The Antidote to Ruminating! 2

One of the things I learned in my psychotherapy training is to be curious about my thoughts and emotions.   As a result, I now bring a new response to strong emotion and things that trigger me and elicit negative reactions…  I bring compassion and inquiry.

Rumination – Overthinking & Over-analyzing

I am the first to admit, I am notoriously guilty of over-thinking.  In the past, I’ve dealt with this by catching myself and then basically telling myself to stop and to turn it off.  I would avert my focus back to my breath and to my body. While this worked in the moment as a conscious choice to stop ruminating, it didn’t help me to ruminate less overall.   I needed to find something that could stop the ruminating from occurring in the first place.

What you resist, persists:

It is my belief that feelings will keep returning despite our attempts to bury them, distract or numb ourselves from feeling them or any other avoidance strategy. We need to FEEL the feelings to get through them.  We can’t go over, under or around them.  So here’s what I discovered:  my ruminating comes from deeper underlying feelings that are not being dealt with.

Try this:

Next time you catch yourself ruminating (replaying imagined scenarios, conversations in your head or stewing about what you should have, could have or would have done…  or what might happen… or whatever it is from the past or imagined future that you are obsessing about),  I want you to catch yourself and instead of stopping it or distracting yourself from it, I want you to question what is the underlying feeling.

Is it fear or a feeling of being unloved?  Even anger is usually indicative of the deeper feeling of fear. What are you afraid of?  Can you acknowledge that your rumination is coming from a deeper place of fear or of feeling unloved?  From a place of hurt?

Acknowledge the underlying feelings.  Have compassion for yourself.

Your inner dialogue might go something like this:

Wow.  This is me being afraid of big changes in my life.  That is understandable.  It’s ok and normal to feel this way.

Give yourself acceptance and non-judgement.  Do not label your emotions as bad. Do not condemn yourself.  Give yourself the gift of patience, compassion and self care.  Love yourself. Just as you would a child who was hurt or afraid. Have that gentleness with yourself.

Do things that are good for you during times of challenge.  Give yourself a bath. A yoga class.  A nap.  Give yourself a hug.

Next time you are obsessing, try this and put a stop to your ruminating once and for all.