How To Stop Ruminating

hello and thanks for watching I'm gonna talk about ruminating what it is and how to stop it so what is ruminating ruminating is going over an intrusive thought or thoughts again and again and again in your head without getting anywhere with it even though you work very hard at thinking about the thoughts you never come up with a solution or an answer to the problem you just keep going round and round and round in your head it's taking the thoughts analyzing them trying to take them apart trying to figure out what they mean about you as a person and again you never really get anywhere with it it just keeps going on and on now some people say they obsess over their thoughts that's not really true what they're doing is ruminating see intrusive thoughts only lasts a brief amount of time they pop into your head they're unwanted everything else that comes after that short intrusive thought is ruminating ruminating to me is the biggest compulsion there is suffers with all forms of OCD can ruminate even a sufferer with contamination issues who washes her hands frequently and harshly can ruminate over whether there are germs or not on her hands for hours and hours on end ruminating is a covert compulsion and it's the biggest covert compulsion there is and what I mean by covert is you can't see it anybody else in a room can't see you doing this compulsion they don't know you're doing it even though your mind is going at a million it's an hour its covert it's nothing that people can see for themselves now why stop it why stop ruminating well quite frankly ruminating is pointless it's a useless exercise because you never come up with an answer or a solution to the problem it just goes on and on a classic example is someone with sexual orientation OCD where they fear that they're gay but they always thought they were straight before a person like that can ruminate endlessly for hours and hours days weeks even months on the subject of whether they're gay or not and they never come up with a final answer no matter how hard they try no matter how long they think about it they never come up with an answer so it's it's a pointless exercise also ruminating is a compulsion it's the biggest compulsion there is and compulsions feed OCD this is very important to understand about compulsions including ruminating compulsions feed OCD your brain sends you intrusive thoughts now what you do about those thoughts is totally up to you but if you pay attention to the thoughts through compulsions such as ruminating you're basically telling your brain that you want to pay attention to this that this is important and so your brain says well I should send more of those kinds of intrusive thoughts in the future look how much energy he expended on that last intrusive thought I should send him more in the future and so that's what happened you first get an intrusive thought you pay attention to it by doing compulsions including ruminating and your brain sends you more intrusive thoughts which one which makes you want to do more compulsions which causes more intrusive thoughts and on and on so that's the best reason why you want to stop ruminating now ruminating seems automatic but you can learn to control it people slip into ruminating very very easily it seems like an automatic thing to do but it isn't quite automatic it can be reversed if you know the keys to to stopping ruminating now a first step to stopping ruminating is to give yourself permission to do it give yourself permission to stop ruminating you understand what ruminating is you understand why you want to stop it so give yourself permission to stop it give yourself permission to not come up with a final answer give yourself permission to not come up with a solution to the problem that was posed by the intrusive thoughts once you give yourself permission here's what you do the first thing you need to do is recognize that you are ruminating you have to catch yourself doing it and you may catch yourself thirty seconds after starting a minute five minutes or half an hour later it doesn't really matter but catch yourself doing it realize oh I'm ruminating I need to stop this the next step is to stop yourself tell yourself inside your head I'm not gonna do that anymore then refocus your mind onto something else other than ruminating and that can be anything that you happen to be doing at the time if you're washing dishes if you're watching a TV show you're watching a movie you're talking with friends who are over at your house visiting whatever the case may be you try to refocus your mind onto what's going on around you and get it off of the ruminating now you won't get it right right away as a matter of fact you will fail right away and you will keep failing for quite some time it's okay it's like tying your shoes you didn't learn that right away your mom or your dad or maybe both sat you down with the shoe on your foot and showed you how to take the laces how to make the little knot how to make the loops how to tie them up and everything and the first couple of times you tried it it didn't work and maybe it took 20 or 30 times before you finally got a really good bow tied on your shoes and then the next couple of times it didn't work out again and but you just kept doing it and doing it and you kept trying and eventually it started to become second nature to you and you figured it out and from that point on you were able to tie your shoes perfectly every time it's exactly the same thing when it comes to ruminating you're going it's not going to work the first I don't know how many times that you try it you'll try to stop ruminating you'll recognize that you are ruminating you'll stop yourself you'll refocus on to something else that you're doing and all of a sudden you go back to ruminating again so you catch yourself again you stop yourself and you refocus on what you're doing and this will take some time to do it you have to realize that by the time you've seen this video you've been ruminating for how many weeks months or years because you have OCD it's not going to get fixed overnight it's going to take some time to figure this out so keep trying keep working at it eventually you'll get better at it and you'll be able to put the stop on ruminating a thank you very much for watching if you want to get a hold of me go to OCD life dot CA you can also follow me on Twitter or Facebook OCD life CA

Channel: Dave Preston

Views: 51,218

Rating: 4.9327102 out of 5

Keywords: OCD, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, ruminating, ruminate

Id: qUFvvlnCvSg

Length: 9min 50sec (590 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 25 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/HiddenAntoid]

Absolutely excellent video. I'm totally saving the link for quick reference for future posters. Thanks for sharing!

[u/[deleted]]

This was SO helpful. Thank you tons for posting this, I needed this

[u/ladyboobridgewater]

Man I have been ruminating ALL day today and just watching this video an hour ago, and learning to watch out for sliding into that thinking and forgive myself for bot having the answer, is really helping me already.

[u/ja1118]

Wow! Thank you for posting this!