12 Tips to Stop Repetitive Thoughts

The American Psychological Association (APA) defines rumination as “obsessional thinking involving excessive, repetitive thoughts or themes that interfere with other forms of mental activity.”

It can be a symptom of various mental health issues. The APA adds that it commonly occurs with obsessive-compulsive disorder and generalized anxiety disorder.

As well as being a symptom, the habit of rumination can affect a person’s health by:

• prolonging or intensifying depression
• impairing your ability to think and process emotions
• causing or aggravating anxiety, sleep problems, and impulsive behaviors
• exacerbating and maintaining stress responses, leading to chronic stress
• increasing the risk of inflammation and physical health problems, as a result of stress
• increasing the risk of substance use disorders

Rumination can turn worry into a habit or a way of life.

People ruminate for a variety of reasons.

In 2005, the APA listed some common reasons for rumination as:

• the belief that by ruminating, you’ll gain insight into your life or a problem
• having a history of emotional or physical trauma
• facing ongoing stressors that you can’t control

Ruminating can also affect people with personality characteristics, such as perfectionism, anxiety, and excessive concern about their relationships with others.

If you ruminate, you may be more likely to:

• focus on negative events from the past and blame yourself for them
• interpret current events more negatively
• feel more hopeless about the future

Rumination can be a hard cycle to break, but there are ways to stop these intrusive thoughts. When such thoughts begin, stopping them promptly may prevent them from becoming more intense.

Here are 12 tips to try when you begin to experience the same thought, or set of thoughts, swirling around your head:

1.

Distract yourself

When you notice you’re starting to ruminate, finding a distraction can break your thought cycle.

For example, you might:

• call a friend or family member
• do chores around your house
• watch a movie
• draw a picture
• read a book
• do some exercise

2. Plan and take action

Instead of repeating the same negative thought over and over again, break down your thoughts into smaller parts and make a plan to take action to address each one, however small.

Write it down on a piece of paper. Be as specific as possible and also realistic with your expectations.

Having made a plan, take one small step to address the issue. Then, when you’re ready, take the next step.

The aim of this activity is to disrupt your rumination. It may help you move forward in resolving the worry, and it can also make you feel more in control.

3. Work out what you can and can’t change

Rumination often stems from previous negative experiences. Some of these experiences we cannot change, but we can change how we look at them.

If you didn’t get that job, can you revamp your resume and have another go?

If you’ve made a mistake or had a bad experience, can you take steps to stop it happening again?

If you really can’t change something, maybe you don’t need to worry about it.

4. Change location

Try spending time in a place where you have been happy before.

Perhaps it’s a place nearby where you can take a walk, drink a coffee, or sit in a park for a while.

5. Revisit your thoughts and get some perspective

We often ruminate when we think we’ve made a mistake, spoken out of turn, or believe we are responsible for something bad that has happened.

If you can put a thought into perspective, you may find it is inaccurate.

If you’ve made a mistake at work, for instance, it might help to:

• Consider what effect will your perceived mistake have in reality.
• Recall when something like this happened before, and how it turned out.
• Take steps to own up and correct the error.
• Apologize, if appropriate.

Remember that everyone makes mistakes, and it’s better to sort it out early if it’s going to need sorting out at all.

6. Readjust your life’s goals

Perfectionism and unrealistic goal setting can lead to a fear or perception of failure, and this can lead to rumination.

Setting unrealistic goals may cause you to worry about why and how you haven’t reached a goal, or what you should have done to reach it.

Setting more realistic goals that you’re capable of achieving can reduce the risks of overthinking your own actions.

7. Work on enhancing your self-esteem

Many people who ruminate report difficulties with self-esteem. In fact, there may be a link between a lack of self-esteem and a tendency to ruminate, according to some scientists.

Ways of enhancing your self-esteem include reviewing and appreciating your strengths and building on them.

8.

Try meditation or deep breathing

Meditating aims to clear your mind, which means it may help you stop ruminating.

When you find yourself with a repeating loop of thoughts in your mind, seek out a quiet space. Sit down, breathe deeply, and focus on your breathing.

Which breathing techniques can help relieve stress?

9. Understand your triggers

Each time you find yourself ruminating, make a mental note of the situation you’re in.

