How do I stop replaying things that happened in my head? (Ex: someone flipped me off today driving and I can’t get past it & can’t stop replaying it in my head trying to remember every detail).
For me the only way to stop ruminating (with varying success) is to decide with conviction that even if there is more information to be gathered/ understood about a moment, I am deciding that moving forward without paying attention to it is more important. For instance, thinking about how someone interpreted what I said used to burden me so much it became hard to function and I just withdrew from speaking as much as I could to avoid being misunderstood. I don’t know if this is a common saying but I had to force myself to comply with the ideal that “everything works out in the wash” in the end.
@Lost- Thank you! That’s a good way to think about it.
Ohhhh, that’s OCD. I get stuck on a thought like that. I can’t let it go. Interesting. I think part of letting things go is having compassion for ourselves. Because I was just feeling annoyed that I have another thing to figure out, annoyed that I have these thought patterns in the first place. I listened to a podcast today (11 Things I Tell My Patients in Their First Session of OCD Treatment Ер. 378 — Your Anxiety Toolkit) and she said, “There’s no such thing as bad thoughts.” I think it would be helpful to not judge ourselves so harshly. Why are you (why am I) replaying those bad moments? What are we trying to figure out? It seems like learning to sit with the discomfort and not ruminating is key. Not exactly sure how to do that… But I really did appreciate this post because I definitely do that too and didn’t realize it was an OCD thing. More insight…thank you. I have read things that say we can just choose to not ruminate but that’s proven hard for me. I can distract myself, but it just comes back. I’m missing something… if you figure it out, let me know.
@JediMJ Much easier said than done - been trying to work past this for a long time now with all different kinds of thoughts. Always ones that left me feeling upset in some way. Best of luck to you, I hope you figure out how to get past these ruminations!
@Annonn Yeah…it seems like we get upset by being flipped off or whatever…and instead of allowing ourselves to feel our feelings we jump into rumination. We analyze it to try to make sure it never happens again because this feeling is intolerable. And what I think I’m learning is we have to learn to live with discomfort. And eventually we’ll level out.
I think it’s also if you have the choice to be present in the moment or think about the thing, you choose to be present in the moment instead. For example, I could watch Jimmy Fallon or ruminate on something my friend said to me. I choose Jimmy Fallon, even though my compulsion is to ruminate.
@HopeM365 Good tip! Thanks!
Advice needed please: Has anybody ever been in a situation where something traumatic or heartbreaking was happening in their life and struggled with rumination? I know there is like a normal amount that you should process something and cry it out but I don’t know that it is conducive to anything to do that on and off for hours? Wouldn’t it at a certain point be considered unhelpful rumination? And if so how does one stop? Because I’m going through something so hurtful and confusing that I don’t know how to stop thinking about it and the usual distractions don’t work for very long. And idk how important this is but it just happened today so it’s very fresh which makes it even harder to not think about and “figure out” why x, y, z happened. Goodness, I’m sorry if I’m weird or a baby
Two things are happening: I get thoughts that just keep looping. They almost feel like song stuck in my head. Also, I’ll imagine something and I feel my stomach drop. Then as the seconds go by I keep getting fragments of the this thought but with different details. For example, it’s kinda like how a “vision” is portrayed. I’ll get a glimpse of the thought and then it’ll rapidly expand into something worse every few seconds. I don’t know if I’m causing this or if it’s just an automatic thing like any other intrusive thought. It feels unavoidable, idk if this is a compulsion or if it’s just another manifestation of an intrusive thought. Apart from that remembering an intrusive thought triggers the full thought again and then it just keeps looping or expanding. I don’t know how to stop any of this. Help?
So, I know my capacity to get fixated on things. And it's normally something that's relatively remote but, my latest issue is really getting to me and I was wondering if people have any advice. I'm avoiding getting too into specifics, as I don't want this to get reassurance-y but, in essence.. I came to the realisation recently that people who I'd been "friends" (feels like the wrong term now) when I was younger were not very nice people, and normalized a lot of very unpleasant behaviour towards other members of the group. They really normalized it, sold themselves as figures of authority, as older and more responsible and grown-up than others, and looking back, they acted horribly. And coming to this realisation, that I'd been manipulated into just accepting their behaviour has just... broken me. My OCD has latched onto it and I can't stop feeling irreversibly tainted by it. I've talked to others about it, and they've reassured me, told me it's not a big deal and that I hold myself to too high a standard, but none of that sticks. I feel better for a bit, then think 'Maybe when you told them you were skewing it to make yourself look better' or 'Did you leave out a crucial detail'. I keep ruminating over and over, trying to remember exactly how everything played out, trying to figure out if I fed into the behaviour, if I did something bad myself (because y'know, I feel like I was accepting of it at the time, so what does it say about my own values?). I know I need to stop doing all this if I want to improve, but then some part of me keeps saying 'So, you're just going to let yourself off the hook then?' Normally, I can rationalize my own fears to some degree, assure myself something won't happen, but the realness of the situation, and the fact I only came to understand the reality of it because the thought had been bothering me means it feels so much more all-encompassing. I know confessing in itself is a compulsion, but I keep feeling that if I'm not I'm somehow concealing what I 'really am' from others around me, and any positive interactions are me deceiving them in some way. I feel like I can't enjoy anything in life right now, and a good part of me feels I should not enjoy it ever again. If anybody has any advice on it, I'm all ears. Or even hearing if you relate to these feelings, I might appreciate the solidarity at least.
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