Rumination is a cycle of negative thinking that interferes in someone’s life. Often begun as a coping mechanism to deal with problems, it’s a thought pathway in the brain that, with repetitive fretting, becomes a deep rut that can be hard to break out of, but nobody has to remain stuck in rumination. With purposeful steps, it is possible to end rumination and expand your thoughts and perspectives.
What Is Rumination?
Rumination describes the process of continually thinking the same thoughts, often negative ones.1,2 Rumination can become problematic because excessive repetitive thinking of negative thoughts can negatively affect mental health and behaviors.
The specific content of the negative thoughts is highly personal and varied. Negative thinking becomes rumination when specific thoughts become intrusive, overriding other thoughts and magnifying reflections thus causing people to dwell on a particular difficulty or situation.3,4,5 When we ruminate, we think about a problem for an extensive period of time, and the thoughts dominate our attention and cause emotional distress.2
Rumination can involve worry and thus focus on uncertainty in the future, anticipatory anxiety about a problem or threat, or the negative, repetitive thoughts can be about the past or present.2,4 Whatever the subject, rumination negatively impacts well-being.
Negative Effects of Rumination
When we ruminate, the same thoughts are constantly on our mind, making them grow ever bigger and loom large.4 When they become our focus in this way, it can be hard to escape the rut to find solutions, and problem-solving becomes difficult.
Consequently, this cycle of negative thinking can:1,2,5
- Cause sadness and intensify depression
- Exacerbate anxiety
- Lead to mood swings
- Cause irritability
- Interfere with sleep
- Disrupt appetite
- Cause fatigue
- Zap interest and motivation
- Create feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, or worthlessness
- Strain relationships
- Increase blood pressure
- Decrease memory capacity
- Cause stress and chronic stress reactions in the body
- Lead to poorer outcomes in people with chronic pain or other health conditions
Reflective Rumination
While rumination can be harmful to both physical and mental health, not all rumination is bad. Reflective rumination, thinking the same positive thoughts repetitively, can have positive effects when it is limited, concrete, specific, and solution-focused.2 Reflective rumination that is used intentionally to solve a problem can help people think clearly and move forward. The negative effects occur when either type of rumination becomes chronic and dominates one’s thoughts.
Rumination vs. Emotional Processing
Whereas rumination involves repetitive thoughts about a problem or situation, emotional processing is a way of trying to understand and deal with feelings. When it is focused on increasing awareness of emotions and needs and regulating reactions to strong emotions, emotional processing can be healthy.
Like rumination, though, emotional processing can be maladaptive. Maladaptive emotional processing involves hyperfocusing on negative emotions. Emotional processing involves judging feelings negatively and trying to inhibit them. Brooding rumination and maladaptive emotional processing keep us stuck in negative thoughts and feelings. With awareness and intentional effort, both can be overcome. Their negative effects don’t have to be permanent.
What Causes Ruminating Thoughts?
At its core, rumination is a coping mechanism. It’s a way of responding to stress by repeatedly focusing on the source of distress.2 Ruminating thoughts keep us stuck in the very stressors we’re facing rather than working toward solutions and forward progress.
Researchers continue to work to understand rumination and why we become caught up in repetitive cycles of negative thoughts.6 One theory states that people tend to engage in repetitive thinking about the nature of their difficulties. Unwanted emotional states, such as sadness, can cause people to think excessively about their emotions.
Another theory, the rumination-stress-reactive model, asserts that stressful or traumatic events cause ruminating thoughts. Similarly, the post-event rumination theory says that in social anxiety, ruminating thoughts are caused by social interactions. According to the goal progress theory, rumination is less about a reaction to moods and more about failing to achieve a goal.
Sometimes, someone’s personal background contributes to the tendency to ruminate. Negative experiences, including but not limited to abuse and trauma, during childhood or adolescence, can make coping difficult and keep people stuck in their thoughts about these damaging experiences.1
It appears that personality traits may also play a role in rumination. Ruminating thoughts are associated with neuroticism.7,8 Further, having persistent repetitive thoughts is a component of perfectionism.9,10
Rumination can occur on its own, and anyone can ruminate regardless of their personality, background, or underlying mental health conditions. However, rumination is often a component of many different mental health disorders.
Rumination & Co-Occurring Mental Health Disorders
Rumination is strongly connected to both depression and anxiety. In fact, the three can be interconnected.1 In depression, it’s common to not only experience feelings of inadequacy and worthlessness but to get stuck in thoughts about them. This, in turn, contributes to feelings of anxiety, making it difficult to solve problems and thus deepening depression. With continued depression comes more rumination.
In addition to depression and anxiety (especially social anxiety disorder and generalized anxiety disorder), rumination can be a part of other mental health disorders, including the following:1,2,5
- Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)
- Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
- Eating disorders
- Substance use disorders
- Borderline personality disorder
Further, rumination is strongly associated with chronic stress.5 While chronic stress itself isn’t a disorder, it contributes to many mental health disorders and physical illnesses.11 Regardless of the cause, you can take steps to decrease rumination and reclaim greater inner peace and well-being.
8 Tips for How to Stop Ruminating
Ruminating is a pattern of thinking that becomes deeply ingrained in the brain, creating repetitive neural pathways and perpetually activating them.12 Our thoughts quite literally fall into a rut and become our default way of thinking. The brain, though, is capable of learning and changing, and with deliberate steps, you can gradually stop ruminating and free your thoughts to explore other ideas.