This includes:

• where you are
• what time of day it is
• who’s with you (if anyone)
• what you’ve been doing
• any triggers that have kicked off the unwanted thoughts

Being aware of these triggers may help reduce any tendency to ruminate.

10. Talk to a friend

Ruminating thoughts can make you feel isolated. A trusted friend may be able to offer an outside perspective that can help break the cycle.

You might ask also ask them to help you make a list of actions or events that turned out well in the past. This can help you gain perspective.

Be sure to speak with a friend who can give you that perspective rather than ruminate with you.

11. Try therapy

If your ruminating thoughts are taking over your life, you may want to consider therapy. A therapist can help you identify why you’re ruminating and how to address the problems at their core.

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) can help you develop new ways to approach situations. One-to-one counseling can provide an opportunity to dig deeper and address any underlying causes.

What are the benefits of therapy?

12. Set your own expectations

If we set ourselves targets that are too high, we may never meet them. This can cause us to question our self-worth, and it may lead to negative ruminations, like “I’ll never be good enough.”

It may be time to evaluate what you realistically can do and adjust your own expectations.

Constantly work on building your self-esteem by:

• taking care of yourself
• doing things you enjoy and excel at
• praising yourself for your successes
• forgiving yourself for your mistakes

Are you aiming too high? How to recognize unrealistic expectations.

What is rumination?

Rumination is a bit like overthinking, where you keep going over and over the same thoughts. These are often negative thoughts about the past, present, or future. They can involve self-blame, hopelessness, and negative self esteem.

Is rumination a mental illness?

Rumination is not a disorder, but it commonly occurs with various mental health conditions, such as depression, anxiety, and OCD.

What causes a person to ruminate?

Factors that can contribute to rumination include having a history of trauma, feeling you are in a situation you can’t control, or having a personality trait such as perfectionism, where you fear not being good enough. A person may also ruminate as they search for a solution to a problem.

Can you stop ruminating?

Distraction, setting lower expectations for yourself, or making an action plan may help you stop ruminating in the short term. If these strategies don’t help, counseling or CBT may be beneficial.

Ruminating involves a cycle where you keep thinking the same thoughts or worrying the same worries without getting anywhere. It can be exhausting and it can affect your sleep and your mental and physical health.

Tips for breaking the cycle include speaking with others, seeking distraction, noticing your triggers, and reviewing your perspective.

If these tips don’t help, consider contacting a mental health professional for assistance.

12 Tips to Stop Repetitive Thoughts

The American Psychological Association (APA) defines rumination as “obsessional thinking involving excessive, repetitive thoughts or themes that interfere with other forms of mental activity.”

It can be a symptom of various mental health issues. The APA adds that it commonly occurs with obsessive-compulsive disorder and generalized anxiety disorder.

As well as being a symptom, the habit of rumination can affect a person’s health by:

• prolonging or intensifying depression
• impairing your ability to think and process emotions
• causing or aggravating anxiety, sleep problems, and impulsive behaviors
• exacerbating and maintaining stress responses, leading to chronic stress
• increasing the risk of inflammation and physical health problems, as a result of stress
• increasing the risk of substance use disorders

Rumination can turn worry into a habit or a way of life.

People ruminate for a variety of reasons.

In 2005, the APA listed some common reasons for rumination as:

• the belief that by ruminating, you’ll gain insight into your life or a problem
• having a history of emotional or physical trauma
• facing ongoing stressors that you can’t control

Ruminating can also affect people with personality characteristics, such as perfectionism, anxiety, and excessive concern about their relationships with others.

If you ruminate, you may be more likely to:

• focus on negative events from the past and blame yourself for them
• interpret current events more negatively
• feel more hopeless about the future

Rumination can be a hard cycle to break, but there are ways to stop these intrusive thoughts. When such thoughts begin, stopping them promptly may prevent them from becoming more intense.

Here are 12 tips to try when you begin to experience the same thought, or set of thoughts, swirling around your head:

1.

Distract yourself

When you notice you’re starting to ruminate, finding a distraction can break your thought cycle.

