How to Stop Ruminating

hello my name is Douglas Bock welcome to your depression recovery channel where each week we talk about coping tools and strategies to heal from depression anxiety have you ever heard of the term rumination rumination illuminating something a cow does when it chews its food over and over again we depressives are very much like cows and then we don't chew our food over and over again but we chew our thoughts over and over again we ruminate on our thoughts and most of these thoughts are negative for example have you ever caught yourself thinking about the same thing over and over and over again it could be the breakup of a marriage or a job loss or a bad investment you made that went south just chewing these things in your mind over and over again things you deeper into a hole it actually reinforces circuits in your brain that are negative and makes you hard to get out of that hole that you have dug for yourself by chewing over those thoughts again and again and again visional analogy of this process is imagine digging a ditch and you're in the dish and you dig and you dig and you dig in the more you dig the bigger the ditch comes becomes and the more you're stuck in it so that's what ruminating does it's digging yourself into a ditch now if here's someone who does something like this I have a good news there's a very simple two-step process from look called the depression cure that I just read about that I want to share with you right now step one become aware of when you're ruminating develop an awareness at the rumination process you can do this by having a smartphone or a timer set it to ring once an hour and every hour check in with yourself and say how much have I been ruminating the last 60 minutes and put it on a 1 to 10 scale so for example if you've been lying in bed thinking about you know your relationship breakup for 50 minutes out of the 60 to give yourself an 8 on the other hand if you've been having a tea with a friend in the afternoon your rumination might only be - so again the first step is to become aware of develop an awareness of when you're ruminating and how deeply you're doing it this leads to step two okay you become aware of emanating you know how when you're doing it what you're emitting on you you're aware of the habit that's you know got to you you're aware of the ditch that you've dug yourself into the step two is based on a very simple but powerful fact that is that people tend to ruminate and tend to feel the worst when they have nothing else to occupy their attention I want to repeat that again people tend to ruminate the most when I have nothing else to occupy their attention you know how they say nature abhors a vacuum well if there's a vacuum your mind is going to straight to rumination so this means that the key to breaking the rumination habit is to turn your attention away from the inner world of thoughts and memories to the outer world of people and activities repeat that again turn your mind turn your attention turn your focus away from the internal world of thoughts and memories to the outside world of people and activities it's that simple and if you start to develop that habit you will start to break the rumination process so now we see the reason why the depressed person's natural attempt to withdraw and isolate is so harmful and counterproductive because they withdraw from the world of people they withdraw from the world of activities and this automatically puts them in the spot of rumination and so even though a lot of people feel that want to withdraw they want to isolate it's actually the worst thing they can do now when it comes to activities the best activities you can do or the ones that are shared with other people because we are mammals we have an emotional connection to each other we were raised as human beings and tribes I'll do a whole other video on a book called the general theory of love but basically connection and intimacy lead to healing isolation leads to the exact opposite activities that maybe won't involve other people but are still taking you outside of yourself can involve listening to music listening to a book on a tape watching a video or going for a walk in the park in both of these cases you're turning your attention away from the inner world into the world of activities and people into the external environment instead of the internal environment so either way you want to do it doing some solitary activities or activities other people activities with other people is definitely the best because other people draw you out of yourselves either way do those types of things and you will tend to less ruminate and feel better you might call these things distractions there's nothing wrong with distractions watching a video when you feel bad as long as you don't overdo it and use it as a way to avoid the world or or basically escape life this is Douglas Bach thank you for watching this video if you want to learn more about this work you can basically a go to healing from depression calm or you can subscribe to this channel by clicking on the link in the closing credits and until we meet again I wish you the best in your mental health recovery and remember do not spend too much time ruminating get out there focus on people focus activities engage with the world thank you very much

Channel: Douglas Bloch

Views: 226,947

Rating: 4.9431901 out of 5

Keywords: major depression, depression symptoms, anxiety disorders, depression help, help for depression, depression recovery, anxiety and depression, anxiety treatment, depression support, anxiety support, support for anxiety, dealing with depression, dealing with anxiety, coping with depression, help for rumination, depression anxiety, rumination disorder, rumination treatment, rumination depression, depression healing, healing depression naturally

Id: KlpYu2938cs

Length: 5min 36sec (336 seconds)

Published: Mon May 18 2015