sometimes i ruminate without realizing i'm even ruminating until it's too late and the thoughts have already taken hold of me. how do i fix this? i feel like i have become my disorder. i'm so lost
Rumination is a tricky compulsion! I do it a lot too and it can be hard to catch for sure! I have found kind of a mindfulness approach to be helpful here. Practice noticing it and redirecting, even if you don't notice it right away. You won't be perfect but it's not all-or-nothing. Each time you stop yourself, wherever in the process you are, and redirect to a maybe maybe not type of response, the better you will get at noticing and redirecting. It takes time, but over time it gets better!
I am sorry that you're going through this. Rumination truly is a very difficult thing, the first step is recognizing that your doing it (so excellent work there) and the next is changing your response- think of it like this, the rumination serves a purpose for you, you likely engage in it to reduce your anxiety and distress, but it is just like a physical compulsion, it only serves to strengthen the obsession in OCD.https://www.treatmyocd.com/blog/the-rumination-trap
Hi! I'm new to the community and wondering what rumination looks like in terms of OCD?
I hear you, and I especially resonate with that feeling of the rumination being automatic, like the thoughts take hold and then you’re on a runaway train. Something that has helped me is to remember that the goal is not to make the thoughts/obsessions go away. It’s to respond differently to them. When we ruminate we are responding to the obsessive thoughts with effort. That might look like checking, reviewing, looking for evidence that the thoughts are true or not, trying to “figure out” something with certainty. It sounds simple but the only way out is to choose not to do those things, little by little. Not by pushing the thoughts away, but by accepting that they are there and not giving them more power by engaging with the content of them. Something that has helped me a ton with rumination are Non-Engagement Responses. Here’s an article with some examples of these and how to use them: https://iocdf.org/expert-opinions/how-do-i-stop-thinking-about-this-what-to-do-when-youre-stuck-playing-mental-ping-pong/ Every time you interrupt the rumination cycle with these non-engagement responses, you are responding differently to the thoughts. And in the long term, by practicing accepting uncertainty it should start to feel less automatic.
Title says it all. Biggest compulsion I can’t seem to stop doing even if I notice I’m doing it is ruminating. How do I stop? It’s almost like my brain automatically does it and I keep getting so lost in thought.
So I got diagnosed with OCD this past summer. Since then I've been in ERP therapy for my OCD. I'm 24 and it took a long time to figure out that what I had was OCD because a lot of my compulsions are internal. I struggle a lot with rumination, my brain just chewing on the problem to find a definitive answer. My therapist told me to focus on the feelings in my body, to try and be present in my body and not just stuck in my head. But it's really hard because I don't realize I'm ruminating until I've already started and it can be hard to drag myself away from it. I usually just start ruminating about something else related. My question is, does anyone have any tips and tricks to stop ruminating? I read the article by Dr. Michael Greenberg about stopping rumination but it just seemed like his advice was "Just don't ruminate" and it was very stressful.
I am dumbfounded by how my whole life has been laced with OCD, and I never thought my anxiety was OCD-esc, since that’s not how it is portrayed in media or discussed in society. I also never truly gave therapy a shot for 25 years since I didn’t think I was mentally ill enough. It took being diagnosed with severe ocd, and depression that made me take a step back. I was not expecting OCD or depression, since i thought i was just a “high strung anxious individual” and since i do, on paper, enjoy life - how the hell could i be severely depressed (when literally i spend an allotted 5 hours a week on crying and being a disgruntled emotional mess) I’ve been through 4 sessions of therapy and each time I cry, even though I never think I’m gonna when i enter the session. I’ve been told i ruminate and all the planning, and thinking and attention to detail and journaling on journaling is not helpful how does one stop ruminating? when rumination is the only thing i do in my brain i am ruminating about ruminating if i don’t keep myself occupied with some form of stimulus i’ll think myself into a panicked state anyone break free from rumination, or have any perspective to share thanks 🫶🏼
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