For example, you might:

• call a friend or family member
• do chores around your house
• watch a movie
• draw a picture
• read a book
• do some exercise

2. Plan and take action

Instead of repeating the same negative thought over and over again, break down your thoughts into smaller parts and make a plan to take action to address each one, however small.

Write it down on a piece of paper. Be as specific as possible and also realistic with your expectations.

Having made a plan, take one small step to address the issue. Then, when you’re ready, take the next step.

The aim of this activity is to disrupt your rumination. It may help you move forward in resolving the worry, and it can also make you feel more in control.

3. Work out what you can and can’t change

Rumination often stems from previous negative experiences. Some of these experiences we cannot change, but we can change how we look at them.

If you didn’t get that job, can you revamp your resume and have another go?

If you’ve made a mistake or had a bad experience, can you take steps to stop it happening again?

If you really can’t change something, maybe you don’t need to worry about it.

4. Change location

Try spending time in a place where you have been happy before.

Perhaps it’s a place nearby where you can take a walk, drink a coffee, or sit in a park for a while.

5. Revisit your thoughts and get some perspective

We often ruminate when we think we’ve made a mistake, spoken out of turn, or believe we are responsible for something bad that has happened.

If you can put a thought into perspective, you may find it is inaccurate.

If you’ve made a mistake at work, for instance, it might help to:

• Consider what effect will your perceived mistake have in reality.
• Recall when something like this happened before, and how it turned out.
• Take steps to own up and correct the error.
• Apologize, if appropriate.

Remember that everyone makes mistakes, and it’s better to sort it out early if it’s going to need sorting out at all.

6. Readjust your life’s goals

Perfectionism and unrealistic goal setting can lead to a fear or perception of failure, and this can lead to rumination.

Setting unrealistic goals may cause you to worry about why and how you haven’t reached a goal, or what you should have done to reach it.

Setting more realistic goals that you’re capable of achieving can reduce the risks of overthinking your own actions.

7. Work on enhancing your self-esteem

Many people who ruminate report difficulties with self-esteem. In fact, there may be a link between a lack of self-esteem and a tendency to ruminate, according to some scientists.

Ways of enhancing your self-esteem include reviewing and appreciating your strengths and building on them.

8.

Try meditation or deep breathing

Meditating aims to clear your mind, which means it may help you stop ruminating.

When you find yourself with a repeating loop of thoughts in your mind, seek out a quiet space. Sit down, breathe deeply, and focus on your breathing.

Which breathing techniques can help relieve stress?

9. Understand your triggers

Each time you find yourself ruminating, make a mental note of the situation you’re in.

This includes:

• where you are
• what time of day it is
• who’s with you (if anyone)
• what you’ve been doing
• any triggers that have kicked off the unwanted thoughts

Being aware of these triggers may help reduce any tendency to ruminate.

10. Talk to a friend

Ruminating thoughts can make you feel isolated. A trusted friend may be able to offer an outside perspective that can help break the cycle.

You might ask also ask them to help you make a list of actions or events that turned out well in the past. This can help you gain perspective.

Be sure to speak with a friend who can give you that perspective rather than ruminate with you.

11. Try therapy

If your ruminating thoughts are taking over your life, you may want to consider therapy. A therapist can help you identify why you’re ruminating and how to address the problems at their core.

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) can help you develop new ways to approach situations. One-to-one counseling can provide an opportunity to dig deeper and address any underlying causes.

What are the benefits of therapy?

12. Set your own expectations

If we set ourselves targets that are too high, we may never meet them. This can cause us to question our self-worth, and it may lead to negative ruminations, like “I’ll never be good enough.”

It may be time to evaluate what you realistically can do and adjust your own expectations.

Constantly work on building your self-esteem by:

• taking care of yourself
• doing things you enjoy and excel at
• praising yourself for your successes
• forgiving yourself for your mistakes

Are you aiming too high? How to recognize unrealistic expectations.

What is rumination?

Rumination is a bit like overthinking, where you keep going over and over the same thoughts. These are often negative thoughts about the past, present, or future. They can involve self-blame, hopelessness, and negative self esteem.

Is rumination a mental illness?

Rumination is not a disorder, but it commonly occurs with various mental health conditions, such as depression, anxiety, and OCD.

