By: Jena, The Wellness Resolution (No Ai was used)

Do you find your mind spiraling with negative thoughts? Do you struggle with obsessive ruminating over the same types of problems? This is a very challenging topic, as I know firsthand how hard it can be to control one’s thoughts. Along with managing and removing ruminating thoughts. However, I have gained a considerable amount of knowledge through my career, and I have also faced real life challenges in this area in the past, so I can speak from experience. I found real solutions that are not the obvious ones you typically hear about.

Most medical professionals and psychologists know of only a few things to try, and then if those don’t work, that’s too bad. And your kind of made to feel like you should be able to control your thoughts, you must not be trying hard enough. But, I know a lot more that can be done! I have not seen any articles that cover as many real strategies as I will be covering.

Understanding Ruminating Thoughts

Ruminating is when the same thoughts keep spiraling in the brain without any real purpose, and they don’t lead to any real solution. It could be obsessing about something negative from the past, obsessing about a current life problem with no resolution, or obsessing about a future event. Rumination keeps your brain and body responding as if the event — the insult, the pain, the panic — is happening right then (Hampton, 2018). The thoughts that run through your head even change your cells and genes (Hampton, 2015). Therefore, these thoughts can harm the body not just on a mental level, but also a physical level.

If you have dealt with ruminating thoughts and they have distracted you from work, your personal life, or just added a lot of stress to your life, tell yourself it is okay. Sometimes the worse thing we can do is be mad at ourselves for it. If you deal a lot with blaming yourself and struggle with self-esteem, that might be a better place to start. Check out my blogs What a Healthy Self-Esteem Really Looks Like and Improving Self-Esteem & Confidence in Your Career.

Before I get into ways of managing negative thought patterns, I have to state I’m not a psychologist or psychiatrist. Therefore, if you are dealing with dangerous thoughts, have chronic anxiety, depression, suicidal, please seek help from professionals. This blog is not right for you.

I will cover concepts a person can do on their own, and more intense ways of dealing with these thoughts.

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Activities to Improve Negative Thoughts & Ruminating

Meditation & Mindfulness

Mindfulness can help us to examine our feelings without feeling guilt or judgement. But also intense feelings of anger, anxiety, or fear can become less intense through meditation.There are days where being mindful might just be sitting with your sorrows, pain, or whatever you are feeling and just feeling it. Mindfulness can help with handling emotions and understanding them. I have a blog that covers all the different types of mediation, how to be mindful, the benefits of mindfulness, and more! View it here: How Mindfulness Improves Your Health & Life

Gratefulness

Being grateful can also help with getting into a more positive mindset, however it might not be an ideal solution for fixing ruminating thoughts. There is a lot of hype in the wellness world about how being grateful is one of the most powerful human emotions. Being grateful is all about focusing on what is good in our lives and be thankful or appreciative of it. View: Being Grateful NOT a Magical Pill, BUT is Potentially Life Changing

Read, Listen and View Positive Things

You could also search for some positive articles, find an inspirational book (i.e. bible), listen to a positive podcast, or a video that may provide new insight to your problem.

If you are really stuck in a negative place it might be a good idea to avoid viewing or watching the news, drama movies or horror films, and you may want to take a break from social media.

Intentionally Deal with Your Thoughts
Write the Problem Out

A common mistake people make with ruminating thoughts is just trying to push them away, and not dealing with them correctly. Writing down your thoughts can help. Try writing without first person pronouns to self distance yourself from the problem and view it objectively.

When Solving a Current or Future Problem

Are you worried about something going wrong in the future? If you have anxiety about something in the future write down what it is and try to make sense of it. Try to think about what someone else would do in the situation. Break down the issue into smaller, manageable steps and take action towards resolving it (PRIORY, 2023).

From healthline: 
Some questions you might ask include (Stanborough, 2023):
Is this thought based on emotion or facts?
What evidence is there that this thought is accurate?
What evidence is there that this thought isn’t accurate?
How could I test this belief?
What’s the worst that could happen? How could I respond if the worst happens?
What other ways could this information be interpreted?
Is this really a black-and-white situation, or are there shades of gray here?

It is also helpful to ask yourself if you are turning something small and insignificant into something much bigger. Will it matter in a day or a week?

When Dealing with the Past

Let’s say you made a huge mistake at work and you can’t help but think what you could of done differently, write it out. Consider how someone else might have tackled the problem, and come up with a solution to ensure the problem doesn’t happen again. What would your friend do? You may even talk to a friend about it and get a different perspective on it.

When Overanalyzing an Interaction

If you had an interaction with someone and you felt you looked dumb, you said something wrong, or you felt they offended you. Review the questions above. Write out the answers, and maybe share with a friend for another perspective. Once you have another perspective you might find it is no longer worth thinking about. However, if it is still eating at you, you might have to reach out to the person you had the interaction with.

Bottling up emotions never works, grudges are unhealthy, and even conversations that are super awkward and uncomfortable often need to happen.

I know this from experience! When I was younger I was a pushover and a people pleaser and often people took advantage of it. And because my personality hates conflicts, I always avoided a conflict. I had a lot of anger and pain that I didn’t deal with. This caused me a lot of stress and some unhealthy ruminating thoughts. But I now find even when it is challenging, even when I think it might not go well, I share how I’m feeling to the person who hurt me, I’m mad at, or whatever. And I usually feel a lot better.

There are certain scenarios where none of these things will work. So then what??

