Well said! We already reside in a world full of complexities and chaos to the brim and the one thing that can save our skin is mindfulness but do we let our mind rest in peace? Nope! Our mind is always wandering and chattering and the worst of all; Ruminating!
Have you ever happened to be in a situation that was either embarrassing or humiliating? For example; your boss humiliates you in front of the entire staff or you said/did something embarrassing that you shouldn’t have done? Once you are out of the situation, you aren’t completely distant from it rather your mind commences to think about the entire situation from the top all over again, leaving you feeling dreadful, humiliated and awful about it. This is known as “Rumination”
Rumination is a type of mind-wandering where the mind is brooding about negative and stressful thoughts in a cyclic way which ends up making the person feel worse and worse about it. Steve Ilardi explains this process as; “Rumination involves dwelling repetitively and at length on negative thoughts, often related to failure, rejection, humiliation, loss or retaliation”
Rumination never leads to any conclusion or settlement between the battle of your thoughts, it just keeps you entangled with the negative ones making you feel awful and at times guilty. Rumination does no good in times of conflict or crisis, it makes the situation worse though.
It simply leads to the increased risk of developing depression, anxiety, stress, insomnia, high blood pressure and the like. Rumination drains your mental resources and interferes in your abilities to solve problems.
Rumination is extremely detrimental for one’s mental health as it tosses one’s mind to a stranded and negative place and you definitely need to shake heaven and earth to get your mind out of that dreadful state. Once you know that you are in soup, you figure out ways to come out of it but what if you don’t even know that you are travelling through troubled waters? That’s the worst, right? The problem with rumination is, People aren’t aware that they are ruminating instead they assume that they are problem solving hence not being able to differentiate between the two is a major part of the problem.
Rumination can effectively demolish your relationships and eventually affect your mental health. Stop Ruminating and Start living in the Now!