What causes a person to ruminate?

Factors that can contribute to rumination include having a history of trauma, feeling you are in a situation you can’t control, or having a personality trait such as perfectionism, where you fear not being good enough. A person may also ruminate as they search for a solution to a problem.

Can you stop ruminating?

Distraction, setting lower expectations for yourself, or making an action plan may help you stop ruminating in the short term. If these strategies don’t help, counseling or CBT may be beneficial.

Ruminating involves a cycle where you keep thinking the same thoughts or worrying the same worries without getting anywhere. It can be exhausting and it can affect your sleep and your mental and physical health.

Tips for breaking the cycle include speaking with others, seeking distraction, noticing your triggers, and reviewing your perspective.

If these tips don’t help, consider contacting a mental health professional for assistance.

stop wasting energy on empty thoughts and experiences – Workle

During one of his famous speeches, the Indian philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti asked the audience if they wanted to know his secret. Those present in the hall fell silent and leaned forward. “You know,” he said, “I just don’t give a damn most of the time.”

“Theories and Practices” translated an article by the author of the Raptitude blog about why a fly should remain a fly, and an elephant should remain an elephant.

Useful for any life situation, including problems at work (a client got nasty, a big deal fell through due to a small joint, etc. ).

Let’s go back to Krishnamurti and his response to the audience. Of course, he didn’t say so. By most accounts, he said, “You know, I just don’t pay attention to what’s going on,” but he could say this and that.

However, the careless concept is still closer to the majority. When you tell someone to “pay no attention”, that someone is likely to look at you strangely – but not the one who came to Krishnamurti’s lecture. At the same time, everyone understands that such unpleasant moments sometimes happen in life, which are best to just forget / give a damn about.

Not to score means to think about what happened. For example, someone is rude to you on the phone, and you replay what happened in your head, you can’t give a damn so easily. And if you just hung up the phone, shrugged your shoulders and calmly went to ride a bike, then you are great at scoring.

Constantly replaying the situation in your head is just a useless thought process

If you are worried, then this does not mean that you are doing something useful. It seems logical that every time we fuss over something, we thereby get closer to some kind of answer. But this is not so, because the constant scrolling in the head is a thought process, and a thought process that is not aimed at finding a solution is useless.

This sheds light on one of the most ineradicable and narrow-minded ideas about human thinking. We are sure that thoughts are valuable in themselves and will lead to something. But most of our thoughts just fill our head and protect us from real life. They do not lead to any important decisions or analytical conclusions. They simply consume us and also, perhaps, make our lives shorter.

We usually think that thoughts serve some function simply because they are caused by a strong emotion or are directed to a subject that is important to us. It can be justice, respect, or the current state of society.

No. Thinking only makes sense if it makes your body move and do something useful. This does not mean that any life grief, rudeness or injustice must be immediately responded to with action. Vice versa. Usually you can’t do anything about it or you just don’t want to do it. And that’s okay.

In most cases, it’s better to do nothing at all, just score.

Such a concept may seem apathetic. In fact, this is not so. This is simply a refusal to waste your energy and time on thoughts that will lead nowhere. So if you decide to mess around with something, make sure that it will lead to some kind of response to what happened, and then move on to action.

Here is a visual scheme of actions.

Practice, practice and more practice

It’s not that easy to learn how to score. This takes practice. The ability to score should be one of those vital skills that we teach children. Along with the ability to count, tie shoelaces and stay away from strangers.

Not so long ago, I went out for a run and someone called out to me from a passing truck.

It seems he called me a ram (or maybe Ivan?). This scared me a lot, I even seemed to jump a little in surprise. They probably laughed there in their cab and gave each other high fives… or what do idiots like that usually do after they yell out of the car?

There have been times in my life when I would have wasted a huge amount of energy worrying about such injustices. But on that day, I was not going to do this, and everything passed me by. I still felt the initial surge of rage and adrenaline, but decided to just skip this five-second event, and not reflect on it for another half a day, and then tell everyone about it.

I continued to run and noticed that just a few seconds later everything was quiet and peaceful on the street again. There was not the slightest trace of what happened, simply because I did not revive it in my head, I did not give a damn about it.

