rumination | combatting repetitive thoughts [cc]

[Music] hey [Music] for lots of people who experience abuse and trauma from religious to occupational to domestic a common symptom they wrestle with is rumination perpetually dwelling on their experience this symptom can last for weeks months sometimes years i want to explore this psychological trap and look at various ways of extracting ourselves from it in broad terms rumination is defined as the process of thinking deeply about something or the product of that thought and in ordinary circumstances there's no harm in this kind of immersive reflection we use it to acclimatize to new information and situations for example in bereavement where thinking intensely and repeatedly about what we've lost allows us to adjust to the new reality we use rumination to make complicated plans and solve problems it can help us overcome the errors we often fall into when we rely on more simplistic emotionally driven reflex thinking the biases the prejudices the habitual mental shortcuts we take the cloud and distort complex realities in its positive form rumination can lead to insight and progress it's the morbid form that leads to problems when we find ourselves circling endlessly and unproductively around negative thoughts images mistakes encounters like a deeply scratched vinyl record we skip back to the same position looping around the same groove never moving forward frida constantly replays memories of an abusive relationship she recalls various scenes from the relationship and imagines herself responding differently shouting back angrily and standing her ground whole afternoons evenings nights can be swallowed up internally rehearsing a single incident that lasts barely a minute and that frieda's revisited countless times before roger frequently experiences nightmarish thoughts of a magical realm of eternal torture that he was told existed after death as a child he was fed vivid fantasies about the terrible punishments awaiting people there like being starved and taunted with food they couldn't reach or being made to jump off high cliffs then having their smashed bodies restored just so they could jump again forever roger was told that he was born with a sick nature and deserved this torture and that his only hope of escaping it was to beg forgiveness for his imperfect thoughts and imperfect actions only after his death would he learn if he'd done enough grovelling since childhood rogers struggled to meet the paralyzing expectations imposed on him brooding incessantly on his shortcomings obsessing over possible negative consequences to his actions fearing the forbidden thoughts that could flash uninvited into consciousness at any moment joanie lives far away from her abusive father that distance and her hectic work life have given her a plausible excuse to minimize contact she only sees him at large family events where she can avoid being alone with him the one form of contact she still struggles with are the letters they continue to send each other seeing one of his arrive her body will flood with adrenaline she'll open it with shaking hands reading it the world will disappear nothing else will exist but his words which will seesaw between pathos and unbridled persecution one moment piling on frailty and vulnerability with a trowel the next firing savage accusations at johnny scapegoating her for his problems the letter will preoccupy her for days these ruminations leave joanie freda and roger feeling churned up disconnected from their lives and stuck firmly in the past the irony is that for all three of them rumination began as a coping strategy for many people rumination seems to offer some kind of comfort at first for roger who would experience huge spikes of panic and anxiety in response to some perceived shortcoming rumination would initially have a dampening effect on his emotions as punishing as it felt dwelling on thoughts of worthlessness gave him a degree of psychological shelter from the sharper feelings but eventually raw from his compulsive mental self-flagellation he would trade anxiety for depression for freda who felt like a powerless doormat in her past relationship reimagining herself as the angry victor made her feel powerful for a while the anger was intoxicating and addictive and she would rehearse her fantasies over and over to sustain the high as she became aware of the hours slipping by she'd start promising herself the next repetition would be the last and she would repeatedly break that promise unable to stop herself she would gradually succumb to feelings of intense powerlessness for joni who would feel immobilized by her father's letters rumination would initially offer her an illusion of hope but maybe this time she'd think of a game-changing response that would set them on a different track but for every idea that came to mind she'd see how he could twist it against her she knew how a single innocent word could be loaded with false poison slowly exhausted from futile overthinking she would sink into despair many abused and traumatized individuals intuitively believe rumination is somehow helping them cope but the evidence points in the opposite direction rumination is often the gateway to much bigger problems a substantial body of research suggests that far from doing any good rumination plays a significant role in both the onset and the maintenance of various mood-related problems involving anxiety stress compulsions and depression studies have highlighted some of the specific features of rumination that pull us down these pathological paths investigating the role of rumination in post-traumatic stress disorder tanya michael and colleagues note that patients often focus on open-ended unresolvable why and what if types of questions instead of the actual traumatic experience edward watkins and colleagues have reported similar findings in the areas of anxiety depression and impulsive behaviors they found a significant determining factor in the experience of these problems was whether the individual engaged in concrete or abstract rumination concrete rumination involves gathering clear discernible details observable facts quantifiable evidence we confine ourselves to what actually happened with abstract rumination we drift away from facts and start contemplating questions that have no definitive answers we become preoccupied with possibilities possible meanings possible motives possible consequences the possibilities are endless and debilitating concrete rumination addresses the specific context of a situation if we fail a task we try to identify the specific factors that led to that particular failure by doing that we get the chance to learn from it and move on abstract rumination works in the opposite direction removing context and distorting information into broad generalizations if we fail a task we generalize it into a personality trait we become a failure we can't do anything right we might also apply generalizations to other people if friends are unable to fit in with our plans perhaps because