this form of rumination often
shifts attention inward away from the external world. It's not
about conversations, it's not about specific events, It's about who
(18:22):
you are as an individual. So whilst in this episode
we really are focusing more on non clinical forms of rumination,
it is important to know that the underlying mechanisms of
how we engage with our thoughts do look differently when
they are in the context of certain mental health problems
like OCD, like depression. They take on a more severe element.
(18:46):
And so if that severe element of this is what
you're experiencing, it's really important that you reach out, you
get help. I want to be incredibly clear with you
right now. People can actually help you with this. You
might not think they can because you've dealt with it
by yourself for so long. People like there are people
(19:06):
out there who train many, many years just to help
you not have obsessive ruminating thoughts. I promise you you
will see a difference. It will get better if you
seek out professional help. Like I can almost promise that
for you, there is someone out there who can help
you with this. Okay, we're going to take a short break,
(19:28):
but when we come back, I want to talk about
how we can successfully overcome chronic rumination using some really
powerful psychological tools you may not have heard of. So
stay with us. We're going to return after this. It's
your break, all right, here's the deal. Here's the deal.
(19:52):
He though, if you want to gain mastery over your rumination,
you've firstly got to understand this thing called meta cognition.
Meta is in Facebook or Instagram, Meta is in beyond, above, higher,
so medicognition. This was a phrase coined by the psychologist
called John Flavelle back in the nineteen seventies, And essentially,
(20:16):
what it means is our ability to think about our thinking.
It's something that makes us uniquely human. It's something that
I don't think any other species can do. Essentially, medicognition
is your ability to be aware of and understand your
own thought processes in a way that is quite detached,
(20:36):
in a way that is observing rather than engaging, in
a way that lets you step back and kind of
see your thoughts and see the thought patterns that you
are having, almost as if they are an object that's
moving on a screen or someone else acting something out.
When you're ruminating, you are often incredibly deeply inside of
(20:59):
your thoughts. This is a problem because they feel like
they are everything, and that they are the final truth
about your life, and that they dictate everything, when the
truth is if you can engage in metacognition, you are
able to step outside of that and see that you
are not your thoughts. You just have thoughts. Those two
(21:21):
things are separate. You are not your thoughts, you just
have thoughts. This distinction is so vital. It's so vital
in interrupting the cycle of rumination because it stops you
from getting overly invested in something just because you think it.
It's like, just because you feel like a failure doesn't
(21:43):
mean that you are a failure. Just because you feel
like something terrible is going to happen doesn't mean that
it does. Just because you think that someone else thinks
something about you doesn't make it true. Your brain like
doesn't have that kind of power to control outcomes and
to control other people's thoughts, to control the future. It's
(22:06):
not a mind reader. It's not a future reader like.
That is the important thing that metacognition allows us to do.
It allows us to break the loop between feeling like
we are our thoughts and knowing that actually we aren't.
This kind of cognitive distance it really empowers us. It
gives us the choice to respond to a thought differently,
(22:27):
rather than being controlled by it. A very prominent therapeutic
approach that specifically uses metacognition. It's in the name. It's
called meta cognitive therapy. It was developed by a professor
known as Adrian Wells. The aim of this therapy is
basically to directly address rumination and worry by focusing on
(22:49):
how we think or out metacognitive beliefs, rather than simply
the content of our thoughts. So the perspective of this
approach is that psychological distress isn't called by negative thoughts themselves.
You're not actually scared of the thought. It's how we
react to those thoughts that is really what's concerning us,
(23:09):
particularly the fact that we feel we can't not think
about something think about it, no matter how scary a
thought is. If you could just decide not to think
about it, it wouldn't be that scary to you. It's
the fact that you don't feel like you can control
how you feel and how you think about a thought,
that turns it into a ruminating thought, that turns it
(23:31):
into a repetitive thought. So what we have to practice
is kind of moving from being a passenger on a
train of thoughts to becoming the driver, a driver who
is capable of applying the brakes, capable of changing tracks.
And this ability to observe and detach, unfortunately, is not
(23:52):
something we're born with, but it is a skill that
we can develop through deliberate practice, interrupting yourself when you
realize you're getting into that pattern, and importantly, not letting
yourself fall into a negativity bias through rumination. So essentially,
not always thinking that the worst case scenario is going
(24:13):
to happen, not always predicting that people are thinking the
worst of you. This is involved being able to say, Okay,
I'm ruminating and I'm obsessive about this thought, and I'm
worried about this thing because I think something bad has
happened or will happen. Is that the only possible outcome here?
(24:35):
What are the chances that the worst case scenario happens
every single time to me? Historically? You know, if you
look back at other times you've ruminated and things have
turned out positively. It's really helpful to remind yourself of
those things. It's also really helpful to say this is
one outcome, I'm going to give myself a list of
five hundred other outcomes that could be more positive. Another
(24:58):
way that I really try and control my ruminating thoughts,
because I get really bad rumination around death sometimes, is
that when I feel myself get into a spiral, I
go into my notes app and I explain to myself
why this is happening. I get super scientific about it.
I write down, you know, this is just anxiety. This
(25:21):
thought isn't more real than any other thought that I
am having. It's just my anxiety. Just because I'm thinking
it doesn't mean it's real. I know this is just
how my brain works. I know that it just doesn't
have all the information. I know that I'm just dealing
with uncertainty, and that my brain's solution for dealing with
uncertainty is just to make me so scared that I
(25:41):
feel prepared. Having that like clinical precision and rationalism to
why I am feeling fearful or why I can't stop
ruminating is really important. And as long as I am
getting worked up over a thought that I'm ruminating over.
I will keep writing in my notes, app explaining to
myself like a teacher, like a parent, why this is happening.
(26:03):
That this thought doesn't have any more merit just because
it feels big, bad and scary. It's just that my
brain's giving it more attention, and I'm not that thought,
and it doesn't make that thought more real. Building on metacognition,
we also have to understand a concept called cognitive fusion.
This is a key principle in acceptance and commitment therapy,
(26:25):
which is a type of therapy that really helps people
manage their thoughts and feelings rather than trying to change
them directly. Again, trying to change how we feel about
our thoughts, not the thoughts necessarily. Cognitive fusion basically describes
a state where we become fused with our thoughts, meaning
that we treat them as literal truths, as commands, as
(26:46):
deeply embedded parts of who we are. When we are
fused with the thought, we often lose sight of the
fact that it's just a collection of words or images
passing through our mind. We think that it's more important
than that. For example, if you have the thought I'm
an embarrassment or I'm cringe, and you're fused with that
thought because it's happened and run through your head so
many times, you experience it almost as a reality about yourself.
(27:11):
This often leads to the fact that we react directly
to the thought by withdrawing, by giving up, rather than
choosing a question it. Just because you have a bad
thought about yourself or about a situation doesn't mean you
can't have a better thought about yourself or a situation.
That initial negative thought has come from you, a better
(27:32):
one can come from you as well. In the context
of rumination, you know, cognitive fusion is really what is
keeping us trapped. When we are fused with repetitive, negative,
or uncomfortable thoughts like I'm unlovable or I'm stupid or
whatever it is, these thoughts feel like reality. The opposite
(27:54):
of cognitive fusion is cognitive diffusion. This is what we
want to pursue. Instead, involves seeing thoughts for what they
truly are. They're not facts. They're just your brain creating
ideas and creating situations and creating thoughts that challenge you
(28:16):
and that feel real to you, even though objectively they
might not be. In some ways, it's beneficial. It's our
brain trying to prepare ourselves for whatever reason it's happening.