Catch yourself responding to what is happening

I have known people who told whole stories about some unpleasant twenty-second incident that happened to them many years ago and which they cannot forget. I think you have met such people too. Don’t fall into the same madness. Follow the chosen course: just score.

The ability to score on time does not mean that you will always score on everything. It only means that you are doing it consciously. You have a reason. The main thing is to catch yourself in the response.

It all starts with anger and outrage in your head, usually in the form of a witty response or an inner sermon about decency and respect. You can start running through several possible scenarios in which you show the abuser who is in charge. It’s also very easy to get caught up in a vindictive fantasy where you, like a tank/Terminator, are rushing after a truck, causing it to crash into a tree, and there you are, standing and laughing, patting your sides.

When you catch yourself thinking like this, remind yourself that you don’t really care about such things. Switch your attention back to the material world. What did you have next according to the plan after this insignificantly small incident happened? Listen to your body: what does it need to move on?

So hang up. Dial the next number, run another kilometer, mix drinks, hop on a bike… everything that logically follows in the life of a person who does not pay attention to the little things in life. And if you can’t wait to think about something once again, then it’s better to think about it.

Source: Theories and Practices

Philosophical Reflections of an Actor

Actors are often called crazy. Therefore, I have always been interested in the topic – what is madness, and how a mentally ill person differs from a mentally healthy one.

In my opinion, it’s a question of measure. Like, for example, carelessness in clothes: it looks stylish in moderation, but when it is too much, it repels.

The difficulty is that everyone often has their own measure.

I remember that in Jerome K. Jerome’s book “Three in One Boat” there is a wonderful fragment where the author, looking into a medical reference book, found almost all the diseases described there. Usually this episode is remembered in an ironic way, when I catch myself in similar behavior and see what I am set to. And for me, this is usually a sign that “stop driving, otherwise I’ll find a lot of things now.”

But sometimes it leads to global, philosophical reflections.

It happened when I read Arnhild Lauweng’s book “Tomorrow I was always a lion”. The book is unusual in that it was written by a person who had schizophrenia and managed to fully recover and, accordingly, can describe the disease both “outside” and “inside”. So, involuntarily, I began to look for parallels with my thoughts and feelings, and, of course, I found it! Just like in Jerome’s book. But, if I may say so, with a positive message and a sense of inner relief: they say, we are all a little “that”, but life still goes on!

It’s just that someone’s “it” is within certain generally accepted boundaries, and everything seems to be normal. And someone was unlucky, and everything developed to an unacceptable degree in such a way that it interferes with everyone – and is called a mental illness. And in fact, everything is the same.

Take, for example, the same panic attacks: I had them too (I even went to see a psychiatrist out of fear at first), and many people around me had them. And he lived with it, and others live. I have now passed them, but someone has left.

Arnhild Lauweng describes his hallucinations in his book. I read, and suddenly I understand that a panic attack is the same hallucination! Only some kind of underdeveloped, or something, not yet clothed in a visible form, only a “bare” feeling of impending danger, an unknown threat, so far without a “picture”. But essentially the same: something that doesn’t really exist and exists only in my disturbed imagination!

By the way, in connection with this I thought: probably, any thought is a hallucination. After all, no one sees or feels it except the thinker himself. But everyone sees the actions of a person who reacts to his invisible (and non-existent for others) thought. And the performance is a collective controlled hallucination. 😉 How do you like it?

What about the “voice in the head”? It happens that you get up in the morning “on the wrong foot”, there is discomfort in your soul, and you begin to see everything in “black color” and cling to everyone. As in a joke: a man wakes up with a terrible hangover, his head hurts, it’s bad inside, he doesn’t want to live, and then a kitten comes into the room. A man, with pain and irritation, pinching his ears: “Well, what is it, all cats are like cats, and this one is top, top, top, top !!!”.

And in the depths of your soul you understand that others are not to blame for the fact that you feel so bad and that you now perceive everything so sharply, but you can’t help yourself, and you continue to hurt yourself and people, blaming and getting angry at everything more. Why not actions under the influence of a certain “evil voice”, but in fact your own bad mood?! By the way, I remembered that in German the words Stimme (voice) and Stimmung (mood) are very similar.