So I want you to notice one visual sight that you really like, and then I want you to look at that and really enjoy seeing it for a minute or two. If they say, “I’m going to go for a walk,” then I’m going to say to them, “Now, how are you going to make sure you’re not ruminating when you’re walking? ‘Cause I can walk and ruminate at the same time and I’m sure you can too.” Then we’ll talk about what else could you do.Īn experience I often give people is a mindfulness exercise where I’ll say to them, “Okay, while you’re out walking, I want you to play the five senses game. I want people to get engaged with something and really pay attention to that thing. It can be something very mundane and practical like go do the dishes, or it can be something like take a walk, or it can be tuned into your sensory experiences.”īecause getting people out of their heads and into the world around them is really one of the best antidotes to rumination. I let them choose, “Do you want to have two minutes, three minutes? How much rumination do you want to do before you stop?” We literally give it a time limit and say, “At the end of three minutes, if you’re not actively problem solving, coming up with steps that are useful, then I want you to stop thinking about this and go do something. In general, once we establish that someone is doing unhelpful rumination, I generally give them like a two to three minute. The answer to these questions about rumination are – Is it time to be thinking about this? Am I avoiding something? How long have I been thinking about this? We want to find out, am I avoiding something? If I’m avoiding something, I want to put my energy into doing something about the thing that I’m avoiding. Really what I’m doing is I’m avoiding working on writing my paper. I’m not writing anything down, I’m not taking any steps. Instead, I’ll start ruminating about something that has recently happened or that’s coming up, “Oh, what am I gonna say when I do this interview for the practitioner series.” I’ll have to think about that and maybe I just start ruminating about it, and I’m not really making any forward progress. Maybe I am supposed to be working on writing a paper and I’m really dragging my feet on doing it, I don’t feel like writing that paper. A lot of times, our rumination kind of tricks us into thinking we’re doing something useful and meaningful, when in fact we should be doing something else. I’m going to read, listen to music, do something else.The second question I ask is, “Am I avoiding anything?” Because avoidance is quite common in both depression and anxiety. So the first question is, is this the time to be thinking about it? If it’s not, I’m going to do something else. They wake up and they start to ruminate about something.Even if it’s good problem solving, 3:00 AM is rarely the best time to do problem solving. The first thing I want you to ask, “Is this the right time to be thinking about this?” Now, I asked that question because a lot of people, when they’re depressed or anxious, they ruminate a lot in the middle of the night. When you catch yourself thinking about something, I want you to ask yourself a couple of questions. She’ll also walk us through a mindfulness exercise that’s intended specifically to replace rumination. So, in the video below, Christine Padesky, PhD will share 3 specific questions that can help clients ease patterns of obsessive negative thoughts. Clients who ruminate often think of it as a helpful problem-solving tool – that if they dwell on a problem long enough, they’ll gain new insight into how to fix it.īut as we know, rumination can keep clients stuck in cycles of depression and self-doubt.
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