Cogito, ergo sum.  “I think, therefore I am” (Descartes, 1637).  But what if I think and think and think, to the point that I feel as if I’m almost not?  Or at least I think to the point of driving myself crazy?  Rumination is what we call it when you get stuck in a mental loop of worry or problems that seem to have no end.  It’s frustrating, hard on your health, and takes the joy out of your day.  Unfortunately, in our stressful world, it is also becoming quite common.  With an epidemic of anxiety taking hold of so many people, rumination is a frequent experience.  So in today’s post, I want to identify the difference between productive thinking about a problem versus rumination and share some expert’s tips on how to free yourself from this unpleasant thought loop de loop.

While rumination is not itself a mental health disorder, it is a symptom often associated with anxiety and or depression.  Examples of rumination include playing an unpleasant conversation over and over again in your mind.  Or when you can’t stop thinking about what went wrong in a presentation at work.  In some ways, rumination is an obsessive thought pattern focused on a negative idea or experience that lacks flexibility or perspective.  While we all worry and overthink, it becomes rumination when these thought loops are frequent, ongoing, and interfere with your ability to concentrate and engage in other thoughts or feelings.  It’s like a car without brakes, going and going without an ability to stop.  In addition, it often involves repetitive thoughts about things that you can no longer change.  In essence, rumination is a continual exposure to a negative experience that keeps reinforcing the negativity.

Certain people are more prone to rumination, research finds.  Women tend to ruminate more than men, as do people who tend to be perfectionistic or insecure (check check, and check…).  And rumination is also common with people with certain health issues, such as people with chronic pain, cancer, or who have suffered a heart attack.  In these cases, it’s understandable to fixate on how things could be different or whether you’ll be ok. For people with mental health conditions such as OCD, anxiety, depression, or bipolar disorder, research shows those who ruminate tend to experience worse depression for longer.

Psychologists offer certain strategies that can be helpful to break the constant stream of your distressing thoughts. The first step is to ask yourself, what is the problem here?  Identify the specific problem and make a list of strategies that you could engage in to improve the situation.  Take the passive experience of reliving a thought or feeling and turn it into an active problem solving activity.  Once you have given consideration to what can be done, let yourself know that you have gotten what you needed out of the repeated thoughts and they are no longer of any use.  Then, when they reoccur,  give yourself permission to let them go by redirecting them. Studies show that when socially anxious people redirect their attention using word games or focused attention on an active thought process, they report feeling more positive about social interactions. Talking to a friend, listening to music or a podcast, or exercising also helped to take the attention away from the rumination and lessen the level of distress. In other words, you have to give your mind something to keep it busy and help it disengage from the ruminative loop.  Reassure yourself it is no longer helpful to keep reminding yourself of what cannot be changed.

Another strategy is to actively avoid your triggers.  Notice when certain rumination is activated and use your mute button, clicker, or block feature to set a boundary.  Often when we scroll through social media or watch a movie or television show, we actually do more harm than good.  We expose ourselves to triggers we don’t have to!  Be careful and conscious in your choice of what you are engaging with.  Studies show that social media can often trigger rumination about our appearances or other social comparisons that can activate anxiety.  We become passive observers of other people’s experiences, which leads to feeling left out or rejected or “less than” in many ways.  We fill in the blanks of what we don’t know with the content of our personal concerns and insecurities.  Pick something uplifting and positive that takes more active engagement, such as playing music, creating in some way, or moving your body.

Sometimes it helps to give yourself worry time.  Designate a period of 10 to 30 minutes to let yourself think about the distressing experience.  This helps to contain your thinking and relieve the pressure.  Adding an active activity such as journaling about the situation can also help to diffuse it.  When the timer stops, you actively let go, but know you will always have tomorrow’s time to think about it, should you desire.

Of course, sometimes the intensity of rumination is too large to be diverted from.  This might be a signal that you may need a higher level of treatment intervention.  Engaging with a therapist to explore your distress may be a good next step, and even a trial of medication can be of help. Serotonin Re-uptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) have been used in a very effective manner to unlock our brains from obsessive thinking and allow us to use other coping tools in managing stress.  Often when people experience trauma, repetitive thinking is a process in which our minds replay what happened in an effort to process the trauma.  Having a supportive and safe environment to explore your experience is helpful to identify what is a beneficial form of remembering versus a reinforcing reliving of helplessness.

Spending time thinking about issues or ideas that are problematic is not in itself unhealthy.  It helps us prepare for a situation we may face again or lead us to make a choice to leave a job or behave in a different manner.  Ultimately it is the quality of our thinking and how it makes us feel that is important to pay attention to.  Having a thought is a natural occurrence.  But a key element in taking care of ourselves is recognizing our power to have a thought and then choose how we how we engage with it.  

