DMerish... for me, what it is - is rumination. Rumination is "defined as the compulsively focused attention on the symptoms of one's distress, and on its possible causes and consequences, as opposed to its solutions. Rumination is similar to worry except rumination focuses on bad feelings and experiences from the past, whereas worry is concerned with potential bad events in the future. Both rumination and worry are associated with anxiety and other negative emotional states." Source Link and more info
here .
Why this occurs is it is a behavioral or habitual thinking style. When I find I'm caught in rumination, I remind myself that I can't get unstuck from the sticky thought/feeling/emotion unless I put it down and become available for the next ones. At first I had a visualization tool for this. Trees with fall colored leaves beside a river or stream. The leaves were falling and I would pick one up and examine it. But in order to pick up the next one, I had to put the leaf into the stream when I was finished examining it. Then I would pick up the next thought and continue to repeat sometimes a few times, sometimes about 15 times to remind myself that many thoughts are available and waiting for my focus/attention. I would play the game until I got unstuck.
"When people ruminate, they over-think or obsess about situations or life events, such as work or relationships. Research has shown that
rumination is associated with a variety of negative consequences, including depression,anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, binge-drinking and binge-eating.
Why does rumination lead to such harmful results? For some people, drinking or binge-eating becomes a way to cope with life and drown out their ruminations, according to Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, Ph.D, a psychologist and professor at Yale University.
Not surprisingly, ruminating conjures up more negative thoughts. It becomes a cycle."
Though this is only
one study (February 2013) here's some stuff to chew on if you think that "rumination" may be what you are experiencing:
"...there are two types of rumination, trauma rumination and depressive rumination (about causes and consequences of depression). The former is a cognitive avoidance strategy that prevents processing of the trauma memory. The latter prevents restructuring of the dysfunctional thoughts about the trauma. This leads to clinical utility of treating different types of rumination differently."
"Ehlers and Steil (1995) suggested that rumination was a maintaining factor for PTSD. The specific reasons for this are that it:
1.Prevents disconfirmation of the negative appraisals of the trauma and its sequelae (Ehlers & Steil 1995).
2.Increases intrusions (Steil, Ehlers, 2000) and prevents a change in intrusive images (Wells 1997, p.268).
3.Increases threat monitoring and therefore hyperarousal (Wells & Sembi, 2004).
Later papers have supported the idea that rumination was a maintaining factor."
Part of the conclusion: " This paper posed the question of “Does rumination maintain PTSD and what are its active ingredients?” The tentative answer to this would be: yes it can maintain PTSD but there must be other factors involved for this to be the case. We need to be clear on the type of rumination and what aspect of PTSD it maintains so we can be clear on treatment. This is also crucial in terms of determining the active ingredients of rumination. This review suggests that abstractness is not an active ingredient
per se but added to “what if questions”, compulsion to ruminate and negative mood before then it is. However, as these weren’t studied in relation to type of rumination we must be cautious in our application of these findings.
Something I found a long time ago helped me to deal with my own tendency for rumination, compulsive or obsessive intrusive sticky thoughts... it is about a 5 minute tutorial on mindfulness and discusses "sticky thoughts" about 3 or 4 pages in. At the end I think is an interactive version of the leaf game:
http://elearning.talariainc.com/buildcontent.aspx?tut=539&pagekey=59245&cbreceipt=0
I checked the link just now, and it is still good... there is an opportunity to watch the leaf game and then to play it. I did that as often as necessary until it became habitual and got some progress on my ability to navigate past the sticky emotion so I could become "available" and stay in the moment. I hope this helps you..
I have also read several of Susan Nolen-Hoeksema's books on the topic of "over thinking" and found them to be generally helpful at combating this tendency for myself.
