How to Stop Ruminating: 15 Tips from a Therapist

Author: Jack Bartel, PsyD

Medical Reviewer: Rajy Abulhosn, MD

Published: June 26, 2024

Rumination can be one of the toughest cycles to break out of, but there are many effective strategies for stopping ruminating thoughts. One of the best ways to stop ruminating is to divert your attention and distract yourself. You could also avoid certain triggers, practice mindfulness, or set a worry timer. How you cope or stop ruminating will depend largely on you and your unique needs.

What Is Rumination?

Rumination is feeling stuck in a cycle of negative thinking and feeling unable to break free.¹ It is a symptom of various mental health disorders, including OCD, generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), and PTSD. Rumination can cause a person to feel extreme distress, develop depression or anxiety, and worsen existing mental health disorders.

At its core, rumination is a coping mechanism the mind uses to help feel more in control of something that is, or was, out of control. At first, it may feel like it is helping you, but over time, rumination begins to feel more like a burden.

Here are some examples of rumination:

• Worrying about future goals to the point it causes distress

• Obsessing over the details of upcoming events

• Spending hours asking “what if” questions about different life scenarios

• Mentally replaying the worst-case scenarios of future events

• Anxiously mentally reviewing conversations after socializing

15 Tips for How to Stop Ruminating

The good news is it’s possible to stop ruminating. While the brain may turn to this as a coping mechanism, it doesn’t mean you have to let it be your only way to cope. There are tools and strategies you can use to decrease ruminating and see improvement.

Here are fifteen ways to break the cycle of ruminating

1. Recognize When You Are Ruminating

The first step to stopping ruminating thoughts is learning how to recognize when you are doing it. Ruminating can become so familiar that you no longer recognize when it is happening. Before you know it, you may be 20 minutes into a rumination session, at which point it is a lot more difficult to pull yourself out.

Here are some tips for how to recognize when you are ruminating:

• Schedule short (3-5 minutes) mindfulness breaks throughout your day: Having mindfulness breaks set aside means that you regularly check in with yourself and your anxieties. If you notice you are ruminating during these check-ins, don’t be disappointed in yourself. Just take a few deep breaths and practice one of the coping skills listed in this article.

• Look for thought patterns such as “always” or “never”: We can often get stuck in black-or-white thinking patterns that lead to negative emotions and episodes of rumination. These thoughts often contain deeply divided language, like always, never, everything, or nothing. For example, the thought: Nothing ever works out for me. I am always left behind.

• Notice tension in your body: When ruminating, our physical body often also takes a hit. Rumination does not just affect the mind. Taking time to notice jaw tightness or aching joints may point you toward recognizing how your thoughts are affecting your physical presence.

• Notice when you feel disconnected: Rumination is an internal process that often pulls your self-reflection inward in an unhealthy way. When this happens, sometimes people can feel disassociated from themselves and the world around them. When you are feeling disconnected, take the time to notice how your thoughts may be impacting your lack of connection with others.

• Look for themes in your thoughts: Ruminative episodes often come in themes. They tend to focus on either the past or future, but hardly the present. Make a list of your triggers for rumination (people, places, feelings, or situations) and begin to recognize when rumination is rearing its ugly head. For example, maybe you start to recognize that feeling sad when you are in bed is a trigger for ruminative episodes.

2. Ground Yourself in the Present Moment

When you are ruminating, you are either regretting the past or worrying about the future. Using grounding techniques for anxiety will pull you out of the past or future and bring you back to the present moment, which is the only thing you can control.²

The 54321 method is a grounding technique that encourages the use of your five senses to explore the present moment in a neutral way. A body scan is another method that uses attentional awareness of each body part while incorporating mindful breathing. Strategies like these can help you feel safe and comfortable in the present moment rather than worrying about the past or future.

3. Challenge the Thoughts

A process called cognitive restructuring can help you challenge your thoughts and stop rumination. Cognitive restructuring has different methods to help challenge thoughts, which often include identifying the negative thought, processing, and challenging the underlying belief system to gain insights.

For example, someone might recognize how their harm obsessions occur whenever their partner leaves the home. They might practice identifying that their underlying belief that their partner might be hurt comes from a place of wanting to protect their partner. They might then challenge that they are not in control of their partner’s well-being outside the home and accept that the likelihood of their partner being harmed while visiting a friend is unlikely.

4. Distract Yourself

Distracting yourself from what is making you anxious can be one of the easiest ways way to stop rumination. The goal is to find activities that will keep your mind so busy that it prevents you from thinking about the problem or worry. You can distract yourself with activities that you love or ask a loved one to help distract you.

It’s important to note that distraction can be healthy or unhealthy. If you are distracting yourself short-term and developing other coping mechanisms for ruminating, you are doing great. However, distraction can also be a type of avoidance coping, where you actively try to get away from or avoid a problem/thought, which will only make the ruminating worse.

5. Set a Worry Timer

Grab your phone, ask a smart device, or use an old fashioned kitchen timer. Give yourself a designated amount of time to ruminate. Once the timer goes off that’s your reminder to stop and move on to another activity instead.