The easiest way to intercept it is to say, actually,
what if I chose just to not believe this thing?
(28:37):
What if I chose to just not agree? I'm allowed
to disagree with my thoughts. They're mine, They're my freaking thoughts.
I'm going to disagree. I want to talk about another
exercise here that I do that I do all the
time that helps me a lot with this, which is
when I have a really bad rumination spiral and I
(28:57):
can't stop thinking about something, I tell myself that thought
hasn't come from me, It's come from someone else, specifically
this other person in my brain called Brian brain Brian.
To play on words, Brian, my brain is like the rational,
good part of me, who I love and who I
enjoy and who is joyful and gives me the capacity
(29:20):
to think and be open. Brian, on the other hand,
is the parts of me that are cruel, that are obsessive,
that are mean and nasty to myself. Brian is like
the little devil on my shoulder. And anytime I really
am getting stuck in a thought, what I always say
is like, oh my god, Brian is being such a
(29:41):
dick right now. Brian is really like getting in the way.
Brian is being a real nuisance. Brian is really letting
the team down. And it helps me create a cognitive
distance between myself and a thought. Stephen Hayes wrote this
book called Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life,
(30:03):
and he talks about a similar exercise where you can
also try and change a thought's presentation. So you can
imagine that your inner critic speaks in a really silly
cartoon voice, or you can like sing your negative thoughts
as a little song. You can imagine you know that
it's not Brian who's saying these negative things. It's your
(30:26):
childhood bully or some person that you really don't respect.
So if it's coming from someone you don't respect, you
feel like you don't have to listen to it as much.
You're just trying to change the presentation of this voice.
So it's not God likes doesn't feel like it's reality.
It's just you know, some creepy little person in the corner.
(30:46):
It's just some like weird little bully that lives in
your brain. You can also try and visualize your thoughts
as objects, So you could picture thoughts as things that
are floating down a river, a cloud, drifting across the sky,
something that you can just observe, acknowledge, and then move
on from. A twenty seventeen meta analysis actually found that
(31:09):
this technique of observation or observing your thoughts, of turning
them into something physical, giving them a sense of distances,
actually incredibly powerful. The reason that they said it's powerful
is because so many other ways of approaching rumination tells
you that you're not allowed or that you shouldn't have
negative thoughts. These perspectives tell you that it's normal. You
(31:33):
just need to make peace with them. Another thing that
I imagine when I have a lot of ruminating thoughts
or intrusive thought is I think about this thought being
like someone who's in my home. Like my brain is
like this big, beautiful, you know, four story house, and
it's got all this comfy furniture, and someone comes in
(31:54):
and it's this thought, and I can like really freak
out about this thought and be like, oh my god,
what are you doing here? Like what are you doing
in my house? And like panic and lock all the
doors and run around and that's gonna really like frustrate
the thought and make it feel more emboldened to be
in my house. Or I can open the door to
the thought and say, oh, hey, you're here, Come have
(32:15):
a cup of coffee, like, come sit down with me,
and you can just potter around like I know you're
in the house. I'm not gonna be like shocked when
you show up. I'm just gonna keep living my life
and I'm not gonna let you like ruin it. You're
welcome to walk around and sometimes I'll probably even forget
that you're there. Do you see what I'm saying, Like, basically,
you want to find a way that you're not like
(32:37):
scared of the fact that you're ruminating. You're just able
to detach from it. A closely related tool as well,
if you haven't already guessed, is mindfulness. I feel like
mindfulness is so often misunderstood. People think that it's like
meditation or just emptying your mind. People think that it's boring. However,
(32:58):
mindfulness is really just the awareness that arises through paying
attention on purpose and being in the present moment without
applying judgment to the present moment. That is the definition
that it was given by the Center for Mindfulness and Medicine,
like the pre eminent center for mindfulness, and I like
(33:19):
that definition so much more. It's basically just the art
of honing in on your senses and bringing awareness to
what is happening right now, whether it's in your body,
the sounds around you, the simple act of breathing. Now,
how does this help rumination? Rumination by its very nature,
(33:40):
pulls you away from the present into like these really dark,
scary caves in your mind. It may also drag you
into the past by asking you to replay events or
things that embarrassed you, or it propels you into the
future worrying about what might happen. Either way, it's not
(34:04):
present based. Mindfulness. On the other hand, is this light
attachment to the present moment. And when we kind of
walk into that channel of light, we're able to come back.
It's like your brain is a child who keeps running away,
and you're like, oh my God, like nah, like my
(34:25):
child is running away, and you're like you can freak out.
You just have to keep bringing them back until they stop. Right.
You just have to be like, all right, come on,
come back now, come back now, back to the present. Moment,
back to the present moment, back to the present moment.
You can keep trying to run away, but like I'm
faster than you, I will get you. That's what you
(34:45):
have to do with your brain. Mindfulness is actually more
powerful than rumination because it's deliberate. Rumination isn't always intentional,
mindfulness always is. It's kind of like there's a hierarchy
right in your brain of thoughts that take priority, and
a deliberate, intentional thought is always going to come out
(35:06):
on top. Mindfulness is like being the parent, the parent
to your brain, the parent who brings you back whenever
you were running away, whenever you are getting lost. Trust
me as someone who used to think that mindfulness was
too hard or was something that wouldn't work. It does.
It makes you the boss of your thoughts. It's also
(35:27):
super easy. It is something also that you build up
right starting with a minute, then going to a minute
in one second, a minute in two seconds, three minutes,
four minutes. It's a slow process. Mindfulness literally changes the
structure of your brain. It changes how your brain is activated,
(35:50):
what connections it seeks, how it thinks about problems. You know,
that's incredibly powerful, that kind of ability to deliberately change,
like the neural wiring of your brain is sensational at
its core. You know, rumination is really a problem of
uncontrolled attention. So whether it's mindfulness, meditation, grounding, essentially, we
(36:14):
want to make sure that our attention isn't only fixated
on internal distress and irrepetitive thoughts, it has somewhere else
to go, that there is control over our attention. You
know that we are making choices around what we want
to focus on. And if we can do that, that's
(36:34):
when we really are able to stop ruminating and just
observe our thoughts, which I know I've said a million times,
but also just like live with our thoughts. Let them
be the little visitors in our head that we acknowledge,
we say hi to, we don't panic about. We just
let them exist without needing to read too much into them. Okay,
(36:58):
we're going to take a short bak. I'm gonna let
some of those tips and tricks sit with you for
a little while. When we come back, we have a
few listener questions, some really good ones actually around heartbreak,
around intrusive thoughts, around so much more. So stay with us. Okay,
(37:20):
I'm back with some listener questions for this topic of rumination.
