For Those Who Ruminate
By: Michael Patanella
Tags: Self Improvement, Life Lessons, Self, Mental Health, Life

For Those Who Ruminate

Part 1 of a series on Rumination

Rumination might not be the most widely used word that we hear every single day, but there’s a good chance most of us may have a general idea of what it means. I never gave it much thought, but when I was recently reading about rumination, I swiftly realized that it’s a topic of that I can greatly connect to.

Many experts have spent the last several years researching rumination, and are beginning to come to some conclusions that the act of it (ruminating) is a human behaviour that links to mental health diseases like Massive Depressive Disorder. The term, ruminating, is a bit of a broad word, and it has come to represent many different branches on the mental health tree of behaviours. It covers a large spectrum of levels too, some minor, while others have the chance to be debilitating.

Ruminating comes in many forms. I won’t say that it’s always all totally bad. Some people do believe certain types of ruminating is necessary in their lives. It’s not always black and white. Just look at the type of ways it manifests. You’ll see some of things it includes, carry some complexity with them.

Rumination can sometimes carry an obsessive nature with it. Because of that, we see many references to obsessive compulsive disorder, and the theory that ruminating can have a strong hold on those suffering from OCD. It also emcompasses similar methods, and it shows itself in the forms of things like over-worrying, especially when the worrying may be of something small or exaggerated.

We worry, we think about the same things for long periods of time, we “stew” about things, rack our brains, we overanalyze, and of course, we can become obsessive over repetitive thoughts.

Timing can be terrible. What doesn’t help most of this, is the fact that a majority of this stuff is done right as we’re lying in bed, all is quiet, and we are attempting to start our nights sleep. So right there, we can have occasional sleep issues to full blown insomnia. Just another piece on the rumination list.

So, like mentioned at the beginning, I came to a realization that I connect to rumination a lot. I think I knew that subconsciously for decades, but after all that time, I’m only coming to discover it only now. It was my new venture of learning about Mindfulness that seemed to guide me right to this topic.

I can relate to the ruminating (at maximum peak) right in that first hour of the night that we’re trying to go to sleep. I’ve suffered those brutal effects many times.

I’ve always done it, and it’s also had many peaks and valleys throughout my life. It connected to my mental health issues, and past addiction issues. The addiction itself was a way of self medicating or emotion dodging that I did in order to just shut the damn ruminating off in my head. Was I ever really shutting it off? Or was it more like simply muting it?

I also suffered greatly in some past relationships. With all my erratic behaviour, came rumination out of guilt. When I was losing all kinds of people and trust, I would spend days stuck in my own head, trying to convince myself of who alleged hated me, who was about to discover something bad I did, who was soon going to call me and berate me. Or worse, when would police be knocking at my door. And for what reason, as there were usually multiple things they could choose from. There is nothing worse than the ruminating that develops as a result of doing things immoral, dishonest, illegal, or just plain ethically disgusting. It brings a strong paranoia that is so difficult to shake off.

Finance issues were big parts of this for me as well. Living a life of addiction or just being erratic in general, made financial situations develop. It would sure be tough times, when ruminating how to get the rent paid, when it’s seven days late, and the bank account balance is $0. Sometimes, it was those kind of situations, where rumination would lead to even more erratic decisions.

That was the thing with ruminating. For as much thinking, as the process of ruminating seems to be, it’s actually very illogical thinking. Endless, constant, illogical thinking. Taking the form of rumination.

Not to mention that usually, ruminating thoughts never took the form of true problem solving. With a start, a plan, and a solution. Because the problem with rumination is the fact that its thinking and repeating the same thing, over, over and over again. We seem to have this one subject in our minds, spinning fast. However it’s in a tornado motion. So, it’s fast, churning, but stuck at the same time.

This is why it is connected to mental health issues. Especially the fact that ruminating already existing obsessive thoughts is known to usually strengthen or prolong mental health issues.

It’s something that seems quite familiar to me. Ruminating is something I’ve put myself through at almost all periods of my life at some point. When I look back at its presence as it connects to my mental health, I know it certainly prolonged it at times. It also most certainly made it worse at times too. I feel strongly that it seems to be something that takes form of a fuel that is behind issues of mine relating to habits of procrastination and being unproductive. Especially when it came to projects that got, slightly started, yet never completed. That can be another unwanted trait of all of this. Plenty of ruminating, but not a lot of getting things done.

Can we completely rid ourselves of rumination? The human factor makes my opinion say, probably not. Control has to be gained. That is the goal to face and address. Next time, we take another look at rumination; and the techniques we can learn on how to control it.