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Best Tips To Ease Down Ruminating?


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Ruminating is another unwanted entry in our hit parade of current problems.

So how best can we stop this damaging activity?

Here are some of my own thoughts to start us off.

Ruminating is like a worry. You go round and round searching for answers listening to the messages from OCD thoughts and responding to them.But you don't solve anything.

So first thing, what is the OCD thought/thoughts and what message are they telling you and how do feel like you want to respond? Eg seek certainty, ask questions, google, read other simiiar posts, analyse/overanlayse.

Take a detached view and see how that will be damaging. Go with the knowledge you have and look to turn those thoughts into benign unhelpful mental chatter.See how by following up the urge to ruminate you can be strengthening not weakening the power of the thoughts.

To break away we need to leave those thoughts as they are - treat them as benign unwanted OCD intrusions. We may not have the power to do this and move on that a non-OCD person has, so we must now get focusing away from them and into just being mindfully involved in something beneficial and involved.

As Caramoole says, if your thoughts drift back just calmly refocus back into the here and now and keep focused there.

A member recently suggested singing to distract from the intrusions - you can do this really or mentally.

Someone else suggested tying up our mind in puzzles and anagrams.

I have found just viewing data like editing and moving around my picture library sorting music, doing paperwork, good; doing day to day chores may not be intense enough as you do them automatically.

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The first thing people need to do when dealing with ruminating is realize they are even doing it. Many people do not realize that ruminating is a compulsion and as such is just like any other compulsion. It seems automatic but it is controllable. People can stop doing it, given motivation and enough practice.

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I know it gave my (literally) headaches when I started forcing myself to stop ruminating. It was really hard, & I should say I only stopped the intensity of the rumination, not the rumination full stop!

Like you say polarbear, knowing it's even happening can be hard, I'd spend half the day doing it before I'd go, 'Oh, this is OCD!'.

Frustrating.

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Oh yeah. Now that I know what I know I can look back and realize that ruminating was at least half my battle. I didn't know anything about OCD and thought those ruminating thoughts were just like the intrusive thoughts. Now I separate them and realize I was causing much of my own distress.

There were times when I would suddenly realize I had been thinking the same thought and about the same thought for days. I didn't know know what it was but it would shock me how much effort I had put into something that turned out to be completely useless.

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I don't think there are any tricks to stopping ruminating. You're talking about refocusing onto something else. I think that's a valid way to go about it but the tough thing to get into is accepting the urge the ruminate and just letting it be while going on and doing something else. it's very difficult to purposefully refocus onto something else when you've got this overpowering urge to ruminate countless times every day. I look at it more that you should refocus onto whatever you happen to be doing at the time, not some set thing you're supposed to be doing. Keeping busy in general I think helps.

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Now that is very true.

OCD can pick out - as it does with me - things that are only in conscience for a fraction in time, then bring that back later and obsess on it.

Its pointless, its damaging, its mental junk - but it turns it into acutr distress and anxiety by focusing the lens on it and saying its important and says something horrible about me.

I have to know that is a lie and move back away and into being.

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I don't think there are any tricks to stopping ruminating. You're talking about refocusing onto something else. I think that's a valid way to go about it but the tough thing to get into is accepting the urge the ruminate and just letting it be while going on and doing something else. it's very difficult to purposefully refocus onto something else when you've got this overpowering urge to ruminate countless times every day. I look at it more that you should refocus onto whatever you happen to be doing at the time, not some set thing you're supposed to be doing. Keeping busy in general I think helps.

Keeping busy in general was helpful when i was working.

Also what Sir William Osler called "living in daytime compartments". Now this is a good technique. I took it onboard to stop myself taking work worries home or home worries to work.

Sir William referred to the compartments as watertight bulkheads on a ship.When one bulkhead closes nothing can enter or leave.He would use this concept to shut out the past behind one "bulkhead" and the future behind anbother and live in the present.

I took it further when I realised that if I took work problems home at night and at weekends they would destroy me. So instead of a bulkhead I had a symbol.

When I turned the key in the lock at home I went from one day time compartment - home - to another - travel. In travel mode I just acted mindfully - smelt the roses, felt the wind felt my feet on the pavement stared out the train window.

When I showed my pass at work I entered the work "compartment".

So there is some mileage here in saying to ourselves we are moving from the damaging active ruminating "compartment" into the treating as benign thought benign thought "being compartment that is involved in the refocusing technique.

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Here is another idea.

Make an appointment with yourself - say well I am rather too busy at the moment to ruminate Mr OCD, but i can fit it in at 21.30 hours (after my intense evening of focusing on something else).

By the time it gets to 21.30 and your OCD'd mind tells you ok i really need to ruminate now, its lost some of its power - you can delay it again until morning. lor refocus.

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I don't think there are any tricks to stopping ruminating. You're talking about refocusing onto something else. I think that's a valid way to go about it but the tough thing to get into is accepting the urge the ruminate and just letting it be while going on and doing something else. it's very difficult to purposefully refocus onto something else when you've got this overpowering urge to ruminate countless times every day. I look at it more that you should refocus onto whatever you happen to be doing at the time, not some set thing you're supposed to be doing. Keeping busy in general I think helps.

