Ruminating

I have this lovely pattern where one tiny event will happen and I will start doubting myself. It could be an unreturned email. Or a funny look that I completely misinterpret. Or maybe a legitimate mess up. Something will happen to make me go to my “bad place” and start the conversations in my head. From there on, I get stuck in this “bad place” and continually try to figure out why I am there. What did I do wrong? How could I have done differently? What is this person thinking of me now? It’s a cycle and it lives inside my head.

Sounds familiar?

Ruminating.

For the longest time, I thought every single person did this. Apparently it’s not the case cause I’ve since met people who don’t get caught up like I do. Who don’t trying to think their way out of these kinds of problems. The first time I met someone like that I remember thinking how lucky they were. How I wished I could turn mine off too.

And I was so right.

Here’s what I learned in this week’s class: Rumination is not good for you. For these kinds of problems, you cannot think your way out of them. This is not the kind of problem where you might collect more data, consult friends. think a bit and solve. This is you getting “hooked in” to a thought and then trying to ruminate your way out of it. The kind of stuff that hooks you in again and again. To make it easier to distinguish and remember, she put up two images. A fish hook and then the thinker. The first step is the thought that hooks you in and then the second step is sitting there and trying to solve it by thinking your way out of it. For those situations, ruminating mostly causes suffering.

As we meditated in class, she told us to pay attention to the thoughts that came up so we could recognize random ones like “this room is hot” or “oh i need to send email to so and so” vs the ones that hooked us in like ” oh i forgot to do this thing again. i always forget to do what i said i would. why do i behave like this each time and let down the people around me.” She said when such a thought came up, to notice it and then to let it go. (This was open awareness meditation where you imagine a blue sky and visualize your thoughts passing by like clouds. So you’d note the hooking thought but not get hooked by it.)

I’ve been thinking about this image of a hook since the class. And I think it’s so appropriate. My hooks are all around the stories I’ve created for my life. When a situation hooks me in, I don’t even notice, I just fall into the abyss of the story. My goal now is to start paying more attention to the situations, words, people that cause me to get “hooked in” so instead of ruminating, I can notice them and say “aha! there it is again, i’m not getting caught in it this time.” And maybe if I can notice it and let it go enough times, it will stop hooking me in at some point.

Like most other things, here’s another area where raising awareness is the key. The more I recognize it, the less I might fall into the abyss.

If I’m lucky.