Rumination is a pattern of thinking that becomes deeply ingrained in the brain, creating repetitive neural pathways and perpetually activating them.1
“Worrying does not empty tomorrow of its troubles; it empties today of its strength.”
— Corrie ten Boom
Something turns it on—a dysregulating encounter, a rupture with a loved one, a bad dream—anything that activates the emotions that we were forbidden to feel as children. Rumination takes over by rescuing us from feeling those forbidden feelings. Rumination disembodies us—which creates immediate distance from the threat our emotions are signaling. Rumination is always self-referential (even when we codependently ruminate about all the ways in which other people should change!)
The purpose of rumination in childhood is survival. if we are consumed by our emotion while growing up in an atmosphere that is intolerant of emotions, how can we survive? We must learn to dissociate in order to self-manage. Rumination becomes the answer, for in rumination we separate from our bodies and inhabit our thoughts. This then becomes a physiologic habit that turns on without permission anytime we experience emotional overwhelm. Rumination will continue to hold sway in adulthood even though there is no longer any danger from our environment.
Rumination is how we learned to manage our feelings, because we couldn’t just feel or express them. It became an emotional habit because we couldn’t just allow our feelings and release them. Rumination turns on the ferocious inner critic, which then induces shame and fear, the twin dragons of childhood trauma. Fear and shame are so dysregulating when we feel them, we will do anything to escape, ergo rumination: the way to dissociate and distract us from those intolerable feelings. Pete Walker calls rumination the “… left brain cognitive distraction of worrying and obsessing” pg. 252.
I believe rumination is almost always an emotional flashback. Rumination takes us out of the present moment, and sends us into the emotionally dangerous territories of our childhood, which furthers the rumination. It is viciously circular: an immediate (misperceived) threat disconnects us from our bodies into an emotional flashback of childhood, where the inner critic begins the litany of rumination—creating ruminative loops of self-blame, shame, or fear. Once the nervous system becomes dysregulated, that limbic (emotional) energy that cannot be released fuels rumination. As the looping rumination gets more elaborated, our feelings of fear and shame are magnified. Rumination then becomes what dysregulates us by taking on a reality that it, essentially, lacks. The ruminative story has no data from the environment, no current tangible reality. But it feels absolutely true because it is based on the unhealed wounds of our childhood trauma.
Rumination is, by definition, a disconnection from embodiment and from the present moment. Without the somatic wisdom of the body, feelings of safety are elusive. The body gives us ballast and grounding—it keeps us connected to the earth. The cost of rumination is this disconnection from the body, from the present moment, from the bottom-up signals (body to mind) that create coherence and that help us move forward in our lives. Rumination cannot connect to intuition because of the disembodiment. In rumination we are not present, but exist in a projected future filled with fear and catastrophe, or a distorted past filled with shame and self-loathing. Or both. In rumination we live in our heads and can’t release the emotion that is so stuck in our bodies.
Though we are disembodied in rumination, the body is deeply affected. Bodies can be amped and revved in states of chronic hypervigilance reinforced by a type of rumination called catastrophizing—creating dangerous or threatening future scenarios based on fears of the future. Fear-based rumination creates chronic states of hypervigilance: we become lost in fearful ruminative loops that continue to create the internal environment that rumination attempts to flee from. Fear-based rumination often underscores anxiety disorders and panic: the nervous system is kept in a constant state of high alert by the scary catastrophizing stories on endless repeat. Shame-based rumination keeps triggering the nervous system into freeze because the rumination focuses on our (overblown) mistakes or missteps of the past. This kind of rumination reinforces deep shame and self-loathing, which underlies chronic depression and hopelessness.
What is the difference between rumination and reflection? Reflection does not loop in repetitive ways. It may meander, but it does not loop. Reflection is an open-ended inquiry. Rumination is a closed loop. In reflectivity, we can ask the body for its input. In rumination, the body is lost to us and cannot give its safety or its wisdom to help us regulate. In reflection, we can differentiate facts from feelings. In rumination, we confuse the two.