Think of your negative thought as spoiled milk.  You take a small sip, experience the unpleasant taste and know it is spoiled.  Would you then keep sipping it to evaluate how spoiled it is while wondering how you could have let it get spoiled and thinking of how you are a terrible person for having spoiled milk in your refrigerator?  Or, would you rather take a sip, experience the unpleasant taste, and choose to go to the store to buy new milk, instead? In other words, maybe we psychologists have a different perspective than old Descartes.  While having a thought may be proof of our existence, how we choose to engage with our thoughts is proof of our humanity?  Now I’m overthinking it.

It’s estimated that 30 to 50 million people around the world will watch today’s Super Bowl game.  Whether your team is playing or not, or whether you even know which teams are playing, we all know it’s the best versus the best in a climactic winner-take-all showdown.  It’s one of the things about sports that most people love to debate and provides the irresistible drama:  Who is best in the clutch and who is likely to choke?  Which team will rise to the occasion and which will fall flat?  It’s so easy to judge and criticize from the sidelines, but I think we all have that moment while watching a player when we ask ourselves “how would I do under that kind of pressure?”  It got me thinking about performance anxiety, and while I will never be expected to throw a touchdown pass with time running out (thank goodness), we all have our own moments in which we have to put our fear aside in order to come through in a challenging moment.

Nearly any situation can trigger performance anxiety, including taking a test in school, giving a presentation to your coworkers, or even parallel parking while people are watching.  Performance anxiety involves performing more poorly than expected given your skill level in the heat of the moment.  Remember those times you studied all night and then your mind went blank the day of the exam?  Or when you complete a tennis serve perfectly most every time in practice but double fault in the match?  In fact, the more you are invested in how you will do in a situation, the more prone you are to having your own worry derail you.  It’s your own fear that disrupts your flow and causes you to hesitate, tense up, or even freeze up all together.  Our thoughts interfere with the way our brain’s have practiced and results in an unexpected outcome.

Normally during a highly practiced performance, brain activity in the prefrontal cortex, which is important for decision making and attention, is suppressed.  This allows the brain circuits responsible for routine and intuitive responding to engage without interruption.   But when we become anxious about how we’ll do, the prefrontal cortex activates and actually causes disruptions that lead to errors, especially in activities that require quick reactions and a flow of engagement, like making music or throwing a free throw.  In other words, as soon as we begin to think about the possibility of failure, our bodies tense and our mind goes into a different mode of operating, literally, our brain gets in the way of our practiced flow.  Emotionally, we move from approaching success to a state of avoiding failure.  Thinking about a potential mistake causes a change in your brain processing that is disruptive and actually makes it more likely that you will make a mistake.

Even if we’re not in the NFL, we can all benefit from what sport’s psychologists teach competitive athletes. Learning to manage your anxiety is a key to performing well in whatever challenges you. The first step is to embrace and befriend your nerves.  When we feel anxious we have the opportunity to interpret the anxiety in different ways. Top athletes can remind themselves that the tension they feel is the thrill of competition and focus their stress into heightened awareness and focus.  When they make a mistake, they put it behind them and move on to the next play with an anticipation of success. For us mere mortals, we can remind ourselves that the sweaty palms we experience prior to our presentation is a sign we are excited and ready.  It’s important to catch ourselves from predicting or anticipating failure.  Imagining and allowing our minds to play out the possible paths to potential problems will only take our focus in that direction and away from our practiced flow.  Dwelling on a mistake will only increase the chance of making another mistake.

Researchers show that distracting ourselves away from details of our performance can help us stave off the interference of our prefrontal cortex.  For example, rather than imagining someone asking us a question we can’t answer, we can look at the wallpaper in the room or what dessert we’ll choose to celebrate our good performance.  It’s also really helpful to practice under similar conditions as the stress we’ll feel on the day of our performance.  If we’re worried about performing in front of an audience, give our speech in front of some friends.  If we’re going to be videotaped, practice being videotaped.  Learning to normalize the stress of the situation to desensitize ourself is quite beneficial.  The more success we have in coping with the stress, the less our avoidance mindset will be triggered to derail us.

So when you watch the game today, remember what it takes for any of the players to have reached this moment and celebrate their effort.  Imagine both the physical and mental toughness they have already demonstrated to compete to be a champion.  And as one who grew up with a family that yelled at the tv when our team dropped a ball or missed a tackle, while safely eating our chips on the couch, I remember the wise words of my Grandmother Rose.  “Darling,” she would say, “don’t be upset.  They’re doing the best that they can.”