I felt curious about this earlier conflict which, at the time had been uncomfortably visceral and intense, but now felt distant. As each thought arose I gently waved it away and returned my focus back to my breathing, but one thought in particular kept coming back so I decided to pay it some more attention.Īt first, I was able to look at the thought in a detached way. I observed them with interest and noticed too my body felt relaxed. On this particular morning I was aware of thoughts around a recent conflict drifting into my mind. My daily practice is a quiet time that I spend connecting with myself – watching my breathing, noticing what’s happening in my body, exploring what’s going on with my thoughts, and observing what emotions are coming up for me.
I was lucky enough to discover the difference for myself one morning when doing my daily practice. By paying close attention to what’s happening to you in each one, you can learn to notice when you’ve slipped out of reflection, calm activity, and into rumination, which as research shows, is pretty toxic. These three areas combined make up what it is to be a person - they form your ‘way of being’ in the world. Learning to identify the difference between rumination and reflection involves looking at three elements that you take with you wherever you go: your thoughts, your emotions and your body. How can you tell when reflection turns into rumination? The first step in making the change is developing an awareness that you’re ruminating, because you can’t change what you’re not aware of. The good news about this is that it’s possible to change your thinking pattern. Overall, the results found that rumination is one of the two key thinking patterns or psychological processes that lead to anxiety and depression. However, the results revealed that a person’s thinking style was as much a factor in the level of anxiety and depression a person experienced. Relationship status and social factors made smaller – but still significant –contributions to stress. The study – the biggest of its kind in the UK – found that traumatic life events were the single biggest determinant of anxiety and depression followed by a family history of mental illness and income and education levels. The study analysed the responses of over 32,000 participants, aged 18 – 85 years, who completed the BBC’s `Stress Test’. Rumination increases likelihood of developing anxiety or depressionĪ study conducted in 2013 by the University of Liverpool found that traumatic life events are the biggest cause of anxiety and depression, but how a person thinks about these events determines the level of stress they experience. “Reflection: to think carefully, especially about possibilities and options.” Psychology Today: Problem Solving Gone Wrong Basically, rumination means that you continuously think about the various aspects of situations that are upsetting.” “Rumination refers to the tendency to repetitively think about the causes, situational factors, and consequences of one's negative emotional experience (Nolen-Hoeksema, 1991).
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