For those of you who don't know, if you follow
me on Instagram or follow the podcast on Instagram, I
should say at that Psychology podcast, I often share the
topics that we are going to be discussing in advance,
so you can ask any specific questions or dilemmas you
may have around that topic or idea for me to
(37:43):
answer in the episode, so you don't have to wait
till after it comes out for any further questions. So
make sure that you are following me at that Psychology
podcast so you can participate. But for this today's episodes questions,
let's start here. Hi, Gemma, is it possible to positively
(38:04):
ruminate or to make yourself only obsess over the good
things in our life? I feel like if I could
do that, I would be unstoppable. I love this question,
and we haven't talked about it at all, which is
my favorite kinds of questions when it's just like something
completely different. So there is this book called the I
(38:25):
think it's called The Upward Spiral, and I'll admit I
haven't finished it yet, but it focuses on exactly what
you're talking about. The ability to, I guess, ruminate only
about positive things. Now, it's not rumination because rumination, the
definition of it requires that the thought that we're obsessively
thinking about be distressing. It's basically I don't know what
(38:49):
other name to give it, but essentially, yes, you can.
You can combat downward spirals or rumination with upward thought spirals,
positive thought spirals upward with actions. It is possible to
train your brain to loop and focus on the good.
The thing is that it doesn't come as naturally as
negative rumination. Our brains obviously have a built in negativity bias,
(39:12):
meaning we're wired to dwell on what's wrong as a
way to learn from those moments and protect ourselves. But
just like rumination makes us spiral over perceived failures, fears,
moments of embarrassment, we can cultivate a kind of positive
rumination by intentionally revisiting our wins, moments of joy, things
we're proud of having. Like five minutes nowaday where we
(39:35):
just think about all the good things that have happened
in our life, where we just think about everything that
we are grateful for. Deciding that for every ruminating thought
we have to have a positive thought, we have to
list something that has brought us joy. Having things like
vision boards, positive affirmations or mantras on the background of
(39:55):
our phone, listening to really positive affirming music, listening to
my other podcast Monitor if you would like, all of
which can help us essentially have a more positive framework
and way of relating to the world. The thing is
is that it is something that will take time. It
(40:15):
is a conscious practice, a deliberate practice that you have
to invest a lot of energy into, but you can
be really successful with it, and the better you get
out of the more time you spend making this a
conscious thing that you do, the more that these positive
thoughts will start to feel as natural and self reinforcing
as some of the negative ones. So excellent question. Moving
(40:38):
on to our second question slash dilemma of the day.
This question slashallema comes from Caroline. My biggest problem with
rumination has been that it's made it very hard for
me to get over someone, specifically my ex someone I
know wasn't right for me, but they keep popping into
my head and I cannot stop myself going on over
(41:00):
and over mistakes, good moments, bad moments, even when it hurts. Firstly,
why do I do that when I know the relationship
was wrong, and how can I stop myself? Oh, Caroline,
I know exactly what you are talking about, And honestly,
I've always found it so strange that our brain chooses
(41:21):
to punish itself in this way, especially around breakups, especially
around the end of romantic love. It's like there's this bruise,
and we can't stop pressing it, like we have to
keep pressing it even when we know it hurts, almost
to remind ourself that it hurts. It's super weird. Let
me explain why this happens. First, we tend to ruminate
(41:42):
over people who aren't right for us, not because we
want them back necessarily, but because we are trying to
find closure, specifically the closure our brain's never got. Obviously,
it relates back to that primary reason that we ruminate,
to find a solution, to find comfort in our emotions
and to battle uncertainty. When a relationship ends, especially if
(42:04):
it was a relationship that left you quite emotionally confused,
or left you with unmet needs, or left you with resentment,
your mind ends up kind of looping around and around
and around. It ends up in looping mode. It searches
for answers. It wants meaning, it wants a different ending,
It wants closure because that packages up a thought that
(42:24):
we have or an experience that we've had very neatly
and allows it to kind of slot into place and
make sense. So essentially, the reason that this is happening
is that you are trying to solve a puzzle that
doesn't have a solution. The reason that your X keeps
popping into your head as well is because of these
things called memory pops or memory flare ups. Sometimes we
(42:46):
just have random thoughts that we don't want to have
because energy is just shooting through our brain in weird ways.
It's going down random pathways. It's you know, we're rearranging
neural circuits in the absence of this person, and it
means that all these memories and feelings are going to
sometimes bubble to the surface. Sometimes as well, you can
(43:07):
have these memory flare ups or memory pops around an anniversary,
around a significant date, around a significant place or location
or thing that you're visiting that reminds you of them.
It's not in it's not by any means indicative that
you should get back together, that you made the wrong choice.
It is just your brain trying to find an easy
way to make sense of what has gone on and
(43:29):
what has happened. The easiest way to combat this is
obviously to try some of the things you've already suggested,
but also to start engaging with more interesting things in
your life. Start giving your brain something else to entertain
it and think about, because chances are, because of how
emotionally salient and recent this experience was, it's probably the
most interesting thing to your brain right now. Your brain
(43:50):
is grasping on to the thing that's going to keep
it the most entertained. Change that give it something else
that's entertaining. Keep busy, find new hobbies, set a big
host relationship goal, something that I do my breakup routine.
Go and do every single doctor's appointment that you possibly
can that your insurance covers. Go to every life appointment,
(44:11):
health appointment, I don't know, beauty appointment, anything that you
haven't done in a while, And just fill your calendar
with self improvement, with recognizing your potential, with taking care
of yourself. Also really worth having a powerful affirmation or
a mantra that you can come back to that will
soothe you, something like I know that true love won't
(44:32):
pass me. I know that there is a lesson in
this that I may have to learn. I know this
is just expanding me as a person, just something, a touchstone,
a phrase to come back to to help keep you grounded.
Also worthwhile to listen to a whole episode that I
did on this titled how to get over someone you
can't stop thinking about. It's basically in our long answer
(44:53):
to this question. So good luck. I hope you get
through it all right. I think we're going to have
time for one more question today, only questions for this episode,
but this one I really really liked. How do you
tell the difference between ruminating and just reflecting or trying
to proactively problem solve? I feel like I think about
things a lot, but it's not always necessarily bad. Sometimes
it's very useful. This is a difficult distinction. You know,
(45:18):
we talked about it before, how rumination has this tricky
way of convincing you that it's actually problem solving when
it's not. The way to really tell the difference between
rumination and problem solving or reflection comes down to, I
think the intention around it and the emotional impact. Rumination
is repetitive, emotionally charged, it's also quite distressing, and there
(45:44):
isn't really a resolution contained in it. There's often a
real emotional impact that is rooted in fear, regret, self blame, anxiety,
and the more you ruminate, the worse you tend to feel.
Where when you are trying to actively work through something
and problem solve, the more you think about something, the
(46:05):
more you work through something, the better it feels there
is progress there. Healthy reflection is more curious, it's more constructive,
and there isn't as much pain when you reflect on
something and go back to it. Often the resolution is
that you do feel better. You leave a moment of
(46:25):
intense thinking with more clarity, with more peace, with some
kind of insight or shift in perspective. So the way
to really tell the difference is, are you leaving one
of these moments and feeling better or you're feeling worse.
Do you feel like you have somewhere or some kind
of solution to do or to follow or to pursue,
(46:48):
or do you not? Do you feel like your thinking
is action orientated or is just looping? I think that's
really the important distinction. Hopefully that answered your question. I
hope as well that this episode was useful to you.
