Rumination
Speaker 0: Welcome to Takeout Therapy. I'm Rebecca Hunter, a therapist who knows therapy is expensive and believes that mental health education should be free. Stick with me for the next few minutes and you'll learn something that will help you think about things different or manage things better for yourself. This podcast is authentic, unedited, and without a bunch of ads, always. All I ask is that you pass it along, please forward an episode to a friend.
And if you like my style and you're ready to do some work, Come join the club at takeout therapy dot com, where I teach classes, do groups, and work with people one on one. Let's get to work. Hi there. I'm so happy you're joining me today for a nice discussion about something we all know about rumination. It is the worst.
If you don't know what rumination means, don't worry. It's a total like silly therapist word. All it means is, you know when you can't stop thinking about something, and it's like so irritating because you're just done thinking about it and you don't wanna think about it anymore. And then you think about it more and more and more, yeah, that's rumination. Let's talk about it today.
Because rumination is super annoying and it will keep us up at night and it will drive us absolutely bananas and we all do it. And so once you kind of understand what illumination is and you know how to what the techniques are for getting rid of it, Oh, I hope it helps you a little bit. I reminate. I get all up in my head. When people hack me off.
I just I get so irritated about people about humanity, basically. And they could be something so silly. Like, I don't know. Like, I went to a store and somebody said something to me or, oh, or, like, I saw somebody and then I said something weird. Right?
And then basically, my brain just like latches onto it and won't let go. Hopefully, you're relating to me right now. Or, like, when you're mad at somebody. Right? Like, I get mad at people sometimes too friends.
And I ruminate about it. And it's so annoying because it's like, it's not even within my control, other people's behavior, and yet my brain is clicking away on it. So let me tell you a little bit about why the brain does this and what we can do about this very annoying thing, illumination. Okay. So glad you joined me today.
Hey, I Before I give you this fabulous information, I just wanna thank people for taking the time to review the podcast. And it's funny. I I've gone through the reviews, and I really, really appreciate so many of them. And even the ones where there's some constructive criticism. I really appreciate having feedback on this little project that I do because it helps me get better and it helps me deliver information in a better way to you.
So even though I didn't love some of the reviews, I saw them and I'm listening. Thank you so much for participating in this project. And if you haven't left a review, that is a really helpful thing for you to do for the podcast because for whatever reason, it, like, raises, you know, its visibility on people's searches. And so what if they need to know about how to act exrumination. Let's help everybody out.
Shall we, and leave a review? Anyways, I just wanted to mention that because I do think it's Well, well, I could ruminate on that. Right? Like getting constructive criticism is one of those things that causes illumination. So what do you do when your brain is just going, going going going.
First, I wanna tell you kind of that rumination is kinda glitchy, but it's a mechanism of the mind. So you always have to remember that your mind's job is to keep you alive. And how does it do that? Well, it tells you about all the bad shit, my friend. So that's what it does, and it does it all day long.
And so when things happen in your life that feel uncomfortable or feel kind of quote unquote dangerous, whether it's emotionally or physically it doesn't really matter, then your brain kind of responds to that. And what it does is it just goes, hey, Remember about this. Don't forget about this bad thing. Right? And that keeps you on high alert.
Like, nobody's gonna be messing with you because you can ruminate. No. But that's kinda what's happening. And so the brain's just a machine. So we can work it just like it can work us.
And the first thing you wanna do in the case of illumination, say, for example, you're laying in your bed in the middle of the night. Thinking about how pissed off you are about somebody else's behavior, And you think, why am I laying here thinking about this? I'd rather be sleepy. So the first thing you wanna do is you want to distract your mind. And please notice my language because this isn't really a you thing unless it's really like you're holding on to something and that's different work to do.
But if you're kinda done thinking about something and you're really trying to put it down and you're not able to, this is a brain glitch. So depersonalizing a little bit can really really help. So the first thing you wanna do is distract your mind. Make it think about something else. And the best way to do this is to learn some breathing techniques that your mind has to kind of pay attention to.
So a popular one that we teach is the box breath. This is all stuff that I teach in my class that I have online. But you can learn to breathe in a way that really distracts your mind. And the way I kinda do it is I take a deep breath in and I just picture filling up my belly. And I picture colors because I'm a very visual person.
And so that helps me to have a focus where to put my mind. And I just do that for as long as I can. And then if my mind goes back to thinking about that thing that I don't really wanna think about, then you gotta go with step two. Which is rewire. And so what I mean by this is, you know, we know a lot about the brain and we know a ton about how thoughts kinda get patterned into our mind.