they're dealing with their own personal demands or struggles we dismiss that context and label them selfish and uncaring abstract rumination globalizes our negative experiences we convince ourselves that something that happened once will always be the case and has always been the case these distortions prevent us from learning and leave us with a sense of hopelessness unlike the more systematic focus seen in concrete rumination with abstract rumination is often a haphazard butterfly focus individuals hop around from thought to thought from memory to memory in a disorganized way never stopping long enough to see anything through to the point of resolution because of this vague processing past experiences of significantly different natures get blurred together into false patterns eventually individuals become overloaded with unresolved thoughts and feelings abstract rumination magnifies and prolongs negative states like a black hole it consumes vast amounts of energy and offers no light just an expanding sense of darkness to combat abstract rumination we need to put our thoughts in their proper place even when we're not ruminating we often give our thoughts quite staggering power and control over us as children we're often taught to view our thoughts as reflections of who we are we learn to equate our thoughts with our identity even the most random notions that pop into our heads feel like a comment on our deepest self if uncharitable thoughts cross our minds it means we're wicked even if we never act on them some religious groups push this misconception further with the concept of thought crime merely thinking about doing something becomes the same as doing it oddly this only seems to apply to bad thoughts there's no positive equivalent of full heroism for good thoughts fantasizing about giving vast amounts of money to charity isn't considered the same as doing it equating thoughts with actions gives them a completely fraudulent power status the concept of magical wishes elevates that status further now our thoughts make things happen magical wishes are a source of false hope and often great anguish sometimes in a moment of anger we might wish for something bad when our anger passes instead of viewing our wish as a momentary expression of mental frustration we worry it's had some physical effect on the universe in these and other ways we let our thoughts push us all out of shape breaking the powerful emotional hole their thoughts have over us means changing our relationship to thinking the concept of distancing refers to the exercise of standing back from our thoughts and viewing them from a detached perspective john powers and kevin lubar noted various kinds of distancing they used the example of feeling hurt by a criticism from a co-worker we could use objective distancing imagining how the criticism might be viewed by a neutral third party temporal distancing involves imagining the criticism happened years ago with hypothetical distancing we'd imagine the incident was a theoretical situation instead of a real one distancing removes us from the emotional impulses of the moment that can distort and block our processing and allows us to consider different responses as we exercise more detachment from our thoughts we can exercise more choice over which thoughts we engage with when the thoughts pop into our heads we often automatically give them our immediate attention if people turned up a house uninvited we wouldn't automatically let them in we'd ask ourselves is it a convenient time for us what are these people here for is it pleasure business some emergency we'd decide whether or not we wanted to invite them in thoughts are like guests in the houses of our minds we can choose which ones we open our doors to and which ones we decline to entertain just like human visitors who refuse to take no for an answer we might find that some negative thoughts persist in trying to push their way in and get our attention in tackling them it's important to recognize the difference between resisting them and dismissing them there might be a natural temptation to try and expel persistent thoughts from our minds by force to try and lock them out with sheer willpower when we do this we create an internal conflict that sets us up for failure and frustration if someone says don't think of a chair what are you most likely to think of when we try not to think of something we're asking some part of our brain to keep track of the thing we don't want to keep track of it's like handcuffing ourselves to something then trying to run away from it the more defenses we put up the more frustrated we get when the thought continues to break through them the more power we give the thought over us we drift into a fearful position dreading its return in contrast when we dismiss a thought instead of trying to block it out by force we accept that the thought exists and simply choose not to give it any energy some people find it useful at the start to speak directly to the thought to say something like i acknowledge your existence but i have no use for you or i know you'd like some of my time but not today because we're not working against ourselves we preserve internal harmony because the persistent thought no longer arouses anxiety or frustration it loses power and we maintain an emotionally neutral position eventually starved of attention the uninvited thought will fade away and we won't even notice recognizing that we can choose which thoughts we give our attention to means we always have the option to simply disengage from any persistent negative thought at any time and stop rumination in its tracks building on that i want to look at some ways we can help to permanently uproot negative thoughts and restore the balance that rumination disrupted [Music] [Applause] in some cases of rumination our thoughts don't correspond to any real problem we're wrestling with an illusion we can end this kind of rumination permanently by debunking the hollow idea or belief that's kept us stuck this involves cultivating our inner lawyer and shifting from abstract to concrete processing roger was tormented by the possibility of a magical realm of eternal torment his indoctrinators had injected him with an unanswerable question a torturous what if when zealots ply us with horrifying magical what-ifs we need to be very clear about what they're doing they're trying to plant an anxiety inside us that we can't resolve when we start down the path of what ifs there's no end to the available horror whatever nightmare possibility we imagine we can always imagine something worse we can always add more horror the fear we feel contemplating those what-ifs isn't a response to any real danger it's a response to our own imagination roger's recovery from rumination began when he reigned in his imagination and shifted his focus to discernible details and identifiable facts when he changed the what if into a what is the fact was his indoctrinators had never offered any persuasive evidence for a single one of their claims that simply subjected