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| Edited By: Birender Ahluwalia |Source: DNA webdesk |Updated: Oct 19, 2015, 10:02 AM IST
A study of women who detected a suspicious lump in their breast; found that women with ruminative tendencies waited 2 months longer than non-ruminators to schedule a breast exam.
Life is never ever perfect, and it will never ever be perfect. Negativity is a part of our life. Make no mistake, every one has negativity, and everyone on the face of this earth continues to face adversity. Women may detect a lump in the breast or men may find an inflamed prostrate. Adversities caused by fate are a part of our life.
Every single day we make mistakes. The mistake could be something as simple as getting up late or discovering that someone you trusted let you down, it could be not getting correct change at the ticket counter or making a bad investment decision. It could be because you have just been denied a promotion or been handed the pink slip.
Our brains are wired to assess the adversary at hand, to measure up and make a lightning-quick judgment of the impact it can have on us. Once it is identified our brain goes into a “problem-solving mode”. The first step to the solving process is reliving the event piece-by-piece, going scene-by-scene through all that has transpired. We hope that our analysis is balanced, wholesome and deliberate. We hope to be reflective and raise our level of self-awareness. We hope to find the root cause of the problem and maybe come up with multiple options as courses of meaningful future-oriented action.
Most of the time the brain jumps straight to, “Why did my supervisor make that face at me? Does he not respect me? I don’t have a future here”. “My boyfriend is a jerk, he does not respect me, I need to dump him”. “This always happens to me”. The scenes keep replaying in our minds. “I am gullible, I will never be in a relationship”. The thought process goes circular and spirals out of control. With every new level, the thought process becomes neurotic, intrusive and out-of-control. It leaves us feeling sad, angry, despondent and frustrated, or worse, with self-loathing, self-doubt and lower self-esteem.
This process of circular processing is called rumination. It is very similar to the regurgitation of a “cud” by ruminant animals such as goats, sheep and cows. We thing that we are thinking over a problem, when in reality, we are just regurgitating the same pattern.
Rumination is where you get trapped in a repetitive theme. It is a situation where you continue to review only your failing and start judging yourself.
There is no new information being presented, there is no debate and there is certainly no course of action. It always ends with the questions— Why me? Why am I always the bad guy? Why am I the only one being bullied?
Rumination is similar to worry, except rumination focuses on bad feelings and experiences from the past, whereas worry is concerned with potential bad events in the future.
You could turn a happy person into an unhappy person through rumination.
Why is rumination bad?
It is my suspicion that Sunday evening blues take hold precisely because we have enjoyed two days of pleasant sweet nothings, then boom! Rumination strikes.
Researchers Elizabeth Vandewater and Abigail Stewart followed women over a course of eleven years and found that women who tended to ruminate about their doubts and inadequacies were unable to convert their regret into positive life changes.
Sonja Lyubomirsky recommends an interesting tool called “Counterfactuals”. She recommends that reviewing your day, writing down at least one triumph or success, at least one foolhardy act and at least one stroke of good luck every day. Then mentally undo or unravel them. How did these events actually happen to you? What led to the stroke of good luck or misfortune? This might provide an important insight. You might find that the past misfortune was perhaps the stepping stone to a greater success. You might find that it was your own actions or maybe a kind act by someone else.
If counterfactuals do not work for you, you can simply thank your mind for thought, and then maybe even promise to think about it at a later time. Give your mind a little dose of gentleness and self-compassion.
If that does not work, maybe just call a levelheaded friend. Praying and meditation are also proven and effective strategies to combat rumination.
If that does not work or if you need a quick fix, just give your mind a much-needed break or a little delightful treat. Maybe try something new; play with your phone camera, try something that you have not tried before, solve the sudoku or crossword, make a trip to the gym or a five-minute walk with a friend. Maybe fire up YouTube and watch your favourite songs (with earphones). Any of these could work brilliantly. Make sure you do not reach for an unhealthy snack.
Slowly bring yourself back to the current moment and focus on what you are supposed to be doing. Research shows that just a simple distraction or a mini-treat is as effective in easing the mind away from rumination. It energises you, allowing you to bring focus back to the task at hand.
To conclude, your brain has this ability to process emotionally difficult experiences. Blocking out these difficult thoughts and memories is perhaps the worst strategy you could deploy. What is needed to overcome the gravitational pull of rumination is a healthy dose of self-compassion, a sense of kindness towards your own self to create some space from those pesky uninformative thoughts and transition into a space of concentration, focus and progress. Sometimes all you need to say to yourself is, “This thought is still running in my head and it making me feel anxious. I am going to be kind to myself. I have the ability to make things right”.
If you can, let your mind get on with what it does best for you— make progress and pursue goals that are meaningful to you, help you forge meaningful relationships, live life in the moment and live in happiness.
