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Two Things You Can Do To Stop Ruminating

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Hi, I’m Dr. Tracey Marks, and I make mental health education videos.

Today’s video is based on a viewer question from S.S. Rose.

S.S. ROSE: “Can you do a video on Ruminance? Not sure I spelled that correctly.”

S.S. ROSE: “I’ve had times where my brain isn’t shutting off even in sleep. I can still hear my thoughts. Can you go into more detail about this?”

Thanks for the question, S. S.

The term “ruminate” means “to run a thought over and over in your mind”.

This is the figurative definition. The literal definition refers to cows regurgitating their food to chew it over and over.

Rumination is not a diagnosis all to itself. We see it in depression and anxiety.

Rumination causes people to get stuck in their thoughts, and even feel stuck in the negativity of their condition.

Typical negative, depressive ruminations may be things like “Why do I always get the short end of the stick?” or “Why can’t I be happy like everyone else?”

Anxious ruminations tend to be worrying about things that happened in the past,

like analyzing past situations and worrying about what kind of impression that you left, or what that person meant by that.

At the time that she said what she did, you didn’t think much of it,

but when you get to the end of the day and start ruminating over the interaction,

what the person said takes on a completely different meaning (and it’s usually a negative meaning).

In both scenarios, it’s repetitive, unhelpful, negative thinking,

and this is different from deconstructing a past situation so that you can process it and problem-solve.

In that case, analyzing the past is constructive, and you’re not stuck thinking only about the negative aspects of the situation.

Why does this happen?

It’s thought to be related to the over-activation of the Default Mode Network in your brain.

I talk about this in a video I did on mindfulness and depression.


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