How can I “fix” my incessant need to ruminate? How can I get out of this vicious cycle and put my mind on a different track. This is a small matter when you are changing the track on you CD player. You just click onto the next track and start playing. Not so easy with the human mind and the compulsive nature of ruminating.
Clinicians now have certain practical remedies for their patients who ruminate obsessively about a life situation. Their mind gets stuck on a single thought, idea or even a past life event. They go round and round without ever reaching a conclusion pro or con about the situation that they are cycling about. It’s much like the definition of “worry” which compares it to sitting in a rockling chair –you’re moving but you aren’t going anywhere.
Many times feeling guilty and ruminating round and round about one’s guilty action, thought or behavior has the same effect without ever resolving it in one way or the other. Just thinking about a problem without taking action on changing it, goes nowhere. The one thing that ruminating can do is to gradually help dig your depression hole deeper.
In my own case, this whole process of ruminating on a particular life issue, gradually spiraled me downward into a hole where I was unable to dig myself out. I was in this hole for more than a year and it was only until I made a decision to motivate myself into action did I begin to see daylight. From that one experience of meeting depression face to face did I learn a great lesson, namely that if I wanted to quit chasing my thoughts which led me to nowhere, then I must stop the chasing. Simple. Stop the chase.
Well, I might have learned that to begin to replace the chase with hopeful thoughts, hopeful people and people who knew a great way to leave the chase. The whole idea was to chase after ways to break up the chain of despairing thoughts and my own inaction. First of all, I had to protect myself from being vulnerable to every catastrophic thought that flew randomly into my head, I had to move out of my isolation and get with a support group who all, as one were spiraling upward and on past their hole digging and into the light of day.
If you stay alone, you will feel alone. And if you feel alone you will hop into that old familiar rocking chair and continue to rock yourself into nowhere. I know. Been there. Done that!
Chase with hope. Chase and start to spiral upwards thinking hopeful outcomes for your own life. Listen to the members of the Depressed Anonymous Fellowship and learn new ways, new ideas, and have the new found beliefs that make your life filled with possibilities you never dreamed of.
And when my feelings turn downward, that is my clue, for me to call a friend in the Fellowship, get back to my daily routine of exercise and prayerful meditation, and most importantly get to a meeting. In this crazy depressed world of ours, here is a place where sanity, serenity and hope can be found. Trust me.
Read the book that is giving hope to those who reach out for that one of a kind book Depressed Anonymous that will not only inspire you but provide you with a daily plan on ways to make your life so much better. And if you need a hopeful thought on a daily basis read (c) Higher Thoughts for Down Days. Both are available online.