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Getting Help Recovering from Trauma That Causes Obsessive Ruminating Over the Same Problems Again & Again

If there are constant arguments in a relationship and you keep getting stuck in the same ruminating thought patterns, if you are always second-guessing conversations with people leading to ruminating thoughts, if you constantly feel like your making mistakes leading to ruminating thoughts. If ruminating over the same type of problems keeps happening again and again, it is not your fault. It is probably linked to a trauma from the past that you may or may not remember. Everyone has some past trauma, but some have deeper wounds, and some are more affected than others.

I know all about this because I dealt with some ruminating thoughts trying all these various methods I mentioned as if they were the only solutions. And I felt defeated! I had medical professionals that made me feel it was my fault when they didn’t work for me. Most medical professionals don’t understand trauma, and if they do they only know one way to help people recover! Because of all my past research and extensive networking, I know several.

People who are often very negative or pessimistic might be holding onto a trauma that no one has ever told them how to deal with. There are many people who try everything to be more positive, but struggle because the root of the problem is never addressed.

Coaches

I have heard that many therapists keep people as patients forever, because they don’t address the trauma that causes repeating thoughts and behaviors. They focus on the past vs how to change behavior patterns to thrive in the future. Coaches don’t discuss past trauma. Coaches (life, wellness, professional) can help people work on adopting healthier behaviors in the present to thrive in the future. However, sometimes people have to deal with their past in order to move forward. That’s why there are certified trauma therapists!

Trauma Therapists

Certified Trauma Therapists have methods that other therapists can’t provide to help deal with the unconscious, past programming in the brain. Methods like brainspotting help address issues immediately that take years to address in talk therapy. Its goal is to bypass the conscious, neocortical thinking to access the deeper, subcortical emotional and body-based parts of the brain (Brainspotting).

Many therapists will advertise they work with trauma as just another one of their services. However, if they don’t specialize in trauma therapy then they don’t have the proper training to really help trauma patients, and could even do more harm than good. Trauma Therapists can identify trauma responses, see struggles a person is going through, know the right questions to ask, understand a person’s behaviors, and see symptoms people might not even recognize they have. They have the knowledge and experience to understand how trauma can or has changed a person over time.

Energy Healing

LASTLY, energy healing can help people to get rid of trauma stored in their energy field. Therapy is great, if you feel you have a mental health problem, negative stuff that you need to make sense of, get validated, or anything like that. If not, energy healing might be a consideration.

As I mentioned in a previous blog, I’ve researched and learned about three and experienced all three. The one that I felt was actually the most scientific and actually makes the most sense is body field harmonizing. Oh yes, and I noticed a difference, otherwise I wouldn’t have mentioned it. It is done using tuning forks to clear stressful energy from your past held in your body field. Might sound weird, but it is a fact that we are all made up of energy. I won’t go too much into this in this blog, but every medical system utilizes the concept of energy: Modern Medicine, Functional Medicine, Naturopathic, Chinese Medicine, Ayurveda Medicine, etc.

Trauma could be something small or something huge. I’ve chatted with many people who needed a few sessions of body field harmonizing to deal with a bad breakup. I have also heard of it used for people dealing with a traumatic car accident that leaves them fearful of driving. Then, there are people who need it to deal with the trauma of losing a loved one, recovering from a violent experience, an abusive relationship, a trauma from childhood, etc. A person might not even recognize what the trauma is that is causing the behavior, but with energy healing they won’t have to recognize it to recover from it.

Other Trauma Options

Trauma therapy isn’t the only option though! I’ve also through my research and networking met a trauma coach and a trauma yoga teacher. Additionally, I met someone who helps people with trauma using neurolinguistic programming. It is an approach that focuses on how you communicate with yourself and others, and how this affects your behaviors and behavior outcomes (PsychCentral, 2021). However, I honestly haven’t tried it or really done the research on this, so I don’t know how effective it is.

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All My Healthy Mind Blogs:

Being Grateful NOT a Magical Pill, BUT is Potentially Life Changing

Remove Clutter Around You & In Your Mind

Why We Need Critical Thinking & Barriers of Critical Thinking

What a Healthy Self-Esteem Really Looks Like

Improving Self-Esteem & Confidence in Your Career

How Mindfulness Improves Your Health & Life

Another Year Passes, Let’s Appreciate the Journey

We Devalue Empathy, Yet We All Need It!

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Resources:

Hampton, Debbie. (2018, October 21). The Best Brain Possible/How to Stop the Negative Thought Loop in Your Mind. Retrieved from: https://thebestbrainpossible.com/negative-thought-mind-rumination-self-distancing/

Hampton, Debbie. (2015, December 13). The Best Brain Possible/How Your Thoughts Change Your Brain, Cells, and Genes. Retrieved from: https://thebestbrainpossible.com/how-your-thoughts-change-your-brain-cells-and-genes/

PRIORY/Tips on How to Stop Ruminating. (2023, Jun 27). Retrieved from: https://www.priorygroup.com/blog/how-to-stop-ruminating

Stanborough, Rebecca Joy. (2023, June 5). Healthline/How to Change Negative Thinking with Cognitive Restructuring. Retrieved from: https://www.healthline.com/health/cognitive-restructuring#questioning-assumptions

Brainspotting/What is Brainspotting?. Retrieved from: https://brainspotting.com/

Gepp PsyD, Karin. (2021, October 7). PsychCentral/All About the Basics of Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP). Retrieved from: https://psychcentral.com/health/neurolinguistic-programming-nlp#what-is-nlp