Rumination – The Ruin of Our Days, Health, and Lives

Essay by Linda Shacklock

What is Rumination?

Have you ever stopped and noticed that you’ve been inside your own head for a lengthy period of time? Obsessing over a situation or something that you just can’t seem to stop thinking about. Well that endless internal negative conversation is called rumination. 

Rumination is the act of repetitive thinking or dwelling on negative internal feelings, the distress this creates and the causes and consequences associated with doing so.

Now I’m not saying that thinking about issues or situations that have an impact on you is a bad thing. It’s not at all. What is imperative to understand is how we choose to think about these things, how much perspective we give to these things, how long we choose to carry on with these thoughts and ultimately what we do to move beyond them that marks the difference between rumination and problem solving. 

It has been widely researched and shown in psychiatric literature that the repetitive, negative part of rumination can contribute to the development of depression or anxiety especially if a person has pre-existing, diagnosed or not, mental health issues.

When someone who is in a depressed mood ruminates, they have a greater likelihood to remember the more negative things that happened to them in the past, interpreting situations in their current lives more negatively, and they possess greater feelings of hopelessness about the future. None of that is helpful and does not lead to proactive problem solving.

Once we pile on the negative interpretations and thinking, a cycle of rumination begins where the more a person ruminates, the worse they feel, which then contributes to more rumination, exacerbating anxiety, depression and feelings of hopelessness and helplessness. 

But it doesn’t stop there. Ruminating, thinking things over and over, is also highly associated with tension & stress. We engage our entire bodies, not just our brains when we ruminate. 

We literally chew over our perceived problems, over and over and over again. Clenching our jaw and grinding our teeth. We tend to shallow breath which engages our anterior neck and chest muscles and switches off our diaphragm. We might even catch ourselves holding our breath. Our abdomens, gluteal and inner thigh muscles become rigid with tension. We clench our hands into fists and scrunch our toes. 

Often all of this goes unnoticed by us as our ruminating brain is focused elsewhere on an endless loop cycle. Finally when your physical body can’t take the endless contracting of muscles not designed to function in this way and get fatigued, simply needing to release from their protracted contracting and holding all the tension inside of us they start to try to seize your attention away from ruminating by signalling you with pain instead. 

The pain alarm bells will start ringing louder and louder until you start to finally pay attention via suffering. Headaches, neck pain, jaw pain, ear pain, shortness of breath, poor sleep, back pain, shoulder pain, inflexibility, tight hips, knee pain, continence problems due to a tight pelvic floor, racing heart, sweats & feeling flushed, muscle cramps, fatigue. The list goes on. 

Now I’m not saying that if you experience one of the above symptoms it’s all due to ruminating. However if we are looking at a pain or body’s physical symptoms holistically in the context of a persons current situation and life we may find that there are connections between rumination & physical symptoms and so it makes complete sense that in order to move through physical pain and symptoms that we tackle how a person is thinking about things that are affecting them. 

We all have the power within us to change our internal dialogue, to exit from rumination and proceed through our days and therefore our lives with a broader less self focused view of the things that happen to us or around us. 

Only we have the power to change ourselves. When we realise this, we step through fear and into healing. When we have a balanced alignment with ourselves internally and with the circumstances we encounter externally we can become effective at problem solving. Problem solving leads to stress reduction and ultimately better health outcomes for you and quite possibly for those all around you. 

You Get to Choose 

You might think you don’t, but you do. It’s not necessarily going to be easy but you can choose to not exit into the rumination lane.

Saying stop thinking about it to yourself won’t work. What will work is replacing ruminating thoughts with other possibilities and balancing options. 

Choosing to see the other as not someone who has you at the centre of their lives and the actions they take but as someone who has their own stuff going on. In doing so we humanise that person rather than vilifying them. That same can be said of things and circumstances that occur. Life is not conspiring against you. It’s just unfolding moment by moment. 

Take a deep breath, re-engage your diaphragm, drop your shoulders, unclench your jaw and release all that stored tension with a long exhale. Do it again and again on repeat. Choose a great big smile at the wonderful life we have and all the beautiful ways we can interpret our world and the precious moments we have left as gifts and not as burdens to carry forward from this moment to the next.

I hope you choose to have a really nice day. 

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