The Seduction of Rumination

We’ve all been there.

A tense situation. Pointed words. A well-reasoned argument spilling out of our mouths. Our opponent defeated. Left aghast at the sagacity of our points, left with no other option but to accept that we bested them.

And it was all in our heads.

I sincerely hope I’m not the only one guilty of this.

Time and again, I find myself playing out scenarios in my mind. Some are alternate versions of things that actually happened. Some.

Most, if I am being frank, are scenarios that will absolutely never happen. Conversations I will never have. Confrontations that are better left lodged in my gray matter.

I ruminate.

I’ve heard some statistic (I don’t recall the actual percentage, and it doesn’t matter—because I think it is a lie) that a shockingly large percentage of people don’t have an active voice in their heads constantly. I don’t believe it because I can’t imagine it. I have a voice. There constantly. Playing out things that never will—nor should ever!—happen.

It’s sort of exhausting. But it is something I do. Have always done. My mind comes up with plans, situations, and eventualities. And it will never shut up about them.

As a friend said to me this week: “Your brain is sort of a dick.”

She has a point.

I thought (think?) this is a normal thing that most of us do. I may be wrong. If so, I would love to hear from people with brains that are a little less dickish. And I congratulate them.

But I don’t envy them.

Yes, my brain is a dick. It is also my closest friend and confidant. It does a lot of good for me. I wouldn’t trade it or how it works. I’m used to it. I know how to anticipate the garbage it is going to throw at me. Most of the time.

And that quality, that ability of it to constantly be thinking, provides me with unlimited things to explore. I appreciate that. I enjoy it.

But I need to learn to train, channel, and harness it.

What makes rumination particularly insidious is that if feels “productive,” as through you’re figuring out something important. In reality, you’re not solving much. Instead, you’re strengthening the neural pathways that amplify problems, or even create them from thin air.
-Nir Eyal and Julie Li

It is precisely because of this constant rumination that this passage from Beyond Belief hit so hard. I’d never thought about my rumination this way. It hadn’t occurred to me that constantly playing out some of these scenarios was actually strengthening those dickesque (nope, not a word, but now it is) neural pathways.

In essence, by ruminating, embracing that rumination, and often running with it, I am teaching my brain how to be an enemy.

Not an ally.

See, so many of the scenarios I play out are stressful confrontations. They are foul fantasies that only serve to create more anxiety. And my body doesn’t care if they are fantasies. It just senses the stress and lets loose the cortisol.

And strengthens those neural pathways that lead to more stress.

Now you know. And knowing is half the battle.

Go Joe.

Seriously. Realizing this has been an important step. I’ve come to understand that this habit isn’t entirely innocuous. It is harmful, yet in an oh-so-subtle way. But knowing this is happening gives us an opportunity.

An opportunity to stop it.

We can’t multitask. And anyone who says we should, or we can, is lying. Our brains focus on one thing. They work on that thing. It’s what they do, how they work. So, understanding that rumination isn’t helpful, we now become aware.

If you’re like me and have been doing this for nearly half a century, we aren’t going to stop this from happening. We will ruminate. Or rather, we will begin to ruminate.

But we can recognize it. Stop it. And replace those neural cycles with something else. Something productive. Something that doesn’t tell our bodies we are in a “fight or flight” situation. No bears are trying to eat us.

We can choose. Choose to exert control. Choose to change our thoughts. Leave behind the unnecessary arguments. Stop the contrived confrontations before they overtake our limbic system.

It is empowering. Knowing I don’t have to play out those scenarios. So I haven’t been.

For too long. Every time. Come on, I just learned this. Still working on it.

Imperfectly.