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Dr. Chansky’s Rules for Ruminators

When I was writing Resolving the unresolvable: the difference between thinking and ruminating, I reached out to my friend Dr. Tamar Chansky, who is an anxiety expert, and founder of the Children’s and Adult Center for OCD and Anxiety in Plymouth Meeting, PA.to ask her advice on effectively managing or stopping rumination when you’re stuck in its teeth.

Below is a brief conversation and her tips.

AS: Could you please explain the difference between rumination and thinking?

TC: Rumination is the process of having repetitive thoughts that your mind gets you stuck on. They are usually about a negative situation—a past relationship or interaction, a mistake, or some unfinished or pending problem.

Different from thinking or processing, which can be productive, cathartic, and illuminating, ruminating causes distress because we are reliving only the direness of that situation. The focus on negativity makes us feel more hopeless and helpless. Yet, because the ruminative thoughts seem necessary, we keep doing it—even though it’s counterproductive and leaves us feeling more anxious and down.

AS: What’s the opposite of rumination?

TC: The opposite of rumination is deciding what to think about. When you choose your thoughts, you get somewhere, you get closure. When we’re thinking, thoughts wander freely through the mind; with rumination, we feel stuck inside thoughts that take up psychic space.

We don’t feel in charge of ourselves when we’re ruminating. Sometimes people can feel that it’s helpful to ruminate to be responsible, to analyze a painful event or relationship to try to gain a better understanding, but the retreading feels miserable, and the misery prevents any progress on the matter.

It’s like trying to iron and re-iron out every wrinkle—what’s the point? People often describe their ruminations as an inability to stop their brain—they are overthinking without access to a brake. They are in overdrive and feel trapped in their own head.

AS: What are some tips to move from rumination into productive thinking?

TC: The first step is to bring separation between you and the feeling that you need to be attending to those ruminative thoughts. We may believe there’s a purpose to the rumination, but spinning in place gets us nowhere.

Often we know that it is counterproductive and anguishing, but the brain won’t let go, and we find ourselves in a loop.

Below, I recommend a two-part way to bring the emotion and importance of the thoughts down to size so that you can step back, get perspective, and begin to break free.

Step one helps with perspective, and step two helps with practical steps.

STEP ONE: CREATING SEPARATION

1. Label it. One of the most important responses we can have in improving our mental health is accurately labeling what’s happening to us or what mode we are in. Practice “spotting” the rumination episodes you have and name them that: This is rumination. This helps bring awareness and mindfulness to what’s happening, and you can decide whether it’s useful.

2. Edit it. Rumination causes distress because you review “unfinished” and “unpleasant” thoughts. When you’re caught in this cycle, try to down-regulate your emotions. You can do this by changing the “fact-ness” of your ruminative thought back into a feeling. Instead of “I screwed up,” try “I’m having the thought that I screwed up.”

The goal is to disengage yourself from the rumination trap you’re ensnared in: When you say that something is OK (instead of: It’s terrible), that makes your hypervigilant brain less interested in reviewing it because it’s no longer stamped as a danger.

3. Don’t take the bait. The content of ruminative thoughts is very attention-grabbing—fear, failure, loathing, resentment, pending business—but you know that you could spend hours spinning and not get anywhere. Instead, imagine they are in your stream of consciousness, but you don’t have to pick them up out of the stream; you can let those thoughts pass by.

4. Translation, please! This may sound odd, but translating a “triggering” word or phrase into another language—thank you, Google Translate! drives a wedge between the thought and your emotions and can add some levity. For example, saying the ruminative phrase in another accent or singing it to a song (e.g., “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”) breaks the hold the phrase has on you.

5. Perhaps sarcasm? For some people who like sarcasm, it can help to add to your rumination phrase, “This is the VERY MOST IMPORTANT THING I NEED TO THINK ABOUT NOW!” saying that helps create distance by bringing out the absurdity of that idea—in the absurdity an opening appears and you can get yourself in the clear.

6. Schedule it. If you’re having trouble creating distance with the previous strategies, sometimes just scheduling rumination sessions can help create boundaries in your psychic space. Tell your brain, “I will think about this for two minutes at 5 p.m.,” rather than ruminating “on demand.” If the ideas come knocking at the door or barging in earlier than their appointed time, say, “Not yet, I’ll see you at 5 p.m.!”