If you have made it this far, please leave an
(47:09):
emoji that you think indicates overthinking, thought, spiraling, and rumination
in general. Mine is definitely like the wave emoji, not
like the hand wave, the ocean wave emoji, because I
feel like that is exactly what rumination feels like. You
like pop your head above the water and you're like, oh,
I think I figured this out, and then it's like smash,
(47:29):
like your back down. So hopefully you feel less like
that because of this episode and that you've learned something
you can apply something. Make sure to send this episode
to someone who you think could benefit from it, a sibling,
a colleague, a friend, a partner, someone in your life
who might ruminate a little bit too much. Leave a
five star review wherever you are listening. It does really
(47:50):
help others discover the podcast. Make sure that you are
following along and that you're following me on Instagram as well.
At that psychology podcast again for like the fiftieth time
in this episode if you want to be able to submit,
listen to questions, or just see what's coming up. What's
happening in the psychology of your twenties space Until next time,
(48:11):
stay safe, be kind, be gentle with yourself, and remember
you are not your thoughts. Talk soon.
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
Welcome back to the podcast. You guys know the deal.
New listeners, old listeners. Wherever you are in the world,
it is so great to have you here back for
another episode as we, of course break down the psychology
of our twenties. Have you ever found your mind constantly
replaying the same thoughts over and over again. Perhaps it's
(00:50):
dissecting a past conversation, re examining a decision that you made,
or just endlessly worrying about something that may or may
not happen in the future. In those moments, I think
it can truly feel like our mind is stuck. It's
cycling around the same things, the same loop, with no exit.
(01:12):
And this isn't just overthinking. It's a specific, often debilitating
form of thinking known as rumination, and that's what we're
going to be dissecting on today's episode. It's actually fairly
common for a lot of us to fall into these patterns,
often because we somehow think that by replaying certain uncomfortable
(01:37):
thoughts or moments, we are somehow going to find a
way out of it, or we're going to solve the problem,
gain some kind of clarity. Sometimes we even think of
rumination as a sign of intelligence, that you're very introspective
and reflective, which is probably true. But the rumination isn't
(01:58):
what's helping prove that point. It's actually doing the opposite.
It's what is getting us stuck in thought loops that
shrink our curiosity and shrink our perspective of the world.
Rumination often really intensifies negative emotions. It fuels anxiety. I know,
it can leave us feeling mentally exhausted. But the very
(02:22):
good news is that there is a way out of
this cycle. There is a way to turn left, I
guess when you've always turned right. And that is precisely
what I want to break down for you today. What
is rumination, what is it actually how is it connected
to intrusive thoughts things like OCD? What is your brain
(02:44):
actually trying to achieve and why can't you stop it
from doing so? And also how do we disengage? How
do we find the off switch for thoughts that are
just like not only frustrating, but genuinely very annoying when
they won't stop running through our head, stopping rumination. And
(03:04):
I know this better than most people. It isn't about
suppressing thoughts. It's not about trying to force yourself to
be more positive. I've tried that. I had such a
hard time last year with really depressing awful rumination and
trying to ignore it or suppress it or constantly distract
yourself really gets you nowhere. It's actually the only way
(03:26):
out is to really understand why it's happening, and to
kind of go further into the belly of the beast
of rumination and develop metacognitive awareness, develop a better way
of relating to your thoughts by staring them straight in
the face. And if that sounds weird and complicated in counterintuitive,
I felt the same way when I was introduced to
(03:48):
this way of approaching them. But I can personally promise
you that it has worked tremendously for me, and I
want to share whatever learned through that process and how
you can kind of help yourself when rumination just will
not turn itself off. So, without further ado, let's get
into it. I want to start by firstly just dissecting
(04:16):
my own experience with rumination, because me and Rumination have
been roommates for a while, We have been buddies for
a long time, and my brain does not discriminate. When
it comes down to what we decide to ruminate about,
it will do. It will take whatever comes through the
front door. It will include things like relationship, like my
(04:39):
relationship and is something wrong here? Did I say the
wrong thing? It includes things around my career, around the podcast,
ruminating around whether I did the correct episode, something that
I said on an episode, what people are going to
think about this or that, whether I know annoyed someone
by cutting them off on the road, something I did
when I was literally like six or seven years old. Rumination,
(05:02):
for me is just the way I think about it
is like a claw machine at like an arcade, where
as as soon as it turns on, it's just gonna
grab anything, like it doesn't care what it picks up.
It just wants to find a source for me to
spiral upon and for me to feel anxious about. Like,
(05:23):
as an example, something that I've been ruminating about so
much recently was like something that I did almost four
years ago now, and I just said something super awkward
in a conversation four years ago, and it wouldn't have
lasted more than five seconds. And right now my brain
is obsessing over it. I am up at night thinking
(05:43):
about it, I am having dreams about it. And the
irony for me within this is that there is like,
there is nothing I can do about that moment. I
can't take that moment back. I don't even know some
of the people who that moment was in front of.
Nothing can change what happened. And yet the amount that
(06:04):
I feel myself thinking about it, you would think that
I had a solution. You would think that I had
a game plan or I could find one, And the
answer is that I don't. And yet this is a
thought pattern I cannot seem to switch off. I'm sure
that you have experienced this. I'm sure that you are
(06:26):
listening to me talk about this and be like, yeah,
I could apply this as a blueprint to my own
life and it would look exactly the same. Rumination is
this very interesting thing whereby it's so internal and only
we can really see it and hear it and experience it.
And yet there are so many people out there who
(06:48):
are having a similar rollercoaster spiral whirlpool going on in
the head, and we never talk about it. The thing
that has really helped me, though, is just having a
word to explain what kind of thought this is, because
a thought that is based in rumination, a ruminating thought
is so much different to any other kind of thought
(07:11):
that I have. Just knowing that there is a difference,
Knowing that these thoughts are special in a way has
really really helped me. Knowing that they are a symptom
of how my brain works, they're not anything more than
that has really allowed me to integrate them better into
I guess my day to day routine. And I know
(07:32):
that sounds weird, but it's allowed me to better look
at a thought and say, this is challenging, this is frustrating,
this is annoying, I can't stop thinking about it. That
doesn't necessarily mean that it's significant, and that doesn't necessarily
mean that the only way through this thought pattern is
by finding a solution. I think the thing I've really
(07:52):
come to peace with is that ninety nine percent of
the time you are not going to solve a rumination.
You know, you're not going to solve an obsessive thought
by magically coming up with some way to fix it.
It's about coming up with a different way to relate
to that thought. Rumination is simply put, getting caught up
(08:13):
in the why of a problem without moving towards the
what now. Rumination wants you to believe that the more
you think about something, the closer you'll get to figuring
it out. But almost everything we ruminate about, you know,
almost everything, like I said, doesn't have a solution. And
(08:33):
that's actually the very reason why we ruminate about it.
That's why our brain is so obsessive about it. That's
why it gets stuck, because it is endlessly troubled and
endlessly puzzled by this thing that we can't sort out.
It's endlessly fascinated by that. A two thousand paper that
I was reading on the role of rumination actually found
(08:54):
that repetitive thinking very rarely results or improves problem solving. Instead,
in almost every single individual they looked at, rumination hindered
effective problem solving. It actually gave individuals and participants the
illusion of control over a situation, but that illusion actually
(09:15):
turned into nothing. They didn't solve problems faster, they weren't
more efficient, they didn't find different sides or perspectives on
the problem. They often just got stuck in or on
one path. This passive and cyclical focus. It really depletes
your mental resources. It makes it harder for you to
(09:37):
think clearly, to think creatively. It's like stirring muddy water.
