Tips To Break The Rumination Cycle

In the last post I covered what rumination is and why we do it. To do a quick recap, rumination is your mind cycling over and over again around the same problems that are bothering you. Rumination either comes about because of some difficulty that feels unsolvable or simply due to boredom.

So, in those times you've found yourself still stuck in rumination, what do you do? Well, first of all, really check - are you just bored? If so, seriously, find anything to do to get yourself moving towards activity. Take a shower, dress yourself up, go get coffee, draw, paint, dance, sing, anything!

So, assuming you are still reading to learn about problem-related rumination, here are two tips.

First, help your brain practice solution-oriented thinking. Start looking for the potential ways your problem might go away. Start practicing taking other perspectives and adopting other ways to explain your situation.

Let's use an example. Let's say you are ruminating over financial worries. Something hasn't come through or you're worried about paying bills or your spending habits. This is a very common topic for rumination. Typically what happens is you spend lots of time focusing on all the ways you are low in money, all the ways it's impacting your life, and all the ways it can get worse. You start forecasting what the future will look like and it typically looks bleaker than today. Yikes. Let's practice getting out of that rut. At this point, some people would recommend affirmations. I'm going to not recommend affirmations and here's why.

Affirmations more often than not just feel fake. It's not realistic to expect yourself to jump from a state of powerlessness and fear to happy-go-lucky and care-free. You have to gradually work yourself in a relieving direction, using thought retraining exercises that are based in believable statements. If you spend time forcing affirmations in your mind, it just prolongs a state of uncomfortable denial and rejection of your true emotions.

So, instead of affirmations, ask yourself questions.

• What if everything worked out? What might that look like?
• What if everything's OK right now?
• What if there is something here that is helpful for me to learn?
• How can I find something useful in this situation?

Start there and keep asking yourself flexible and even playful questions like these to help open your mind to creative possibilities.

Notice how your feelings change when you ask and answer these questions.

Another way to break the cycle of rumination is to practice present-moment awareness. When we're ruminating we are anywhere but in the present-moment. We are in the past, agonizing over something someone did or over something we did or didn't say. We're analyzing the intentions of others and what they meant. And if we're not in the past, we're in the future. Predicting all sorts of bad things coming our way, getting all worked up and pessimistic about our chances of happiness and peace. Again, the reason for this is because our minds are natural problem-solvers. 

However, you can help your mind gain bigger muscles in present-moment awareness through mindfulness exercises. Here are several kinds of mindfulness exercises you can do to increase your ability to focus on the present:

• Sense Immersion
• Choose a physical object and sit down with it. Spend 10 minutes attending to this object. What does it look like? What does it smell like? How does it feel in your hands? What is the texture like? How does the light hit it? Notice all these and many more details. Notice how your perception of the object changes as time passes. Notice the difference between this level of perception and how you usually perceive the object when you are simply passing by it through your day.

• Thought Observation
• Imagine yourself lying down in a field of flowers. You look up at the sky and watch the clouds float by. Each time you notice a thought, "place" it on a cloud above and watch it float by. If you find yourself hooked in by a thought, gently acknowledge that it caught you up, and place it on the next cloud you see. Do this for at least 10 minutes.

These exercises will help you increase your ability to focus on the present moment. The present moment is truly your only point of power. 

 In addition, the greater ability you have to get some distance and observational skills towards your thoughts, the better you will be able to notice thinking errors that get in your way and block you.  Feel more, do less. :)