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How to Make Your Rumination Stop

Writer's picture: Jessa HooleyJessa Hooley

Rumination is a pervasive and relentless experience for many trauma survivors and oftentimes seems to arise out of nowhere. We know rumination is hindering to our healing process, so what do we do when it starts?


The first step to stopping rumination is to have compassion for yourself. It is normal to ruminate and there is nothing wrong with you for finding yourself lost in a spiral. The next step is to offer a gentle reminder that the rumination is not serving you and make a conscious decision to take action to steer the mind in a more helpful direction.


The following are a few exercises to help navigate the mind away from destructive rumination:


Stopping Rumination Before Bed

Bedtime is a notorious opening for rumination to begin. Trauma can make the body unpleasant company and in the quiet moments before sleep there is not much to distract us from our bodily sensations. Enter rumination. Among other unrecognized "benefits", rumination may be just attempting to keep us from entering our bodies when our nervous systems don't feel safe to do so. Unfortunately, this does nothing to help us get to sleep. Here are my two favorite recommendations for gently guiding a ruminating mind into sleep.


Anchoring With Breath

This exercise is ridiculously simple and yet so effective. When your wheels are spinning as you lay down, begin to focus on your breath. When you inhale say in your mind's voice "in", and when you exhale say in your mind's voice "out." You WILL get distracted and start back into the story. The moment you notice your distraction go back to saying in/out...in/out.


The point isn't to not get distracted. The goal is to continue returning to the breath whenever you notice. Over time your ability to stay with your breathing will grow and the pull toward the story will lessen and lessen until you can fall asleep. Don't be deceived by the simplicity. With patience and compassion for yourself it is highly effective.


How to Make Your Rumination Stop


Sleepscapes/Podcasts

Contrary to common sleep hygiene recommendations, trauma survivors may benefit from a little external chatter to help guide their minds away from rumination at night.


How to Make Your Rumination Stop

Sleep stories or podcasts (that you aren't intensely interested in) can be really helpful to give your mind a different thread to follow. Following a story or podcast that you have little emotional investment in is highly favorable to the emotionally stirring experience of rumination.


Here are the top five sleepcasts if you don't know where to look:


Free somatic trauma healing program from Vibin Wellness

Unwinding

Myofascial unwinding is a powerful somatic tool for softening body tissues and becoming embodied (something you aren't doing when you're ruminating). Begin by picking some music that isn't too fast or too slow. Stand with plenty of space around you and begin to sway with the music, shifting the feet from side to side. Then you'll move into slow unwinding motions by making circles and waves with your body. This can look like:


  • rolling your hips

  • arching and curving your back

  • "swimming" with your arms

  • rolling your neck

  • "flying" like a bird in slow motion


Anything that offers you 360 degrees of movement. It can be helpful to try and embody a sense of water as you move. I recommend a minimum of 10 minutes (approx. 4 songs) of myofascial unwinding for settling back into the body.


Here is a short demo of unwinding as taught in BBTRS® (Biodynamic Breathwork Trauma Release System®).



Yoga

Yoga is a time-tested embodiment practice and is wonderful for combatting rumination when done with a trauma-sensitive approach. If you are trapped in rumination I don't recommend doing a yoga practice that is too intense or fast paced. Intense exercise can often be a practice of distraction or dissociation. Distraction helps with rumination in the short term, but once the distraction stops you will likely be drawn right back into it. Using mindful movement like yoga offers a longer term solution by allowing your attention to rest in the body.


Tips for a rumination-butt-kicking yoga practice:

  • Mindful efforts – When you are in challenging postures focus on specific muscles that are engaged.

  • Prioritizing comfortable adjustments – Staying curious about how you can tweak a pose to be more comfortable will help keep you fully engaged with the pose.

  • Playfulness – Being playful with your poses can also keep you more engaged with your bodily experience. Try something new with your arms. See how shifting your weight alters the intensity. Just throw out the idea that there's "only one way to do the pose" and see what you come up with!

  • Focus on the Felt Sense – What sensations are you feeling as you move through your practice? This is the bread and butter to an embodied yoga session. (P.S. If you don't know where to start with this, I'd suggest reading "How to Feel Things In Your Body: Practical Steps to Focus on Sensations")


How to Make Your Rumination Stop

Self-Talk with Parts

Talking to the parts of you that are stuck in the rumination story is a practical and effective. The parts of us that are spinning are typically younger, more vulnerable, and have been burdened with experiences that they haven't been allowed to share before. See if you can find a quiet and private place to talk to this part of yourself. I recommend having the conversation out loud if it's tolerable for you. Allowing your parts to vocalize their truths can be very empowering. Here are some prompts that may be helpful, but feel free to improvise.


Questions to ask the parts that are stuck in rumination:

  • How old are you?

  • What do you want me to know or remember from this story?

  • What do you need?

  • How do you feel?

  • What does it feel like in your body to be back in this story?


Statements to make to these parts from your adult-self:

  • I'm _____ years old now.

  • I'm going to take care of you.

  • You aren't alone.

  • I believe you.

  • I want to know what you want to share with me.

  • I'm sorry I wasn't able to listen before now.

  • You never have to go back there again.


How to Make Your Rumination Stop

This is far from an exhaustive list of techniques to use to stop rumination. If rumination is a recurring problem that you struggle with you would benefit greatly from a holistic approach to your trauma. The more you can integrate the parts of you wounded by what happened, the less hold the story will have over you in your every day life.


What other ways do you like to address episodes of rumination? Let me know in the comments!

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No articles or content is shared with the purpose of diagnosing or treating any condition. Please consult your doctor or mental health provider.

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