Rumination as a concept has slowly grown into a colloquial term. An evolving culture emphasizes conversations about mental health and reduces stigmatic beliefs, and can also dilute these conversations through repeated exposure. In becoming sensitized to terms and beliefs, rumination can sound commonplace or unexceptional at times, and I hope to provide a structure for understanding rumination, affirming the pain it induces, its role in functioning, and ways to reconcile its presence.
What is rumination?
Rumination is an experience of repetitive and often passive thoughts accompanied by distress and brief moments of perceived relief. Rumination is distinguished by its involuntary and compulsory nature; in a ruminative cycle, thoughts may be fast, sticky, ambiguous, and at large, focused on anticipated events and anticipated consequences, which may or may not be related to a person’s experience of their version of reality.
Rumination may also assign meaning to intrusive thoughts (it can be helpful to think of all thoughts as intrusive, finding similarities between dream states, dissociation, and other forms of consciousness). When an individual assigns meaning to a perceptible feeling, the body can decide the feeling is significant, thus requires attention to “resolve”. Part of the human condition is feeling hostile toward ambiguity in efforts to survive, and many people find they respond to inconsistencies in thoughts or perception with an unprompted exploration of plausibility. In a ruminative cycle, these thoughts gravitate toward repetition, an event ultimately defined by cognitive isolation where an individual attempts to seek enigmatic solutions to real or imagined stressors.
What does rumination do?
Rumination is employed as a way to actually decrease anxiousness, and many find rumination provides momentary feelings of relief. This is not so dissimilar to substance use, where ingesting a thought process (or substance) generates transient comfort, but the process of seeking reassurance through rumination actually exacerbates anxiety (builds tolerance and requires more). Rumination also increases cortisol levels, producing states of stress. If a person’s body is familiar with stress in their life experiences, rumination can feel compatible with a body’s homeostasis— as humans, we are wired to do the same thing over and over, to maintain an internal environment and have physiological balance. In this way, attempts to interrupt rumination can actually feel intensely stressful, especially if an individual is sensitized to hyper-vigilance.
What can I do to make this different?
• Ground the self in the immediate environment: say your name, touch your clothing, feel air on your face, observe nearby objects. Break up the cycle by tethering the self to environment
• Perspective: Expose the self to the thought as if it were true, and attempt to make peace with this version of reality, assuming there is no resolution; allow the uncertainty and ambiguity to exist
• Put it away: Permit the self to hold ruminative thoughts and write them down. Fold paper, place in pocket or away from sight, and revisit in 20 minutes. Tolerance for ruminative distress can feel like panic and a lack of safety, however allowing the self to sit with these sensations decreases the experience of rumination in teaching the body rumination is not a need, and one can survive without seeking conclusions
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