7. Take some quiet time. Taking meditative breaks can help quiet the mind: Balance your inner picture by focusing on people or things you love or are grateful for—love and gratitude are the antidotes to fear and dread.

STEP TWO: BEING PRODUCTIVE WITH YOUR THOUGHTS

There’s a finding in cognitive psychology called “The Zeigarnik Effect,” which basically means that if the brain senses something is unfinished, it will keep it circulating until it feels done. It may be that ruminations are fragments of seemingly unfinished psychic business.

If you can process them, you can put them away for good, but we won’t settle them in the spin cycle—we need to look at the situation squarely in the eye and see if there is in fact anything else we need to do about it or learn from it. Here are ways not to get stuck:

1. Fact-check it. Write out the ruminative thought—and fact-check it for accuracy. Ask yourself, Is this the truest description of the situation? If not, what is?

2. Do a thought-status check. Ask yourself: Is there something unfinished that needs to be done either within yourself or between you and someone else to “finish” this thought? If so, what are the steps you need to take to have the courage to make those changes? Or is the situation finished but still spinning around your mind because it’s unpleasant and hard to accept?

If something needs to be accepted in your life story, remember we can’t control the things that have already happened, but we can begin to change how we respond to them. Our control is in deciding to work at accepting the things we cannot change.

3. Redirect your thoughts. You can think of this as distracting yourself, but I think of it as choosing to be in charge of your time and engaging in things that are meaningful to you. Have a list of things that you’d rather do than ruminate.

Some people get up and move (rather than be a sitting target), others will do something constructive like learn a couple of vocabulary words, and others may take that moment to change the tone and either use loving kindness and compassion for themselves or send a kind thought to someone else.

What you’re doing with these interventions is weakening and eventually breaking the cycle of negative thought leading to hours of ruminating, and instead, that trigger becomes a signal to you: Time to do something else!

4. Don’t go it alone! It can feel very isolating and self-undermining when ruminative thoughts creep into your life and take over. You may want to find a friend—perhaps even someone working on their own challenges—and text them when you need help so that they can keep you grounded in your true self.

You can encourage each other to take charge and change the negative patterns that have downloaded into your life.

AS: What’s the difference between worrying and ruminating? Or having anxiety and ruminating?

TC: Quick answer: Worry equals focus on future threats; ruminating equals perseverating or being stuck on negative content. Not necessarily threats but more negative events (which may or may not have actually occurred).

Through repetition, they become more and more convinced of their truth and the hopelessness of the situation. Both worry and rumination are symptoms of anxiety (and depression).

Worry and rumination are concerned with negative thoughts. Usually, worry is more open-ended (in the sense of endless negative possibilities)—we worry about the threat, harm, and dread.

Whereas rumination is more of a re-treading and stuckness about regret, failure, or what feels like hopeless situations; I often think about the fact that the physical definition of ruminating is regurgitation!

Rumination happens to people with anxiety and with depression. It's related to worry, but it has its own nature. Whereas worry is like a chain of events linked by worsening what-ifs, rumination is more like being stuck in a room with no windows or doors, and your thoughts of a negative situation or accusations about yourself just reverberate off the walls.

The more you stay in that room, the more reverberation of those thoughts happens, and the more convinced you are of the thoughts and their power: "I'm a failure," "People hate me," "It's going to be cancer."

While worry doesn't always lead to hopelessness, it always leads to being more anxious about facing what you fear. Rumination, on the other hand, generally makes people feel hopeless because there's no perspective or input, or way out. That's why it's essential to label it when it’s happening, "Ruminating!"

You can use strategies to get yourself out of that dark room and let the light in of perspective, proportion, or even move forward to take action.

Even if something that you are ruminating about is true—"She broke up with me," "I got fired,"—you need to help the brain move along in the story of your life. She broke up with me, or I got fired, and now I'm figuring out what to learn from that and what to do next.

Especially when it's true, we need to help the brain not get us stuck at the worst part and instead nudge it along on our path forward.

So, there you have it: a formative and comprehensive list for getting out of your head and into the world. Let me know if you put any of these into practice, and how it went for you!

And you? What are your tips and tricks for combatting rumination? Let me know in the comments!

Until next week I am…