And our thoughts oh, boy. Our thoughts create our reality. Don't they? And so one of the ways that we can deal with rumination is we can meet up with it head on. We can be like, oh, I'm First of all, you have to be able to notice.
So like, breathing is a great plan because then you start to notice what's happening. Breathe often. Often and always, I say. But the rewiring really happens when you give your brain something to say. Give your brain something to think about.
What's happening in illumination is your brain's given you something to think about. It's like, hey. Let's think about this since you're not doing anything. Right? Let's think about this annoying thing that happened or this silly thing you said, or let's oh, Let's second guess everything about you right now.
And if you're just like, what? I don't wanna be doing this. I don't wanna be thinking about this. Then your brain's kinda running things and you need to take the reins. And the way you do this is to give it something to think.
And so I teach this all the time in my classes and all the time in therapy and we go into it really deep, but I call this mantra work, which probably isn't the right way to say mantra work, but whatever. It's kind of a philosophy that has gone back through eons of time. Which is repeat a phrase that you do want to think. Just repeat something else. Rather than let your brain give you material to think about, you give your brain material to think about.
And so sometimes you can pair this with breath. And I always say if you're gonna do a rewiring project for illumination, then then just create a little empowering statement about how you don't wanna ruminate about this. Minus kind of, I'm going for peace. I think you probably heard me say that before if you listen to the podcast, but I guess that's kind of I haven't thought about it that way, but, like, the word piece always enters my mantra right now in my life because that's kinda where I wanna be. I wanna be at peace.
And so I pair it with breath. When I'm ruminating, I take a nice deep breath in, and I think to myself, let's go for peace. How about some peace? Right? Or just a little I mean, you don't have get all official and not don't be perfect about this.
But just like, maybe it's a word, maybe it's just in peace, out peace. Or in peace and out sleep if you're laying a bed? And how long can you do it for? Make it a little game. Something that's more interested in thinking about the same exact thing you don't wanna be thinking about But, you know, loss loss less interesting than a lot of things.
It might lead you to fall asleep. It's so boring. Wouldn't that be awesome? So just a couple of rules for once you distract and then rewire with your little statement that you repeat. A couple of rules.
One is, be curious. With yourself about what's happening for you. Right? So that's something else you could go into thinking about after you're done ruminating when you're awake and there's an intention set or you're like, you know, I'm gonna give myself some time to think about this situation. Like, what is it that's bothering me so much?
And why? This is like kind of where you dig in and do your personal growth work. You know, a lot of times when we ruminate, we're thinking about somebody else, aren't we? Which I always think is very interesting And then I'm like Rebecca, why are you wasting only time thinking about somebody else? Maybe see what's going on with you.
Okay? So that's kind of just an idea, a little rule for why this is just like, you can turn rumination into personal growth work. And then also, by not being judgmental, like, can we just say one of the rules of getting rid of remuneration is don't be so judgmental. Yeah, we are so like, oh, why do you think about that? Or, you know, are your thoughts?
Are you ruminating in a really judgment? Away? Like, are you judging yourself? And so if that's a thing, then definitely. You want to be doing some mantra work around that.
Go back and listen to the episodes about, like, how to have a relationship with yourself and Again, I teach this in my class. I I believe really firmly that the key to all of it is our relationship with ourself. So in illumination, it doesn't really pay to sit there and then lamb based yourself because you're ruminating in the first place. Like, why am I thinking about that? What's wrong with me?
But but but, no, it's a brain glitch. And just take responsibility for it, get some breathing going, get some distraction techniques going. There's lots of ways to distract the brain, pick healthy ones. Right? And then work to rewire.
Oh, in PS, this process takes about one thousand repetitions. That's the way the brain works. It just takes a steady, steady effort in just going like, oh, I don't really wanna be thinking about this. Okay? I'm gonna try to get to some peace.
I'm gonna do some breathing. I'm gonna say some nice things to myself. And hopefully, you'll drift right off to sleep. But just remember, all this stuff is part of doing the work, and I stand beside you while we do it together. Okay, take care and I'll see you soon.
Thanks for listening. The goal of this project is really to provide mental health education to everyone who needs it. So if you want to help me with that, forward an episode to a friend or write a kind review, pleads, And if you like my style and you're ready to dig in, do some work with me, come join the club at takeout therapy dot com. Where I'm now hosting a monthly mental health maintenance club. I also do classes, groups, and one on one coaching and therapy.
It's time for a change. Are you ready?