The more you stir, the less clear it becomes. And
yet it convinces us time and time again that no,
just one more second thinking about it, just one more day,
and the solution will become clear. It's honestly, it's like
a scam. It's like a pyramid scheme where we're told, like,
(09:58):
the more you invest, the more you're gonna get out.
One more time you think about me, the closer you'll
get to a solution. And every day you're waiting for
like you're waiting for the payout. You're waiting for like
all the money to rain down on you, and it
never does. Rumination is like the most elite scam artist
there is. So the question that is probably on your
(10:20):
mind is if it is so bad, why do I
do it in the first place. Well, I don't think
it will come as a surprise that this is often
not a deliberate thing. We often genuinely believe that what
we are doing is productive, and that's because our brains
are built to solve problems. They're built to learn from experience.
(10:43):
This is one of the ways that it does it
successfully and healthily is by looking at a moment, looking
at an experience that was uncomfortable, and learning from it,
but then moving past it. Rumination occurs when we can't
move past it, essentially, and so the act becomes less
about solving and more about problem dissecting, without that actually
(11:05):
leading to any kind of outcome. Another reason that we
ruminate is that we're trying to cope with difficult emotions.
When we're feeling sad, anxious, angry, whatever it is, our
brains look for ways to manage that discomfort. Obviously, they
don't want to have the unpleasant feeling. Sometimes rumination becomes
a default strategy, even if it's not effective, because at
(11:26):
least it feels comfortable, and it's a way to stay
internally focused rather than face the discomfort directly or by
engaging with the outside world. It allows us to deal
with the problem completely within us, and that means we
don't have to face, you know, perhaps a feeling of
embarrassment or shame, with sharing our anxieties, we don't have
(11:47):
to face yeah, whatever the outside world has to say
about our problem. Of course, another reason why we ruminate
is that a lot of us really struggle with uncertainty.
I know I do, right. I think it's one of
my biggest flaw. It's like, genuinely, it's my biggest flaw.
It's a huge reason why I think I'm so impatient.
If something feels unresolved or ambiguous, our mind might ruminate
(12:12):
in an endless loop to try and find some kind
of definitive answer or a feeling of closure that will
give us something concrete, to end with, something resolute, to
put a stop to the spiral. What we don't realize
is that very rarely will that answer actually be satisfying
once we get it. It's basically just a proxy. The
(12:35):
pursuit of an answer is a lie. There normally, isn't one.
Consider the example of someone being cheated on, you might
become You might obsessively ruminate about why. You want to
know why, why did you do that to me? Why
wasn't I enough? Why was this person better than me?
(12:56):
Whatever answer your ex gives you for why they did it,
why it happened. Why it wasn't your fault. It's still
going to hurt the same amount because the pain isn't
in the reason, it's in the fact that it happened. Right,
But whilst there's still this possibility of an answer and
of closure, we hold onto that idea. It's kind of
(13:16):
like a life buoy, like a life vest We hold
onto the idea that all the pain we're going through
could simply be explained away because that seems like a
much nicer idea than the real outcome and the real
thing that will happen, which is that we have to
work through this on our own, and we have to
work through this knowing that no answer is ever going
(13:38):
to satisfy the fact that what happened to us was
just painful. You know, an answer is always going to
be futile, but we can't give up on the fantasy
of an easy solution. You know, like any behavior, the
more we engage in something, the more we practice it,
the better our brain gets at it. You know, the
(14:01):
more you practice pitching a ball, the more you practice painting,
the more you practice solving a Rubik's cue. These are
all very weird examples, but you get what I mean,
the better our brain gets doing it. Same with rumination,
the neural pathways associated with these repetitive thoughts just gets
stronger and stronger over time. It's a very famous saying.
(14:22):
Neurons that fire together wire together. It's called long term potentiation.
This is what is happening when you can't stop ruminating,
when it feels like that is the first line of
defense against any problem that you do. You think about
it enough until hopefully it doesn't hurt anymore. Over time,
it can become an automatic response to stress, to a
(14:44):
negative mood, to minute challenges. You don't even consciously choose
to do it. It's just your brain going down the most
well worn path that it can because that is the
easiest way to move forward. So whilst rumination often starts
with seemingly good intentions to solve, to cope, to find closure,
to understand, it quickly turns into a self perpetuating cycle
(15:07):
that keeps us really stuck. You've really got to recognize
these underlying motivations that our brain is rolling out in
order to be able to gently redirect your thoughts in
the future. Something I haven't mentioned that I think is
really crucial just to quickly add in here. Rumination and
OCD are often very linked as well. Rumination can sometimes
(15:32):
manifest in a particularly intense form under OCD. In OCD,
rumination isn't just you're not just dwelling on everyday worries.
The thoughts become intrusive, they become unwanted, and they're highly distressing.
And these thoughts often clash with someone's deeply held values
(15:53):
and their sense of self. For example, someone with OCD,
you know, they might endlessly ruminate, obsessive ruminate over whether
they've caused someone harm, if they've left the stove on.
They might be plagued by really disturbing, unwonted thoughts of
a violent nature, of a sexual nature, despite having no
(16:13):
desire to act on them, they just can't help themselves.
A key distinction in OCD compared to just plain old
rumination is this compulsive element. An intrusive thought is often
followed by an action that attempts to soothe, so seeking reassurance,
double checking every single switch in your house, washing your hands.
(16:35):
But rumination itself could actually become the mental compulsion. Right.
Rumination is both the beginning and the end of a
mental and unhealthy mental loop. So the only way that
you find yourself being able to feel less distressed by
the fact that you can't stop thinking about something is
(16:56):
by thinking about it more. This is often known as
pure oh purely obsessional OCD as well, the thought is
both the obsession and ironically, it's also the compulsion. It's
kind of like what we were talking about before, you know,
thinking about something constantly might actually be kind of soothing.
(17:17):
It kind of offers temporary relief, even if later down
the line it becomes incredibly difficult to undo, even if
later down the line it becomes incredibly painful. So rumination
has a lot of ties to OCD. It also has
a lot of ties to depression. There is a specific
(17:39):
form of rumination known as depressive rumination that is a
core feature in the onset, maintenance, and recurrence of a
depressive episode. Basically, depressive rumination really focuses on self blame.
It focuses on perceived inadequacies, past failures, feelings of hopelessness,
and Unlike general rumination, which is often about a specific problem,
(18:01):
depressive rumination often has a very broad focus. It's dwelling
on questions like am I a bad person? What's wrong
with me? Why don't things go right for me? My
life is pointless? You know, this form of rumination often
shifts attention inward away from the external world. It's not
about conversations, it's not about specific events, It's about who
(18:22):
you are as an individual. So whilst in this episode
we really are focusing more on non clinical forms of rumination,
it is important to know that the underlying mechanisms of
how we engage with our thoughts do look differently when
they are in the context of certain mental health problems
like OCD, like depression. They take on a more severe element.
(18:46):
And so if that severe element of this is what
you're experiencing, it's really important that you reach out, you
get help. I want to be incredibly clear with you
right now. People can actually help you with this. You
might not think they can because you've dealt with it
by yourself for so long. People like there are people
(19:06):
out there who train many, many years just to help
you not have obsessive ruminating thoughts. I promise you you
will see a difference. It will get better if you
seek out professional help. Like I can almost promise that
for you, there is someone out there who can help
you with this. Okay, we're going to take a short break,
(19:28):
but when we come back, I want to talk about
how we can successfully overcome chronic rumination using some really
powerful psychological tools you may not have heard of. So
stay with us. We're going to return after this. It's
your break, all right, here's the deal. Here's the deal.
