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Tips for stopping ruminating


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Does anybody have any good tips for stopping ruminating? I've had success in the past with stopping other types of compulsion but I find it incredibly difficult to stop myself doing this, and doing it often feels like blocking my thoughts ("white bear syndrome").  A lot of the advice you read on OCD addresses other compulsions without any clear guidance on this one, which to me seems slightly different to other types of compulsions, especially more physical ones.

A slightly different question I have is how this fits with ERP.  The only way I have been able to really stop ruminating is by directing my attention elsewhere (like in Brainlock) but this seems very different to carrying out ERP which involves focusing your attention on the fear. 

I have recently read some good advice on this forum which says something like "don't give the thoughts any importance, just carry on with your day" - which seems intuitively correct, but again I am not sure how this fits with ERP which involves doing the opposite, giving the thoughts all your attention (albeit without responding to them).  I have never fully understood the exposure aspect of CBT if I'm honest.  

Many thanks!

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I have ideas on this but putting it in to words is difficult. I think most importantly you need to work out why you are ruminating. What is your brain trying to work out? When you establish that then it may be possible to come up with exposure exercises to help with rumination. 

Rumination is a compulsion trying to make right a feeling that something is wrong, usually there are behaviours that people engage in that make the process of rumination come about more often. So try looking at checks or avoidances you may be doing that actual increase the likelihood of rumination too.

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Thanks Gemma, that's really useful I hadn't really thought of it like that, looking at the behaviours around rumination and addressing those as part of exposure.

Another question I have is around "imaginal scripts" which you often hear recommended as a type of exposure.  I have tried this in the past and it has been horribly counter-productive.  This could well be because I've been doing it wrong.  I have had far more success with switching my attention elsewhere and refusing to go down that road.  In my experience it's not like I have to make a special effort to deliberately expose myself to my fears like this - they are there constantly anyway! The effort is in stopping my compulsions. Does anyone have any opinions on this type of exposure? Good idea or not?

 

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Hi GBG, sorry to hear you've been struggling lately. Here is my take on ruminating - my biggest compulsion, and although my method goes against what some others recommend it totally worked for me. 

So - your mind is a raging torrent of hideous ruminating and you are racked with fear. It's completely impossible to 'let the thoughts pass and get on with your day', 'imagine your thoughts as clouds, drifting by' etc. The reality is that you just can't do that, any more than you could ignore someone smashing you over the head with a frying pan repeatedly. 

In this situation, I prioritise calming down over long term cognitive change. Distraction is the only thing that works - find a critical activity that works for you, something mental that takes just enough effort that you simply don't have any cognitive room to ruminate, but not too hard that you give up. The key is allowing the fear to be there, ie the obsession, but not the ruminating, ie the compulsion. The only way this works for me is accepting the fear as true. Yes I will be murdered tonight, this is the end of me. Full stop. The fear surges, and without the reassuring ruminating, it stays. This is what you 'sit' with. Then if (and I really mean when) the ruminating starts, I take a dog training approach, and strictly tell myself not to ruminate, and remind myself that the fear is true. Then back to distraction. And repeat. Eventually the spikes gets less, you start to calm down and then you realise it was all silly. Once calm, it is much easier to work on the cognitive side: 'where did that fear come from?' 'Why do I mind if x?' 'Is that reasonable? Does it make me happy to think that way? Can I change the way I think about that?' Etc. But Its very hard to do that in the throes of a huge spike. 

I know distraction is supposed to be bad but I guess for me it was my 'medication' that helped me work on the cognitive side of things.

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Hi Franklin,

I've thought this before but you really should write a book or something - what you say always makes so much sense and you've always helped me a great deal! :)

I have been making some notes for myself on a way to move forwards and I think your approach is what I need right now, a way of moving away from total crisis to a place where I can address cognitive restructuring and so on.  Accepting the thoughts as definitely true gives me nowhere to go rumination-wise.

Seeing distraction as medication also makes sense to me.  The 'waterwings' so to speak.  It is also a way of cutting compulsions off at their source.

Thanks again xx

 

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I think distraction is fine, however it's important to understand what behaviours you might do day to day that make you want to ruminate over and over. Is there a way in your life that you keep yourself 'safe' in some way? 

25 minutes ago, gingerbreadgirl said:

I have tried this in the past and it has been horribly counter-productive.  This could well be because I've been doing it wrong. 

Why do you think it went wrong? I don't think scripts are a must but I wonder if you still place an overimportance on your thoughts. If you remember something from your past that you aren't proud of then you feel the need to confess it, if you confess then it's natural your brain wants to make sure there isn't anything else, it would be irresponsible not too right? This is what confessing 'says' to you indirectly. Avoidance is similar, it constantly 'says' there is something to fear, checking says that checks are vital for survival and so on.

I think it's important to view yourself as constantly affecting what your brain does by how you act day to day, everything feeds into each other. 

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Thanks Gemma.  You're so right about everything you do affecting how your brain works. 

I think for me the imaginal scripts simply focused my mind on it all, which I was doing anyway, so at best they seemed futile to me.  When I had a really bad false memory obsession a few years back, what worked for me was simply not engaging with it at all, every time it popped into my head I just thought "not going here".  That eventually kicked it to the kerb.

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12 minutes ago, gingerbreadgirl said:

 When I had a really bad false memory obsession a few years back, what worked for me was simply not engaging with it at all, every time it popped into my head I just thought "not going here".  That eventually kicked it to the kerb.

This is the correct way to deal with intrusions and stop ruminating GBG. 

My therapist told me to simply think "Oh that's just my silly obsession"  and refocus away. 

I have built on that into, when an intrusion comes, gently but wilfully think positives - such as love kindness joy - and steering my focus into mindful activity, in the present, in the moment. 

