What is mental rumination and how to deal with it effectively

Mental rumination is a psychological phenomenon that appears as a symptom in several of the more frequent psychopathologies, although it can also occur as a form of discomfort in free people of disorders.

In fact, most people experience this alteration at some point in their lives, to a greater or lesser degree, and there are those who have to deal with it on a relatively regular basis. Fortunately, there are several things we can do to put a stop to this unpleasant experience, and to manage it so that it does not become a factor of wear and tear on our mental health.

In this article you will find different solutions to the question: How to deal with mental rumination? But first of all, let's start by defining this concept.

• Related article: "Types of Anxiety Disorders and their characteristics"

What is mental rumination?

As we have advanced before, mental rumination is a psychological alteration linked to a feeling of discomfort but which does not constitute psychopathology in itself. In fact, it is commonly present in cases of widespread psychological disorders such as depression or generalized anxiety.

But let's be more specific: what is the annoying or even emotionally painful element of mental rumination? This phenomenon manifests itself through the tendency to suffer intrusive thoughts with the ability to disturb us in one way or another, and which we cannot "expel" from our head even though we feel we need to stop thinking about them.

The frustration generated by mental rumination causes a vicious cycle to occur: discomfort leads us to keep trying desperately to get away from those ideas or images that appear in our consciousness, and that makes it easier for them to come back to us one and again.

However, do not confuse mental rumination with rumination disorder: the latter is part of eating disorders and It consists of an almost literal rumination of the food ingested, so it has nothing to do with the subject that we address in this article.

Characteristics of this phenomenon

The characteristic aspects of mental rumination are as follows.

1. Intrusive thoughts carry a painful emotional charge

If an idea that comes to mind over and over again does not turn out to be unpleasant, frustrating, sad or anxious in some way, it cannot be spoken of mental rumination.

2. It is often associated with guilt

Intrusive thoughts often have to do with memories that make us feel guilty in some way. For example, someone who comes to mind over and over again what happened one day when his best friend was very disappointed.

3. It usually causes problems sleeping

The moments in which we try to fall asleep are a magnet for the kind of mental contents on which mental rumination is based. If someone experiences this phenomenon, it is very likely that much of the time in which your attention is fixed on these intrusive thoughts occurs while in bed.

How to deal with this problem?

Follow these tips to prevent mental rumination from affecting you too much.

1. Practice Mindfulness

Mindfulness is a set of very useful exercises to manage the emotions that we usually consider "negative", and it is also easy to learn. In fact, many teams of psychologists focus a good part of our activity on the use of this therapeutic resource, both in sessions with patients and in courses and workshops that we organize.

In short, Mindfulness brings us to a state of consciousness in which we focus on the here and now, without letting obsessions or worries drag us down and make us lose the control.

• You may be interested in: "Companies that invest in Mindfulness are more productive"

2. Get moderate exercise

Exercising is a very good way to disconnect, because it draws our attention to very specific bodily sensations and to very short-term goals. In fact, much research shows that aerobic exercise is an excellent anxiety reliever.

3. Use the thought-stopping technique

This is a technique widely used in psychology when it comes to managing problems related to anxiety, although it needs to be repeated (i.e. practiced) several times to benefit from its effects.

When you feel that mental rumination begins to express itself, go to a quiet place and spend a couple of minutes deliberately thinking about those mental contents; come a time, you must have planned in advance by setting a time limit, speak a keyword that you associate with stopping the movement of your flow of thoughts: for example, "End" or "Enough", and let that concept freeze your mental activity. Once this is done, you can continue with what you were doing.

4. Don't try to completely block out unpleasant thoughts.

It is one thing to try to make the stream of thoughts stop to curb the inertia of the mental rumination, and another thing is to pretend specifically to eliminate the mental contents painful; the latter is impossible, and If you try, you will not only get frustrated, but you will also be feeding mental rumination.

Are you looking for psychotherapeutic assistance?

If you are thinking of starting a psychotherapy process to treat a psychological problem that is affecting you, whether it is based on a psychopathology or simply based on a dysfunctional pattern of behavior (mismanagement of arguments, coping with a relationship crisis, etc.), get in touch with U.S. On Psychotools We have many years of experience treating patients, we offer our services both in our psychology center located in Barcelona and through online therapy by video call. On this page there is more information about how we work and our contact details.

Bibliographic references:

• American Psychiatric Association -APA- (2014). DSM-5. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Madrid: Panamericana.
• Horse, V. (2010). Behavior modification manual. Guayaquil: University of Guayaquil.
• Magee, J.C. & Teachman, B.A. (2012). Distress and Recurrence of Intrusive Thoughts in Younger and Older Adults. Psychology and Aging, 27 (1): pp. 199 - 210.