(19:52):
He though, if you want to gain mastery over your rumination,
you've firstly got to understand this thing called meta cognition.
Meta is in Facebook or Instagram, Meta is in beyond, above, higher,
so medicognition. This was a phrase coined by the psychologist
called John Flavelle back in the nineteen seventies, And essentially,
(20:16):
what it means is our ability to think about our thinking.
It's something that makes us uniquely human. It's something that
I don't think any other species can do. Essentially, medicognition
is your ability to be aware of and understand your
own thought processes in a way that is quite detached,
(20:36):
in a way that is observing rather than engaging, in
a way that lets you step back and kind of
see your thoughts and see the thought patterns that you
are having, almost as if they are an object that's
moving on a screen or someone else acting something out.
When you're ruminating, you are often incredibly deeply inside of
(20:59):
your thoughts. This is a problem because they feel like
they are everything, and that they are the final truth
about your life, and that they dictate everything, when the
truth is if you can engage in metacognition, you are
able to step outside of that and see that you
are not your thoughts. You just have thoughts. Those two
(21:21):
things are separate. You are not your thoughts, you just
have thoughts. This distinction is so vital. It's so vital
in interrupting the cycle of rumination because it stops you
from getting overly invested in something just because you think it.
It's like, just because you feel like a failure doesn't
(21:43):
mean that you are a failure. Just because you feel
like something terrible is going to happen doesn't mean that
it does. Just because you think that someone else thinks
something about you doesn't make it true. Your brain like
doesn't have that kind of power to control outcomes and
to control other people's thoughts, to control the future. It's
(22:06):
not a mind reader. It's not a future reader like.
That is the important thing that metacognition allows us to do.
It allows us to break the loop between feeling like
we are our thoughts and knowing that actually we aren't.
This kind of cognitive distance it really empowers us. It
gives us the choice to respond to a thought differently,
(22:27):
rather than being controlled by it. A very prominent therapeutic
approach that specifically uses metacognition. It's in the name. It's
called meta cognitive therapy. It was developed by a professor
known as Adrian Wells. The aim of this therapy is
basically to directly address rumination and worry by focusing on
(22:49):
how we think or out metacognitive beliefs, rather than simply
the content of our thoughts. So the perspective of this
approach is that psychological distress isn't called by negative thoughts themselves.
You're not actually scared of the thought. It's how we
react to those thoughts that is really what's concerning us,
(23:09):
particularly the fact that we feel we can't not think
about something think about it, no matter how scary a
thought is. If you could just decide not to think
about it, it wouldn't be that scary to you. It's
the fact that you don't feel like you can control
how you feel and how you think about a thought,
that turns it into a ruminating thought, that turns it
(23:31):
into a repetitive thought. So what we have to practice
is kind of moving from being a passenger on a
train of thoughts to becoming the driver, a driver who
is capable of applying the brakes, capable of changing tracks.
And this ability to observe and detach, unfortunately, is not
(23:52):
something we're born with, but it is a skill that
we can develop through deliberate practice, interrupting yourself when you
realize you're getting into that pattern, and importantly, not letting
yourself fall into a negativity bias through rumination. So essentially,
not always thinking that the worst case scenario is going
(24:13):
to happen, not always predicting that people are thinking the
worst of you. This is involved being able to say, Okay,
I'm ruminating and I'm obsessive about this thought, and I'm
worried about this thing because I think something bad has
happened or will happen. Is that the only possible outcome here?
(24:35):
What are the chances that the worst case scenario happens
every single time to me? Historically? You know, if you
look back at other times you've ruminated and things have
turned out positively. It's really helpful to remind yourself of
those things. It's also really helpful to say this is
one outcome, I'm going to give myself a list of
five hundred other outcomes that could be more positive. Another
(24:58):
way that I really try and control my ruminating thoughts,
because I get really bad rumination around death sometimes, is
that when I feel myself get into a spiral, I
go into my notes app and I explain to myself
why this is happening. I get super scientific about it.
I write down, you know, this is just anxiety. This
(25:21):
thought isn't more real than any other thought that I
am having. It's just my anxiety. Just because I'm thinking
it doesn't mean it's real. I know this is just
how my brain works. I know that it just doesn't
have all the information. I know that I'm just dealing
with uncertainty, and that my brain's solution for dealing with
uncertainty is just to make me so scared that I
(25:41):
feel prepared. Having that like clinical precision and rationalism to
why I am feeling fearful or why I can't stop
ruminating is really important. And as long as I am
getting worked up over a thought that I'm ruminating over.
I will keep writing in my notes, app explaining to
myself like a teacher, like a parent, why this is happening.
(26:03):
That this thought doesn't have any more merit just because
it feels big, bad and scary. It's just that my
brain's giving it more attention, and I'm not that thought,
and it doesn't make that thought more real. Building on metacognition,
we also have to understand a concept called cognitive fusion.
This is a key principle in acceptance and commitment therapy,
(26:25):
which is a type of therapy that really helps people
manage their thoughts and feelings rather than trying to change
them directly. Again, trying to change how we feel about
our thoughts, not the thoughts necessarily. Cognitive fusion basically describes
a state where we become fused with our thoughts, meaning
that we treat them as literal truths, as commands, as
(26:46):
deeply embedded parts of who we are. When we are
fused with the thought, we often lose sight of the
fact that it's just a collection of words or images
passing through our mind. We think that it's more important
than that. For example, if you have the thought I'm
an embarrassment or I'm cringe, and you're fused with that
thought because it's happened and run through your head so
many times, you experience it almost as a reality about yourself.
(27:11):
This often leads to the fact that we react directly
to the thought by withdrawing, by giving up, rather than
choosing a question it. Just because you have a bad
thought about yourself or about a situation doesn't mean you
can't have a better thought about yourself or a situation.
That initial negative thought has come from you, a better
(27:32):
one can come from you as well. In the context
of rumination, you know, cognitive fusion is really what is
keeping us trapped. When we are fused with repetitive, negative,
or uncomfortable thoughts like I'm unlovable or I'm stupid or
whatever it is, these thoughts feel like reality. The opposite
(27:54):
of cognitive fusion is cognitive diffusion. This is what we
want to pursue. Instead, involves seeing thoughts for what they
truly are. They're not facts. They're just your brain creating
ideas and creating situations and creating thoughts that challenge you
(28:16):
and that feel real to you, even though objectively they
might not be. In some ways, it's beneficial. It's our
brain trying to prepare ourselves for whatever reason it's happening.
The easiest way to intercept it is to say, actually,
what if I chose just to not believe this thing?
(28:37):
What if I chose to just not agree? I'm allowed
to disagree with my thoughts. They're mine, They're my freaking thoughts.
I'm going to disagree. I want to talk about another
exercise here that I do that I do all the
time that helps me a lot with this, which is
when I have a really bad rumination spiral and I
(28:57):
can't stop thinking about something, I tell myself that thought
hasn't come from me, It's come from someone else, specifically
this other person in my brain called Brian brain Brian.
