All My Mind's A Circle: Mental Rumination
Help breaking out of thought rumination or anxiety loops
What is rumination?
Rumination describes repetitive thinking, or dwelling on negative feelings and distress and their causes and consequences.
In other words, we often ruminate when we’re feeling distress due to anger, hurt feelings, anxiety, etc. We end up going over the situation in our minds, over and over again, seemingly unable to stop fixating on the feelings and their cause.
This happens most often for me with feelings of injustice. If I, or someone I care about, have been treated unfairly, I have a hard time letting go.
Story time
When I was fresh out of College, working my first full-time job as a newly-minted Youth Worker, I had a terrible landlord. There were numerous repairs needing to be done around the house, which of course he never did.
One day, I had to stay home from work because I was quite sick. I took some cold medicine and fell asleep on my couch, only to be woken up to my landlord trying to enter my apartment with his key! He hadn’t called ahead, he hadn’t booked an appointment to come in, nor given notice that he needed access to the apartment.
He had a contractor with him to come and finally complete one of the necessary repairs, but I wasn’t about to let two strange men into my apartment while I’m in my pyjamas and drowsy on cold medicine.
After a series of issues, I ended up taking this landlord to the provincial tenancy board. We had to have a hearing where I described to a mediator all the issues and presented evidence for my claims.
I won the case and things ended well, as my then-boyfriend and I moved in together. We were engaged shortly thereafter, and have now been married for 15 years (wow, we’re old!).
It took a few months from start to finish for a full resolution, but looking back, it wasn’t as big of a deal I made it out to be. Between submitting the paperwork, attending the hearing, and waiting for the mediator’s decision it probably took up a couple of days of my time.
However.
You know the popular phrase “this is living rent-free in my head”? That landlord and our dispute took up nearly all of my mental energy for those few months.
While I was absolutely entitled to my feelings, and it is reasonable to be stressed out by poor living conditions and conflict, I significantly exacerbated my own suffering through the whole ordeal by thinking about it almost non-stop.
It’s easy to say “just take the necessary steps, then set it aside, there’s nothing more that can be done”, but knowing something intellectually and acting on it are two very different things.
That was about 17 years ago, and I’ve learned a hell of a lot since then — about myself, about self-care, and about life in general. I’ll share with you what I’ve found (and what evidence suggests) can help interrupt the unhealthy cycle of rumination.
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