True, hence the headaches.

It was a real battle at first, a thought would come, I would try to stop it & then another would come & so on.

Constant fighting, no wonder my head hurt!

I try & think of something else, something practical, for me it helps being at work, & seeing as my workmates know, I can talk to them if I need to. I also find listening to positive music at work is good, I listen to that instead of the thoughts & if I get to worked up, I take a break & read a newspaper or something online.

The arcade & TV are also good for distractions. Anything you can 'switch off' to.

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Guest footiefan

I find ruminating in bed really hard. It's like you're tired, trying to relax and don't want to get up and read or

look at television.So OCD says to me "now that I have you in this vulnerable position, let's start with the usual..."

Any tips on beating rumination in bed?

Thanks

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I have a small CD player by the bed and can listen through headphones.

A breathing meditation in bed. Close your eyes and focus from ruminating onto your breating . Breathe deeply and long and notice how far down inside you the breath goes.then exhale. When you have a rhythm going of breajhing in and out and just focusing on the breath, you can add a word or phrase to the outbreath if you like, or you can breathe in cycles of four, counting on the outbreath.

This exercise ashifts focus from active doing - ruminating - into being - mindfulness.

If your mind strays during it, calmly refpocus it back to the breathing. .

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I don't mean to hijack the thread here, sorry, but can someone please define what rumination is? Like if I have two thoughts that are mainly bothering me and all I do is thnk about how to deal with them, is that ruminating?

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More tips.

Go down the gym or for a run or a walk . Concetrate on the activities you are going. If running or walking , focus on the surroundings and tell yourself to see how many houses have loft conversions, are they all the same size and shape, what colour are the roofs, what colours predominate on the outside, how many have render.

What sort of cars are there parked in the road. What colour or make predominates. What sort of dogs are being walked. Take your phone and see if there are any picture opportunities.

If at work, find a project to do that can really test you and get onto it wholeheartedly.

Phone a friend and concentrate on the discussion.

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I have a couple of questions about ruminating. They are devil's advocate type questions as I pretty much know the answers but I have never heard then properly spelt out.

Firstly, ruminating is a type of thinking - albeit a conscious, deliberate type. So isn't suppressing the urge to ruminate a type of thought suppression which encourages white elephant syndrome etc?

Secondly, mindfulness and distraction are both attempts to focus attention elsewhere. Can this not become a type of compulsion in itself?

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Suppressing the urge isn't considered to be right because yes it strengthens - trying not to think of pink elephants brings up pink elephants.

Distraction to a benefical activity should be ok so long as it is NOT being used as a compulsion setting up new rules and conditions and all the paraphernalia of a ritual.

Like I was just having a play in the arcade.

MIndfulness is the normal order of things for someone without an anxiety disorder. They tend to operate in the here and now.

(Of coure they could learn to be more mindful).

So if we operate mindfully, we are just being in the here and now, and that isn't a compulsion - but it can become a useful automatic function when we get good at it.

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I don't mean to hijack the thread here, sorry, but can someone please define what rumination is? Like if I have two thoughts that are mainly bothering me and all I do is thnk about how to deal with them, is that ruminating?

Ruminating is going over something in your head, again and again, without coming up with a solution or answer. A lot of people call it over thinking.

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I have a couple of questions about ruminating. They are devil's advocate type questions as I pretty much know the answers but I have never heard then properly spelt out.

Firstly, ruminating is a type of thinking - albeit a conscious, deliberate type. So isn't suppressing the urge to ruminate a type of thought suppression which encourages white elephant syndrome etc?

Secondly, mindfulness and distraction are both attempts to focus attention elsewhere. Can this not become a type of compulsion in itself?

1. White elephant syndrome presupposes you purposefully try to not think about a specific thing. Not ruminating is not equivalent to not thinking about a specific thing. It's trying to calm your brain and stop thinking altogether (except perhaps on some task that you deem to be important to concentrate on instead of ruminating).

2. Yes. I am not a big fan of 'distraction' as it it written in some books. It ends up being described as switching over from one compulsion to focusing on some specific task (being the same task every time). I believe in that sense it is a case of swapping one compulsion for another. I advocate that people focus on whatever they happen to be doing at the time, whether reading a book, watching TV, washing the dishes.

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It's not about suppressing the thought, it's about not engaging with it, about not getting into the conversation to work it out. The instigating thought isn't the problem, it's about what comes next....rumination.

Secondly, mindfulness and distraction are both attempts to focus attention elsewhere. Can this not become a type of compulsion in itself?

Mindfulness is about staying in the present moment. Distraction can be slightly different and can involve (if we're not careful) trying to push the thought away rather than sit with it. I'd substitute trying to carry on as normal and paying attention to what you're doing rather than being drawn into analysis and rumination.

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