Mindful Rumination
(read time: 2 min)
Do replay conversations over and over in your head? What did you say? How did your face look? Did you act the right way? What does the other person think of you now? It can be an endless cycle of rumination if you let it.
YOUR BOOST
The next time you catch yourself unconsciously going down a spiral of replays, stop everything else you are doing, and be with these thoughts completely.
Sit with the emotions and let the replay happen
Dig into why the situation made you feel worried or guilty
Set your ego aside and make a repair plan if needed
I call this Mindful Rumination. Your goal is to use it, so you can understand, learn and figure out your next steps. Once you do that, you can tell your mind it’s done, so you can move on.
THE SCIENCE
Evolutionary theory pins low-level depressive symptoms, like rumination, as beneficial because they allows us to learn from social situations. This ability to feel when something *maybe* wasn’t right has the benefit of refocusing your attention, otherwise known as the REPLAY. This gives you time and space to see if something really was wrong, in which case you can now do the socially responsible thing of making it right.
The danger comes when rumination turns into a full-on depressive spiral that leads to NO action and this prevents you from moving on. The replay just keeps happening and you start to internalize that something about you is innately wrong. Guilt and worry are replaced by shame. Shame is a HUGE CLUE that the converstion triggered an underlying issue. When this happens, it’s time for a good dose of inner work (talk with your therapist, journal, do whatever makes sense for you to unpeel the onion). When you tackle the real issue underlying the replay, you’ll lift out of the spiral and be able to move on again.
TAKE HOME
If you’re going to spend time ruminating, which science shows isn’t actually as bad as you think, then do it the right way. Be mindful, walk through what happened, pin point any uynderlying issues of shame, figure out if there is a follow up, and then get back to living.
No shame, no guilt, just more good days,
Nicole