Rumination can creep up so easily when you’re not aware of it. Simply put, rumination is when you are focusing so much on your negative thoughts that it stops being productive.
Not only does it cease to be productive, but it can cause you to spiral further into depression or anxiety.
Naturally, you may be thinking, “Why wouldn’t I think about this problem I have!?” and that’s valid. However, you want to be aware of when thinking about a problem crosses the threshold from helpful to harmful.
These are some ways you can tell.
6 ways to know if you’re ruminating rather than processing:
1. You keep revisiting the same question, not getting any closer to an answer.
The clearest sign that you are ruminating is that your thoughts are not getting you any closer to an answer to your question or a solution to your problem.
You just keep going over and over the situation, trying to find some answer or thing that you missed.
A lot of times, the reason that you can’t find anything is that there is nothing to find. You essentially waste all of that time as you keep going over it looking for something that doesn’t exist.
I can give you a good example. Years ago, I had a breakup that I did not see coming from a woman I thought I was going to spend my life with.
I spent months going over and over our relationship, the breakup, and the circumstances surrounding it.
I didn’t have a hard time accepting the breakup itself, but I could not get past the idea that I could have done better.
I wasn’t getting any closer to an answer; I just spent most of that time tearing myself to pieces as a self-inflicted punishment for my relationship ending.
2. You replay mistakes, but don’t actually learn from them.
And that previous example I gave dovetails nicely into this point. Over and over and over again, I would think about all of the things I had done wrong, my shortcomings, and mistakes.
The truth of the matter is that I could have thought about that and figured out my mistakes in the first couple of weeks after the relationship ended. That way, I could have learned from those mistakes and grown much sooner (I eventually did).
However, this went on for much longer than it needed to.
I would sometimes find myself thinking about it even years later. I was fixated on it in an unhealthy way, and it made it so much harder for me to let go, heal, and move on. The wound didn’t get a chance to heal for a long time because I kept reopening it for no reason at all.
Similarly, if you’re just replaying your mistakes but not actually learning from them, it’s rumination.
3. You are searching for certainty in the uncertain.
Consider this. You’re in a relationship, and the person ghosts you. This kind of experience can tie you up in knots because you have no answers or closure.
You have no idea why that person left, and any speculation about it isn’t going to go anywhere because they aren’t around to answer.
All you can do is wonder. But that wonder is a treadmill that will go on and on until you can just let it go.
But how do you do that?
Well, there’s a quote from Marcus Aurelius that I think offers the solution: The cucumber is bitter? Then throw it out. There are brambles in the path? Then go around them. That’s all you need to know. Nothing more. Don’t demand to know “why such things exist.”
In the case of ghosting, you don’t need to know why the other person wouldn’t communicate or just left. That’s not a problem with you. That’s a problem with them for not being emotionally mature enough to have that conversation. They aren’t your person. There’s nothing else you really need to know.
Would it be nice to have closure? Certainly.
But closure is a luxury not everyone gets.
4. You are looking for evidence that the worst is true.
Rumination is an inherently negative activity because we don’t ruminate about positive experiences.
And that can become a self-reinforcing cycle. You’re thinking about the negative, you’re looking for the negative, so you may find what you’re looking for, whether it actually exists or not.
To go back to the example of ghosting, if you’re thinking negatively, you can interpret it as a flaw with yourself rather than an immature action of the other.
Instead of asking, “What did I do wrong? Why am I not lovable?” we could be wondering why this person didn’t want to communicate. Why did they just choose to leave instead of working on whatever issues we had? What is going on with them that they chose to ghost?
But still, these aren’t questions that can be answered by anyone other than that person.
With rumination, any answers you find aren’t going to be anything other than confirming your own worst thoughts.
5. You notice the thinking leaves you worse off than when you started.
A good sign that you’re engaged in unhealthy thinking is that your thinking leaves you feeling worse than when you started.
Instead of trying to find a solution or understand something, it could be that you’re using your thoughts to tear yourself down.
You’re finding all of your flaws, all of the things that you could have done better, and focusing on those instead.
I used to scoff at the idea that our thoughts help determine our moods, but as I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to understand the wisdom in that.
If you spend your time focused on the negative, then you’re going to feel worse. You essentially drag your own brain down into the depths of depression or anxiety by giving the negativity your attention.
That doesn’t mean you have to avoid it altogether. That’s not healthy either. Just be aware of whether or not your thinking is productive and how you feel afterwards.
If you feel stuck or like you’re getting worse, then you’re more than likely ruminating.
6. You postpone action until you can “figure things out.”
What if you never “figure it out”? There may be no reason for what you’ve experienced other than that sometimes bad things happen to innocent people. It happens every day, for no reason at all.
It doesn’t mean you deserved the pain, or that you did anything wrong. All it means is that you’re a human being, having a human experience of a difficult time.
I know it’s hard to accept that, but once you do, it’s so liberating.
You don’t have to figure things out to take action. You don’t need to know why the cucumber is bitter to decide to throw out the cucumber. You throw it out, and you move on.
That is equally applicable to a situation like ghosting. Alright, they left. Are you going to wait around to try to figure out an answer you don’t have a question to? Or are you going to let it go and move on to other things?
Closing thoughts…
Rumination is rarely helpful. It’s an unhealthy coping skill that many people use to try to gain control over a situation where they feel powerless.
But you always have the power. You have the power to accept a situation for what it is and move forward.
There’s no reason to waste months or years of your life dwelling on things that aren’t meant for you.
Personally, the lynchpin for my healing was starting to ask, “Why not me?” instead of “Why me?”
It helped me break those cycles of rumination, combat my depression, and accept life as it is.