Try these eight tips to stop ruminating:
1. Create & Uphold Boundaries
Having clear separation between different aspects of your life, such as work and relaxation or in your relationships, can prevent stress and problems from one area seeping into other areas. According to research, people who maintain boundaries (for example, between work and home life) create a protective buffer that reduces stress and rumination.13
To help you keep ruminations about work from bogging down your downtime or that stressful conversation you had with a friend from dominating your time with your partner, create a clear distinction between one situation and the next. Give yourself time to transition your thoughts and emotions by carving out a few minutes of private time to breathe deeply and mentally reset. Remind yourself that you’re leaving one situation and are now going to think about and pay attention to the next one.
2. Focus on Solutions Instead of Problems
When you catch yourself in a repetitive, negative thought cycle about a difficult situation, intentionally shift your thoughts away from the problem and begin to think about potential solutions.5 Brainstorm potential fixes by writing down any idea that comes to mind, no matter how outlandish. The idea isn’t to find a realistic, workable solution in an instant but to shift your thoughts away from ruminations about the problem and toward solutions.
3. Challenge & Replace Your Thoughts
Challenging your thoughts can be very helpful in breaking the pattern of ruminations.5 The truth about our thoughts is that they are not absolute facts, and just because we think something, it doesn’t mean it’s true.14 Many of our thoughts are distorted, and not only that, they are negatively skewed because the brain is hard-wired to look for problems.15 Rather than automatically accepting your ruminative thoughts, begin to approach them with curiosity, questioning their validity and intentionally looking for concrete evidence to debunk them.
Because ruminations can be overwhelming, it can be helpful to create a list of the problems spinning in your mind and then separate them into distinct challenges so you can approach them one at a time. Then, go deeper. Don’t simply challenge them but instead replace them with more helpful, solution-oriented thoughts.1
4. Practice Mindfulness
Mindfulness involves deliberately paying attention to what is going on right now, in this present moment, to redirect your thoughts and focus. It can be a powerful strategy to stop rumination.2 By using your senses to notice what is happening around you, your thought pathways in your brain are redirected away from bothersome thoughts, disrupting the cycle of rumination. Living mindfully, one moment at a time, gives you a steady supply of new thoughts and ideas to take the place of the outworn ruminations.4
A key component of mindfulness is awareness. Oftentimes, we’re unaware that we’re lost in thought, ruminating over challenges and negativity.5 When you catch yourself ruminating and are more deeply aware of your thoughts, you can become curious about them, gleaning useful bits of information that you can then use to focus on solutions and problem-solving. Take a mindful approach to your search for solutions by focusing on one specific problem and action steps to solve it. This helps prevent runaway thoughts and a return to ruminating.
5. Distract Yourself Purposefully
To break the pattern of repetitive negative thinking, intentionally distract yourself with something different and engaging as soon as you catch yourself ruminating.2,5 Shifting your attention to a distraction activates different, more positive, neural networks and gradually trains your brain to think differently.
Choose to switch gears and engage in a different activity such as a quick, brisk walk, listening (and even dancing) to music, looking at pictures that make you happy, or preparing and eating a healthy snack. It can be especially powerful to distract yourself with thoughts of times when things have gone well for you despite problems you were facing. Whatever you distract yourself with, pay attention to it mindfully, and when you catch yourself returning to your thoughts, just make a note of it and return your attention to your distraction.
6. Spend Time in Nature
Stepping outside among green or blue spaces provides an extremely effective distraction and opportunity to mindfully turn your attention away from your negative thoughts. Being in nature has been shown to be therapeutic and help reduce ruminations.5 Research shows that spending as little as 90 minutes in nature can decrease rumination.16 You don’t have to walk for an hour and a half in order to reap the benefits of nature. Enjoying fresh air and natural elements in regular, short bursts can be equally helpful.17
7. Exercise
Exercise can help reduce rumination.5 While regular exercise does provide long-term mental and physical health benefits, just a single session of moderately intense activity can boost mood and reduce rumination.18 When you find yourself overthinking difficult situations, engaging in physical activity that you enjoy can help.
8. Work With a Mental Health Therapist
Mental health therapy can go a long way in helping you stop ruminating.5 Talking with a licensed mental health professional can help you process thoughts and emotions and determine how to take positive action to make desired improvements in your life. This empowering process can help you break free from negative thoughts that are keeping you stuck.
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and interpersonal therapy both lend themselves well to reducing ruminations.1,2 Another type of therapy called rumination-focused cognitive behavioral therapy (RFCBT) is specifically designed to help people decrease ruminative thinking. A specific form of CBT targeting rumination, the goal is to shift ruminations from unhelpful thoughts to helpful, solution-focused thinking.1,2,3 Rather than focusing on the content of the ruminations and overcoming specific obstacles, RFCBT targets the way people think to change the underlying thought processes.1
When to Consider Professional Treatment
When your negative thoughts seem to be dominating your life, occupying your mind during the day or keeping you up at night, you might consider working with a mental health professional for help and positive change. Rumination can rob you of life’s joys and prevent you from participating in your own life. It can even make it difficult to recover from stress and other challenges.19 It can be difficult to deal with rumination and its negative effects on your own, so if you are facing this challenge, know that therapy can be extremely helpful.
To find a therapist who is right for you, check with your doctor for a recommendation or referral, ask trusted friends or family members who may be familiar with therapy, contact local mental health organizations for information about local providers, or use an online directory.
When choosing a therapist, seek someone who is licensed to practice in your state. Feeling a positive connection with your therapist and believing they are trustworthy and respectful of you is important. When you are comfortable with your professional therapist, you can make great strides in overcoming obstacles such as rumination so you can live your life more fully.
Final Thoughts on Ruminating
While the specific nature of your own thoughts is unique to you, ruminating is a very common challenge, so if you feel stuck in negative thoughts, know that you are not alone. Know, too, that you aren’t doomed to be caught in this thought process indefinitely. You can take measures, including working with a therapist, to change your thinking and gain freedom.
