What Is Mental Rumination And How To Deal With It Effectively
Mental rumination is a psychological phenomenon that appears as a symptom in several of the most frequent psychopathologies, although it can also occur as a form of discomfort in people free of disorders.
In fact, most people experience this alteration at some point in their lives, to a greater or lesser degree, and there are those who have to face it on a relatively regular basis. Luckily, there are several things we can do to put a stop to this unpleasant experience, and to manage it so that it does not become a factor of wear and tear on our mental health.
In this article you will find different solutions to the question: How to deal with mental rumination? But first of all, let’s start by defining this concept.
As we have mentioned before, mental rumination is a psychological alteration linked to a feeling of discomfort but which does not constitute psychopathology in itself. In fact, it is commonly present in cases of psychological disorders as widespread as depression or generalized anxiety.
But let’s be more specific: what is the annoying or even emotionally painful element of mental rumination? This phenomenon manifests itself through the tendency to suffer intrusive thoughts with the capacity to disturb us in one way or another and which we cannot “expel” from our heads even though we feel we need to stop thinking about them.
The frustration generated by mental rumination causes a vicious circle to occur: discomfort leads us to continue desperately trying to get away from those ideas or images that appear in our consciousness, and that makes it easier for them to return to us again and again.
However, mental rumination should not be confused with rumination disorder: the latter is part of the eating disorders and consists of an almost literal rumination of the food ingested, so it has nothing to do with the topic we address in this article.
Characteristics of this phenomenon
The characteristic aspects of mental rumination are the following.
1. Intrusive thoughts have a painful emotional charge
If an idea that comes to mind again and again does not seem unpleasant, frustrating, sad or anxiety-inducing in some way, we cannot speak of mental rumination.
2. It is often associated with guilt
Intrusive thoughts often have to do with memories that make us feel guilty. in some way. For example, someone who keeps remembering what happened one day when he greatly disappointed his best friend.
3. It usually causes sleeping problems
The moments when we try to fall asleep are a magnet for the type of mental content on which mental rumination is based. If anyone experiences this phenomenon, It is very likely that a good part of the time in which your attention is focused on those intrusive thoughts occurs while you are in bed.
How to face this problem?
Follow these tips to prevent mental rumination from affecting you too much.
Mindfulness is a set of very useful exercises to manage the emotions that we usually consider “negative”, and it is also easy to learn. In fact, many teams of psychologists focus a good part of our activity on the use of this therapeutic resource, both in sessions with patients and in courses and workshops that we organize.
In short, Mindfulness takes us to a state of consciousness in which we focus on the here and now, without letting obsessions or worries drag us down and make us lose control.
2. Do moderate exercise
Exercising is a very good way to disconnect, because it directs our attention to very specific bodily sensations and very short-term goals. In fact, much research shows that Aerobic exercise is an excellent anxiety reliever.
3. Use the thought stopping technique
This is a technique widely used in psychology when managing problems related to anxiety, although it needs to be repeated (that is, practiced) several times to benefit from its effects.
When you feel that mental rumination begins to express itself, go to a quiet place and spend a couple of minutes thinking about those mental contents deliberately; When a time comes, you must have planned ahead by setting a time limit, say a key word that you associate with the cessation of the movement of your flow of thoughts : for example, “End” or “Enough”, and let that concept freeze your mental activity. Once this is done, you can continue with what you were doing.
4. Don’t try to completely block unpleasant thoughts
It is one thing to try to stop the torrent of thoughts to stop the inertia of mental rumination, and another thing to try to specifically eliminate painful mental contents; the latter is impossible, and If you try, you will not only get frustrated, but you will also be feeding mental rumination.
If you are thinking about starting a psychotherapy process to treat a psychological problem that is affecting you, whether based on psychopathology or simply based on a pattern of dysfunctional behavior (poor management of arguments, coping with a relationship crisis, etc.), please contact us. In Psychotools We have many years of experience caring for patients, we offer our services both in our psychology center located in Barcelona and through online therapy by video call. On this page there is more information about how we work and our contact details.