The looping stories that are created during a ruminative cycle are never factually true in any sense. They are self-created stories of our childhoods: how we were treated when alone and vulnerable is how we will treat ourselves in states of vulnerability. So how can we heal this destructive habit of triggering ourselves into dissociative rumination? It is a multipronged approach that takes incorporating a few new practices into daily life. Here are some suggestions.
- Use movement—yoga, dancing, drumming, walking/running– any kind of movement. This brings the body back online, while movement creates more endorphins, our primary pain-relieving neurotransmitter. Movement may be the single most important intervention for those who ruminate heavily, because movement reconnects the body with the brain, encouraging the flow of bidirectional information (top-down mind to body and bottom-up body to mind).
- Use the body. Sensate focus is a practice of naming and tuning into the feeling of a body part—your seat on the chair, your feet on the floor, your belly or chest when you breath. It is a practice that can help us out of rumination by reconnecting us to our bodies. Body scan meditations can help us learn how to tune into our body. There are many free body scan mediations on the internet, like on this website: https://www.freemindfulness.org/download
- Practice presence. “When you are walking, just walk. When you are sitting, just sit”. Try to ditch the multitasking and help yourself stay in the present moment by doing one thing at a time. Mindful meditations are very helpful to practice being present. Website above also features free mindful meditations.
- Use play. Any kind of open-ended play—coloring, painting, bubbles, chalk, jumping rope, twirling in the grass—you name it. Play sends a signal to the nervous system that ‘I am safe” and so it reinforces feelings of safety. Engaging your child parts in play can loosen up the rigid internal system, creating more openness.
- Use EFT tapping for feelings of overwhelm, shame, fear or any big feeling that threatens to overwhelm. See video on this website. If we can release the feeling that triggered us into rumination through crying, safe raging, expressive writing or EFT tapping, it stops.
- Write out your ruminations. You may have feelings that come up when you write. See if you can allow those feelings to be released while you are writing. This kind of journaling is never shared with anyone, and is ripped up after the writing session. Remember, rumination is a flight from feeling, so writing about what you are ruminating about can lead you to some kind of ‘aha’ or a feeling release.
- If you find yourself in heavy rumination, ask yourself “am I thinking of the past or the future”. That can help you determine the nervous system valence and the intervention: is it fear of an unknown future with catastrophizing story, or is it shame of the past with an invented story of self-blame? If its future catastrophizing, you are likely in the nervous system state of hypervigilance. Deep belly breathing, meditation, laughter, and physical movement paired with music is helpful. If it’s depressed shame and self-loathing ruminations, you are in the nervous system state of freeze. Firstly, give yourself compassion. Then try an expressive meditation like shaking and dancing, which will wake up the nervous system. (See https://cmbm.org/self-care-basics/ Scroll down to expressive meditation and follow the videos). Any energetic movement will help you get out of freeze.
- Differentiate facts from feelings. Is it a fact that the future is dangerous? No. It is a feeling. Is it a fact that Mary doesn’t like you anymore because you said ‘no’ to her? No, it is a fear (a feeling), not a fact. Inquiring about the feelings vs the facts can help us stay in reality (facts vs feelings.)
- Learn how to give yourself compassion. This is an antidote to rumination because it does not blame the self and it does not inflate fear. Self-compassion basically soothes the self and its parts. We learned rumination as children to survive, and it is likely a child part that turns on rumination and keeps us in that cycle of reactivity and dissociation. Therefore, any comfort or compassion you give yourself will be felt by those child parts, which can allow for a loosening of the ruminative grip. Visit www.selfcompassion.org for explanations and free guided practices of self-compassion.
Retrieved from:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S105381191930878X
Walker, Pete (2014) Complex PTSD, from Surviving to Thriving. www.pete-walker.com