Ruminations

Rumination is repetitive, prolonged, and recurrent negative thinking about one’s self, feelings, personal concerns and upsetting experiences (Watkins,2008).It has also repetitive thinking about the symptoms, causes, circumstances, meanings, implications, and consequences. Ruminations typically lead to depressive moods. Worry on the other hand is a chain of thoughts and images, negatively affect-laden and relatively uncontrollable and leads to anxiety. They both lead to magnification and prolonging existing negative mood states and negative thinking. It also  interferes with cognitive functions of attention, concentration and effective problem-solving. Rumination further leads to an unwillingness to move to a more pleasant mood state by shirking behavior that would enable change.

An antidote to rumination is behavior activation where one schedules pleasurable, social, physical activities on a daily basis. One may also make a note of one’s negative ruminating thoughts and look at alternate mechanisms of thinking by ideating and brainstorming about optional ways of thinking.

The best is to move towards reflective thinking which is a process where you critically analyze and evaluate your own thoughts, experiences, and actions to gain deeper insights and improve future decision-making. It involves introspection and a careful consideration of the context, meaning, and implications of an experience. It would involve refuting the ruminating thought and alter it to more positive goal oriented thinking.