To play on words, Brian, my brain is like the rational,
good part of me, who I love and who I
enjoy and who is joyful and gives me the capacity
(29:20):
to think and be open. Brian, on the other hand,
is the parts of me that are cruel, that are obsessive,
that are mean and nasty to myself. Brian is like
the little devil on my shoulder. And anytime I really
am getting stuck in a thought, what I always say
is like, oh my god, Brian is being such a
(29:41):
dick right now. Brian is really like getting in the way.
Brian is being a real nuisance. Brian is really letting
the team down. And it helps me create a cognitive
distance between myself and a thought. Stephen Hayes wrote this
book called Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life,
(30:03):
and he talks about a similar exercise where you can
also try and change a thought's presentation. So you can
imagine that your inner critic speaks in a really silly
cartoon voice, or you can like sing your negative thoughts
as a little song. You can imagine you know that
it's not Brian who's saying these negative things. It's your
(30:26):
childhood bully or some person that you really don't respect.
So if it's coming from someone you don't respect, you
feel like you don't have to listen to it as much.
You're just trying to change the presentation of this voice.
So it's not God likes doesn't feel like it's reality.
It's just you know, some creepy little person in the corner.
(30:46):
It's just some like weird little bully that lives in
your brain. You can also try and visualize your thoughts
as objects, So you could picture thoughts as things that
are floating down a river, a cloud, drifting across the sky,
something that you can just observe, acknowledge, and then move
on from. A twenty seventeen meta analysis actually found that
(31:09):
this technique of observation or observing your thoughts, of turning
them into something physical, giving them a sense of distances,
actually incredibly powerful. The reason that they said it's powerful
is because so many other ways of approaching rumination tells
you that you're not allowed or that you shouldn't have
negative thoughts. These perspectives tell you that it's normal. You
(31:33):
just need to make peace with them. Another thing that
I imagine when I have a lot of ruminating thoughts
or intrusive thought is I think about this thought being
like someone who's in my home. Like my brain is
like this big, beautiful, you know, four story house, and
it's got all this comfy furniture, and someone comes in
(31:54):
and it's this thought, and I can like really freak
out about this thought and be like, oh my god,
what are you doing here? Like what are you doing
in my house? And like panic and lock all the
doors and run around and that's gonna really like frustrate
the thought and make it feel more emboldened to be
in my house. Or I can open the door to
the thought and say, oh, hey, you're here, Come have
(32:15):
a cup of coffee, like, come sit down with me,
and you can just potter around like I know you're
in the house. I'm not gonna be like shocked when
you show up. I'm just gonna keep living my life
and I'm not gonna let you like ruin it. You're
welcome to walk around and sometimes I'll probably even forget
that you're there. Do you see what I'm saying, Like, basically,
you want to find a way that you're not like
(32:37):
scared of the fact that you're ruminating. You're just able
to detach from it. A closely related tool as well,
if you haven't already guessed, is mindfulness. I feel like
mindfulness is so often misunderstood. People think that it's like
meditation or just emptying your mind. People think that it's boring. However,
(32:58):
mindfulness is really just the awareness that arises through paying
attention on purpose and being in the present moment without
applying judgment to the present moment. That is the definition
that it was given by the Center for Mindfulness and Medicine,
like the pre eminent center for mindfulness, and I like
(33:19):
that definition so much more. It's basically just the art
of honing in on your senses and bringing awareness to
what is happening right now, whether it's in your body,
the sounds around you, the simple act of breathing. Now,
how does this help rumination? Rumination by its very nature,
(33:40):
pulls you away from the present into like these really dark,
scary caves in your mind. It may also drag you
into the past by asking you to replay events or
things that embarrassed you, or it propels you into the
future worrying about what might happen. Either way, it's not
(34:04):
present based. Mindfulness. On the other hand, is this light
attachment to the present moment. And when we kind of
walk into that channel of light, we're able to come back.
It's like your brain is a child who keeps running away,
and you're like, oh my God, like nah, like my
(34:25):
child is running away, and you're like you can freak out.
You just have to keep bringing them back until they stop. Right.
You just have to be like, all right, come on,
come back now, come back now, back to the present. Moment,
back to the present moment, back to the present moment.
You can keep trying to run away, but like I'm
faster than you, I will get you. That's what you
(34:45):
have to do with your brain. Mindfulness is actually more
powerful than rumination because it's deliberate. Rumination isn't always intentional,
mindfulness always is. It's kind of like there's a hierarchy
right in your brain of thoughts that take priority, and
a deliberate, intentional thought is always going to come out
(35:06):
on top. Mindfulness is like being the parent, the parent
to your brain, the parent who brings you back whenever
you were running away, whenever you are getting lost. Trust
me as someone who used to think that mindfulness was
too hard or was something that wouldn't work. It does.
It makes you the boss of your thoughts. It's also
(35:27):
super easy. It is something also that you build up
right starting with a minute, then going to a minute
in one second, a minute in two seconds, three minutes,
four minutes. It's a slow process. Mindfulness literally changes the
structure of your brain. It changes how your brain is activated,
(35:50):
what connections it seeks, how it thinks about problems. You know,
that's incredibly powerful, that kind of ability to deliberately change,
like the neural wiring of your brain is sensational at
its core. You know, rumination is really a problem of
uncontrolled attention. So whether it's mindfulness, meditation, grounding, essentially, we
(36:14):
want to make sure that our attention isn't only fixated
on internal distress and irrepetitive thoughts, it has somewhere else
to go, that there is control over our attention. You
know that we are making choices around what we want
to focus on. And if we can do that, that's
(36:34):
when we really are able to stop ruminating and just
observe our thoughts, which I know I've said a million times,
but also just like live with our thoughts. Let them
be the little visitors in our head that we acknowledge,
we say hi to, we don't panic about. We just
let them exist without needing to read too much into them. Okay,
(36:58):
we're going to take a short bak. I'm gonna let
some of those tips and tricks sit with you for
a little while. When we come back, we have a
few listener questions, some really good ones actually around heartbreak,
around intrusive thoughts, around so much more. So stay with us. Okay,
(37:20):
I'm back with some listener questions for this topic of rumination.
For those of you who don't know, if you follow
me on Instagram or follow the podcast on Instagram, I
should say at that Psychology podcast, I often share the
topics that we are going to be discussing in advance,
so you can ask any specific questions or dilemmas you
may have around that topic or idea for me to
(37:43):
answer in the episode, so you don't have to wait
till after it comes out for any further questions. So
make sure that you are following me at that Psychology
podcast so you can participate. But for this today's episodes questions,
let's start here. Hi, Gemma, is it possible to positively
(38:04):
ruminate or to make yourself only obsess over the good
things in our life? I feel like if I could
do that, I would be unstoppable. I love this question,
and we haven't talked about it at all, which is
my favorite kinds of questions when it's just like something
completely different. So there is this book called the I
(38:25):
think it's called The Upward Spiral, and I'll admit I
haven't finished it yet, but it focuses on exactly what
you're talking about. The ability to, I guess, ruminate only
about positive things. Now, it's not rumination because rumination, the
definition of it requires that the thought that we're obsessively
thinking about be distressing. It's basically I don't know what
(38:49):
other name to give it, but essentially, yes, you can.
You can combat downward spirals or rumination with upward thought spirals,
positive thought spirals upward with actions. It is possible to
train your brain to loop and focus on the good.
