Techniques To Help Quiet Your Ruminating Thoughts
By: Elizabeth Koblenz, LCSW
Do you ever feel like you think of a past or future event over and over? Do you feel like your thoughts continue to circulate in your mind, making it hard for you to quiet your thoughts? There is actually a name for this, and it is called rumination. Rumination is the process where you continuously think about the same thought over and over again. This can become a habit that occurs frequently, and it may become frustrating when you are constantly reminding yourself of the same negative thought over and over again. People may ruminate when they are facing a stressful situation that they have little to no control over, or they may ruminate about a past traumatic event or experience that happened. Here are techniques that you can use to try and help quiet ruminating thoughts:
Distract Yourself: An easy and effective way to quiet your thoughts is by distracting yourself. This can help to break your cycle of your thoughts. Some ways to distract yourself include calling a friend, reading a book, taking a walk, or anything else that you enjoy daily.
Challenge your thoughts: Oftentimes, you end up ruminating over events that you may not have control over. You may be replaying the scene again and again to try and pinpoint how you could have changed a certain outcome. Challenge these thoughts and think about how your thoughts or ideas may not be accurate. How can you reframe what you are thinking and change these thoughts? You may even find that some are irrational!
Understand your triggers: When you start to find yourself ruminating, take a minute to recognize this. How are you feeling at this moment? What are you doing at this time? Write down how you feel and what made you think about these thoughts. This can be a helpful way to reduce rumination.
Work on your self-esteem: It is common that people who ruminate may also struggle with low self-esteem. Working on your self-esteem takes time. Start by identifying your strengths. Continue to do things that make you happy and be kind to yourself through this process. Practice those skills that make you feel good and find time to implement them more consistently!
CBT: Cognitive behavioral therapy is a way to learn how to identify these negative thought patterns so that you can reframe them and be more in control of your behaviors that follow the thoughts. Learning CBT can be done through therapy, where you can also learn how to identify skills to cope and become more in control of your thoughts!
It can be also helpful to talk to someone about your thoughts and to learn to take control of them. If you are looking to talk to someone, or interested in learning techniques to help quiet your ruminating thoughts, reach out to us today at hello@upsidertherapy.com