When we have eased our brain into mindfulness, we have moved mental domain from the active "doing"  part, where all our obsessing and compulsing takes place, to the benign just "being" part of the brain, where we are thinking just in the present in the moment. 

And this really does work. 

Edited by taurean
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I do this 5,4,3,2,1 method.

Name 5 things that you can see.

Name 4 things you can touch. 

Name 3 things you can hear. 

Name 2 things you can smell. 

Name 1 thing that you can taste. 

It really helps to get my mind distracted x 

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In my case, I distract myself to whatever I am doing at that moment when thought come but I keep certain time of day when I don't do that distraction. I keep 30 minutes to 1 hour a day when I purposely bring the fear instead of distracting. You may notice that you are ruminating because you are trying to fix something or trying to alleviate the feeling that something is wrong. What is wrong that you are trying to fix? If you look at your thought pattern you may easily find it. Then comes the harder part. You have to bring that feeling of uneasiness, anxiety and feeling of wrongness more and more continuously for sometimes and not do something to escape it. The more uneasy you feel, the more successful is your effort. Do it regularly for some specific duration of time regularly. It is very good for your fear to lose its strength. It will prepare you for times when the intrusion automatically occur. Other times you distract yourself as you already do.

Edited by worriedjohn
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3 hours ago, worriedjohn said:

In my case, I distract myself to whatever I am doing at that moment when thought come but I keep certain time of day when I don't do that distraction. I keep 30 minutes to 1 hour a day when I purposely bring the fear instead of distracting. You may notice that you are ruminating because you are trying to fix something or trying to alleviate the feeling that something is wrong. What is wrong that you are trying to fix? If you look at your thought pattern you may easily find it. Then comes the harder part. You have to bring that feeling of uneasiness, anxiety and feeling of wrongness more and more continuously for sometimes and not do something to escape it. The more uneasy you feel, the more successful is your effort. Do it regularly for some specific duration of time regularly. It is very good for your fear to lose its strength. It will prepare you for times when the intrusion automatically occur. Other times you distract yourself as you already do.

Thanks worriedjohn, this is really good advice xx

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Another way is to get distracted into guided meditations. 

This CD/download by Australian psychologist Simonette Vaja is absolutely brilliant for this.

On the CD -"mini meditations for stress-free living"- are seven 10-minute guided meditations where Simonette's soothing voice and accompanying calming music take you to a relaxing environment. 

My favourite is driving through green rolling hills, another is a morning meditation, a third at a luxurious health spa, a fourth visiting a waterfall. 

I am using the CD tonight to relax after a very busy week. 

 

Edited by taurean
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I have some trouble with exposure; I feel I'm not tackling my worries head on and my brain feels a little crinkled up in certain areas; I don't feel like I quite have control. That said, I have plenty of distractions - all you can really do sometimes is distract yourself and it does help you reach even ground. Exposure can be very, very difficult because it can feel like too much - like I'm committing a sin or somesuch and I just can't take it; it makes me way, way, WAY too anxious to follow through. So that's a bit hard right now. 

I think it does help to remember that ruminating won't help, especially if you've done it before. It won't help reach any sort of conclusion and if you recognise ahead of time that the relief you feel will only be temporary, then I think you're saving yourself a lot of trouble. I know, that sounds a little emotionless but ruminating is, I feel, like weeds; the more you struggle with them, the deeper you go. It's incredibly difficult to avoid the temptation sometimes, as ruminating has become second-nature to me. But, I think as long as we have a back-up; things we enjoy and people to support us, then we'll be okay. :)

C x

 

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On 15/11/2017 at 14:08, Gemma7 said:

I have ideas on this but putting it in to words is difficult. I think most importantly you need to work out why you are ruminating. What is your brain trying to work out? When you establish that then it may be possible to come up with exposure exercises to help with rumination. 

Rumination is a compulsion trying to make right a feeling that something is wrong, usually there are behaviours that people engage in that make the process of rumination come about more often. So try looking at checks or avoidances you may be doing that actual increase the likelihood of rumination too.

This has shed some light for me today!!! I'm trying to work out if I'm 100% certain of my love for my partner, I feel the need to work out 100% if I want to be with him or not... wouldn't feel the need to do this, if I didn't feel like something was wrong... I'm doing it so I feel confidently in love again. DUHHHH

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Yeah, that's really helped me too. I'm forever ruminating in my head and my brain won't quieten; it's rather hard and I think I'm too scared to admit to it. I often feel 'wrong' and anxious and my brain just wants to correct it, but isn't sure how; ruminating's the only way I can cope and of course it's not a very good way. 

Thanks for this; it was a much-needed reminder. 

 

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22 hours ago, Cub said:

Ruminating's the only way I can cope and of course it's not a very good way. 

 

That's problem with we OCD sufferers. Correct it with "Ruminating is the way we suffer". We can't put into practice even we know that ruminating is bad. We think by ruminating we can eliminate our anxiety. This is the idea that keep us stuck. When I started reading these forums and saw people advocating stopping rumination, I thought it might be a great idea. But I was afraid to apply the idea on myself. I thought if I don't ruminate, I can't cope with OCD and it will go to some disastrous level. But after some years I was put on a strong SSRI, I started to apply this on myself. I was surprised to see that at first I had a feeling of uneasiness, high anxiety, mental resistance etc. It's like quit smoking. Uneasiness due to giving up a long lasting habit.

But very soon they began to subside and then I began to improve. Later I come off that SSRI but continued stopping rumination and exposures. Apart from some fall backs and ups and downs, the progress was steady. Today I am almost recovered. I repent why I did waste so many years of my life chasing that certainty? But at least, better late than never.

Edited by snowbear
removed swearing
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