The thing is that it doesn't come as naturally as
negative rumination. Our brains obviously have a built in negativity bias,
(39:12):
meaning we're wired to dwell on what's wrong as a
way to learn from those moments and protect ourselves. But
just like rumination makes us spiral over perceived failures, fears,
moments of embarrassment, we can cultivate a kind of positive
rumination by intentionally revisiting our wins, moments of joy, things
we're proud of having. Like five minutes nowaday where we
(39:35):
just think about all the good things that have happened
in our life, where we just think about everything that
we are grateful for. Deciding that for every ruminating thought
we have to have a positive thought, we have to
list something that has brought us joy. Having things like
vision boards, positive affirmations or mantras on the background of
(39:55):
our phone, listening to really positive affirming music, listening to
my other podcast Monitor if you would like, all of
which can help us essentially have a more positive framework
and way of relating to the world. The thing is
is that it is something that will take time. It
(40:15):
is a conscious practice, a deliberate practice that you have
to invest a lot of energy into, but you can
be really successful with it, and the better you get
out of the more time you spend making this a
conscious thing that you do, the more that these positive
thoughts will start to feel as natural and self reinforcing
as some of the negative ones. So excellent question. Moving
(40:38):
on to our second question slash dilemma of the day.
This question slashallema comes from Caroline. My biggest problem with
rumination has been that it's made it very hard for
me to get over someone, specifically my ex someone I
know wasn't right for me, but they keep popping into
my head and I cannot stop myself going on over
(41:00):
and over mistakes, good moments, bad moments, even when it hurts. Firstly,
why do I do that when I know the relationship
was wrong, and how can I stop myself? Oh, Caroline,
I know exactly what you are talking about, And honestly,
I've always found it so strange that our brain chooses
(41:21):
to punish itself in this way, especially around breakups, especially
around the end of romantic love. It's like there's this bruise,
and we can't stop pressing it, like we have to
keep pressing it even when we know it hurts, almost
to remind ourself that it hurts. It's super weird. Let
me explain why this happens. First, we tend to ruminate
(41:42):
over people who aren't right for us, not because we
want them back necessarily, but because we are trying to
find closure, specifically the closure our brain's never got. Obviously,
it relates back to that primary reason that we ruminate,
to find a solution, to find comfort in our emotions
and to battle uncertainty. When a relationship ends, especially if
(42:04):
it was a relationship that left you quite emotionally confused,
or left you with unmet needs, or left you with resentment,
your mind ends up kind of looping around and around
and around. It ends up in looping mode. It searches
for answers. It wants meaning, it wants a different ending,
It wants closure because that packages up a thought that
(42:24):
we have or an experience that we've had very neatly
and allows it to kind of slot into place and
make sense. So essentially, the reason that this is happening
is that you are trying to solve a puzzle that
doesn't have a solution. The reason that your X keeps
popping into your head as well is because of these
things called memory pops or memory flare ups. Sometimes we
(42:46):
just have random thoughts that we don't want to have
because energy is just shooting through our brain in weird ways.
It's going down random pathways. It's you know, we're rearranging
neural circuits in the absence of this person, and it
means that all these memories and feelings are going to
sometimes bubble to the surface. Sometimes as well, you can
(43:07):
have these memory flare ups or memory pops around an anniversary,
around a significant date, around a significant place or location
or thing that you're visiting that reminds you of them.
It's not in it's not by any means indicative that
you should get back together, that you made the wrong choice.
It is just your brain trying to find an easy
way to make sense of what has gone on and
(43:29):
what has happened. The easiest way to combat this is
obviously to try some of the things you've already suggested,
but also to start engaging with more interesting things in
your life. Start giving your brain something else to entertain
it and think about, because chances are, because of how
emotionally salient and recent this experience was, it's probably the
most interesting thing to your brain right now. Your brain
(43:50):
is grasping on to the thing that's going to keep
it the most entertained. Change that give it something else
that's entertaining. Keep busy, find new hobbies, set a big
host relationship goal, something that I do my breakup routine.
Go and do every single doctor's appointment that you possibly
can that your insurance covers. Go to every life appointment,
(44:11):
health appointment, I don't know, beauty appointment, anything that you
haven't done in a while, And just fill your calendar
with self improvement, with recognizing your potential, with taking care
of yourself. Also really worth having a powerful affirmation or
a mantra that you can come back to that will
soothe you, something like I know that true love won't
(44:32):
pass me. I know that there is a lesson in
this that I may have to learn. I know this
is just expanding me as a person, just something, a touchstone,
a phrase to come back to to help keep you grounded.
Also worthwhile to listen to a whole episode that I
did on this titled how to get over someone you
can't stop thinking about. It's basically in our long answer
(44:53):
to this question. So good luck. I hope you get
through it all right. I think we're going to have
time for one more question today, only questions for this episode,
but this one I really really liked. How do you
tell the difference between ruminating and just reflecting or trying
to proactively problem solve? I feel like I think about
things a lot, but it's not always necessarily bad. Sometimes
it's very useful. This is a difficult distinction. You know,
(45:18):
we talked about it before, how rumination has this tricky
way of convincing you that it's actually problem solving when
it's not. The way to really tell the difference between
rumination and problem solving or reflection comes down to, I
think the intention around it and the emotional impact. Rumination
is repetitive, emotionally charged, it's also quite distressing, and there
(45:44):
isn't really a resolution contained in it. There's often a
real emotional impact that is rooted in fear, regret, self blame, anxiety,
and the more you ruminate, the worse you tend to feel.
Where when you are trying to actively work through something
and problem solve, the more you think about something, the
(46:05):
more you work through something, the better it feels there
is progress there. Healthy reflection is more curious, it's more constructive,
and there isn't as much pain when you reflect on
something and go back to it. Often the resolution is
that you do feel better. You leave a moment of
(46:25):
intense thinking with more clarity, with more peace, with some
kind of insight or shift in perspective. So the way
to really tell the difference is, are you leaving one
of these moments and feeling better or you're feeling worse.
Do you feel like you have somewhere or some kind
of solution to do or to follow or to pursue,
(46:48):
or do you not? Do you feel like your thinking
is action orientated or is just looping? I think that's
really the important distinction. Hopefully that answered your question. I
hope as well that this episode was useful to you.
If you have made it this far, please leave an
(47:09):
emoji that you think indicates overthinking, thought, spiraling, and rumination
in general. Mine is definitely like the wave emoji, not
like the hand wave, the ocean wave emoji, because I
feel like that is exactly what rumination feels like. You
like pop your head above the water and you're like, oh,
I think I figured this out, and then it's like smash,
(47:29):
like your back down. So hopefully you feel less like
that because of this episode and that you've learned something
you can apply something. Make sure to send this episode
to someone who you think could benefit from it, a sibling,
a colleague, a friend, a partner, someone in your life
who might ruminate a little bit too much. Leave a
five star review wherever you are listening. It does really
(47:50):
help others discover the podcast. Make sure that you are
following along and that you're following me on Instagram as well.
At that psychology podcast again for like the fiftieth time
in this episode if you want to be able to submit,
listen to questions, or just see what's coming up. What's
happening in the psychology of your twenties space Until next time,
(48:11):
stay safe, be kind, be gentle with yourself, and remember
you are not your thoughts. Talk soon.
Host
Jemma Sbeghen
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