him to magical fear-mongering let his mind run wild and in his terror he'd surrendered his rationality now with rationality restored roger's inner lawyer dismissed their case on the grounds of total lack of evidence while roger's rumination was ultimately based on an illusion for many others the focus of their rumination is very tangible like joanie's father sometimes we get stuck ruminating on a problem because we keep using the same fixed approach we need to reframe the picture view it from another angle as noted before with abstract ruminations we're often viewing situations through a distorting lens of broad generalizations when we need to be looking at specific contexts in joni's case she assumed everyone was fundamentally amenable to reason and as long as she continued to view her father from that fixed angle she continued to exhaust herself trying to reason with him her rumination ended when she allowed herself to view him from a different angle as someone who wasn't open to reason from there everything fell into place abusers come in a variety of forms some act like five-year-olds often because in some important developmental terms that's what they are children some abusers are like histrionic actors generating endless melodramas and casting themselves in the starring role often as some noble unappreciated victim joanie realized this was what her father was doing he had no interest in listening to reason he was focused purely on hunting for grievances to create his dramas when joni recognized this she stopped taking his letters seriously whenever they arrived she would read them aloud in the style they were written like a shakespearean tragedy instead of a source of stress they became a source of entertainment she continued to write back occasionally but kept her replies brief and wasted no unnecessary thoughts on them when we get stuck in one perspective seeing things from another angle can be a transformative experience another way to step out of rumination is to give our thoughts and feelings some external expression many writers say they can never discuss a project with anyone until it's completed talking about it before it's done takes away the drive to see the project through they no longer feel the need to tell the story because by sharing it with someone it feels like it's already been told in the same way the drive to ruminate often subsides when we find some way to get our thoughts out of our heads where they just go in circles and give them some external expression there are many ways to do this keeping journals using some creative medium like painting or music some people use what's called the empty chair technique they imagine the person they're ruminating about sitting in front of them in an empty chair and say whatever they need to say for some targets of abuse writing letters to their abusers really purges their minds of a lot of pent-up material for people who do choose to write letters a word of caution don't ever send them it's not about engaging with the abuser it's just about releasing our thoughts some people burn or shred their letters some post them back to themselves whatever works for you it's worth saying something here about expressing anger anger is an important and valuable emotion it can give us strength and motivation to combat real abuse and sometimes we can lose ourselves in it frida's angry reinventions of past scenes with her abuser made her feel strong but kept her from moving forward her anger made it easy for her to see all her problems as someone else's fault it also prevented her from recognizing and processing the softer feelings that her anger was covering feelings of hurt and vulnerability it was when freed was finally able to express her full range of feelings that she began to free herself from the past activity can be a great preventative measure against rumination not necessarily in the way we might intuitively think some people use activity as a distraction technique but this doesn't always help because we're using activity as a kind of resistance an attempt to push thoughts away it can end up arousing more anxiety activity helps to restore balance to our lives rumination can lead to prolonged periods of inactivity preoccupied in our thoughts we put off social engagements we fail to plan recharging breaks we neglect ourselves we stop doing the things that might help to lift us out of our mood as days of inactivity begin to mount up our rumination becomes self-feeding all we have to look back on are days of unproductive thought activity helps to break up that self-reinforcing pattern it gives our days distinctive texture and stimulates our thinking in other areas again a word of caution when we're starting to re-engage with activities after long periods of rumination it's easy to fall into self-defeating internal dialogues we might think to ourselves this used to be more fun why am i not enjoying this as much as i used to instead of making negative comparisons with the past just focus on what the activity is giving you right now which brings me finally to mindfulness the state of focus on the present moment mindfulness is about becoming aware of the here and now observing our thoughts and our sensory experience in a state of detached curiosity instead of becoming entangled and defined by our thoughts and emotions we watch them come and go without attachment we view them as the fleeting experiences they are if we find ourselves going off into the past or the future we just notice that that's happened and bring ourselves back to the present if we become aware of any critical inner voices telling us we're doing a bad job of this mindfulness stuff again we notice it without engaging with it through mindfulness we can learn to direct our attention purposefully and calmly instead of allowing ourselves to be yanked around passively by random butterfly thoughts and feelings research has shown that regular mindfulness exercises can have a huge positive impact on rumination and mood disorders of course there'll be times in all of our lives when we have to face painful thoughts and feelings times of conflict and abuse times of loss and bereavement and allowing ourselves to feel the pain of those moments is an important part of processing them but if we find ourselves descending into downward spirals of morbid unproductive thought there are measures we can take do's and don'ts to halt and reverse that descent and overcome rumination [Music] foreign

Channel: TheraminTrees

Views: 346,521

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Id: o1G4JFuLlO8

Length: 26min 26sec (1586 seconds)

Published: Sat May 01 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/NorthernBones23]

It's hard for me to think of internal issues "differently" but this really helped. I know I get stuck on stuff but I didn't know how to put it into words. This did that.

[u/zethlington]

I thought these were wedding cakes in the thumbnail

[u/crabmuncher]

Thank you! Excellent and concise video on the subject.

[u/shluugorgh]

Thanks! This is good