Setting a worry timer can help you stop ruminating because it encourages you to recognize that worrying is a choice. Sometimes, ruminating can feel like it is outside of your control, but this activity asks you to slow down the process of rumination and recognize your choice to engage or not engage in rumination. You can choose to begin when the timer starts and choose to stop ruminating when the timer ends.

6. Remove Yourself for a Moment

If you feel caught up in ruminating and your environment is only making it worse (e.g., worrying about work performance while having lunch with colleagues), it’s okay to remove yourself from the situation and take a moment to decompress or identify what you can do to cope. Sometimes, we need to take a second to reset, refocus, or calm down.

7. Recognize What Is (& Isn’t) in Your Control

Ruminating often focuses on areas completely out of one’s control. We can’t change what we’ve been through, but we can change how we look at the situation. For example, if something bad happens, what is in your control that you can change so it doesn’t happen again? What can you do? When we focus on things within our control, we regain power over that situation rather than it taking power over us.

8. Say the Thoughts Out Loud

Thoughts always feel more real and valid in our heads but can change when we say them out loud. If you are ruminating, try ruminating out loud. You can say the thoughts as they are in your head or pretend you are talking to someone else about it. Research has shown that saying the thoughts out loud can make them seem a lot less serious and overwhelming. To combat the thought even more, you can say it in a funny voice or with a weird emphasis. Making your tone humorous can help to decrease the power the thoughts hold.

9. Identify Your Triggers & Plan Ahead

Each time you notice you start to ruminate, make a note. Write down where you are, who you’re with, what’s happening around you, and the day or time. Over time, you may start to notice certain situations or events that lead you to ruminate. Being aware of these can help you prepare yourself to cope with those moments.

Lots of people try to avoid thinking about their rumination, hoping it will go away. Unfortunately, avoidance and hoping it won’t happen don’t give you the tools you need to stop ruminating thoughts. And, if you’re going to think about ruminating anyway, why not think about what you can do to stop it? Creating a plan can help you decrease ruminating and feel more in control.

10. Try Stream-of-Consciousness Journaling

Stream-of-consciousness journaling about your anxiety is a strategy in which you write down all the thoughts that pop into your head without thinking about what they mean or if they make sense. Reviewing the stream of consciousness afterward can help you recognize how certain thoughts contribute to rumination or how the process of rumination occurs. After gaining this insight, you might be better able to stop ruminating early in the process.

11. Sprinkle in Some Positive Rumination

Positive rumination is a strategy where you intentionally ruminate on positive emotions and thoughts. The idea is that instead of spending a lot of time in negative ruminations, you can learn to ruminate about more productive things that generate positive emotions. Using positive rumination can help you learn to spot moments where you are feeling good or learn what thoughts can help trigger you into a positive mood.

Here are some positive ruminations that can combat negative rumination:

• Ruminating about an upcoming event you are excited about

• Choosing a positive memory and reliving the enjoyable sensory characteristics

• Noticing pleasant sensations in the present moment and allowing yourself to ruminate on what makes these sensations pleasant

• Choosing a recent positive conversation with a loved one and mentally replaying the special moments

12. Utilize Mindful Movement

When you ruminate, you generally feel lost in your internal world and mind. Mindful movement is a strategy to reconnect with your body and re-direct that anxious energy into a more productive activity than rumination. Mindful movement is about recognizing what your body is capable of and respecting your needs for the day.

For example, mindful movement may look like a five-minute walk in your neighborhood one day, and another day might look like an hour-long hike with friends. It is important to recognize what your mind and body might need for the day and respect those gut feelings.

13. Start a Mindful Meditation Practice

Mindful meditation for anxiety is the practice of being in the present moment with gentle and directed awareness. It can help stop rumination because it encourages you to exist in the present moment, just as it is. Rumination often pulls people to the past or the future, but mindful meditation asks us to bring awareness to the present moment.

Here are some tips for beginning a mindful meditation practice:

• Start small, such as a daily 3-5 minute practice.

• Choose a time and place where you won’t be distracted.

• Allow yourself to move if you need to. For example, if a walking meditation might benefit you more than sitting meditation, allow yourself the space to practice a different type of meditation.

• Remember, it is more about the routine than the amount of time practiced. For example, it is more beneficial to practice for 3 minutes daily than for 20 minutes once a week.

14. Commit to One Action

When you ruminate on the future, you are generally concerned with “what if” scenarios and paralyzed by the steps you need to take. Committing yourself to taking one step toward the goal you need to complete or the choice you need to make will sometimes stop ruminating thoughts in its tracks. This may look like flipping a coin when you need to make a decision or identifying the steps you need to take for a long-term goal and committing to trying the first one.

15. Talk to a Therapist

If you feel ruminating is a daily occurrence and starting to impact your work productivity and relationships, it may be time to reach out to a mental health professional. Ruminating is very common and normal, but more severe rumination can be a sign of generalized anxiety disorder, PTSD, or OCD. If one of these disorders is driving your rumination, talking to a therapist is crucial to feeling better. A therapist can help you not only decrease your ruminating but also help you uncover the root behind what may be leading you to ruminate

To read the article by Jack Bartel, PsyD in full visit: https://www.choosingtherapy.com/how-to-stop-ruminating/