Is ruminating a compulsion? How do you stop it?

My advice to help with ruminating would be to say I don’t have to figure that out or to say maybe, maybe not, and to try to not let if affect you.

It 100% is a compulsion. I recommend looking up Dr. Michael J. Greenberg’s writings. He talks a lot about rumination, where it stems from, and how to eventually stop ruminating. (All writings are public access and include exercises as well!)

It’s a compulsion for sure!! It was always my worst one and it took a long time to learn how to recognize when I was ruminating and how to shut it down cause it felt almost automatic! But it is possible! You “just” have to accept the possibility that the thing you are scared of might be true … not that is necessarily is true but that it might be and you can never know! Take distance from your thought try maybe even agreeing with them in a sarcastic manner ( sureee/ yeah / ecsactly / that’s so true) or smt. and then redirect your thoughts to a game, a movie, singing along to a really good song or mind exercises like naming a celeb for every letter of the alphabet or connecting characters in your fave shows (fx this guy is married to this girl and that girl is friends with this character) see if you can connect them all🤷‍♀️ idk just something that you are interested in (The thought might still float in the back of your head that’s fine you don’t engage and if you feel your self starting to then agree with the thought and try to continue with what you were doing) Also I like to have embrace unceartanty reminders on my screen savers and stuff. Because sometimes rumination can feel like solving a problem and like it’s life or death to figure this out now but I like to remind myself that’s not true Again even if you try really hard and practice all of these techniques you are probably going to slip up.. just recognize it and move on it doesn’t matter if it’s not perfect. It takes practice and I believe in you!!

Yesss it can be . If you’re switching up thoughts to avoid one of the other then yess. Bcuz I tend to just replace it with something to cover up that triggering thoughts that leads me to compulsively think over and over . But I can help it so I just ruminate :(

Thank you for all the responses and resources!

Can’t ^

Thank you! 💕