The podcast I found helpful this week is about how to stop the endless cycles of obsessing and ruminating. I like it because it is tactical and because I can be quite prone to this sort of obsessive rumination. When something upsets me, I feel trapped inside my head and struggle to sleep and focus on important things. The host says,
“This is so broad in its application. It could be a person who rejected us, an interaction at the coffee shop, the person who cuts us off in traffic. It could be something really big in our relationship, a family dynamic, or something about work.”
She takes an Eastern approach to solving the problem:
“In our modern, western world, we pay so much attention to our thoughts and can be very individually focused. It all feels very big and important. Whereas a lot of spiritual traditions, Eastern traditions have recognized the mind as being very unreliable and our thoughts as being just like mindless endless chatter that will often, if we believe those thoughts, leave us feeling worse off.”
She makes an interesting point that at times like this,
“It’s very juicy and seductive to make ourselves the victim of a situation. And the stories that spring from that are incredibly tempting and can really draw us in, but inevitably keep us stuck in a mode that is not really conducive to our well-being.”
This is something I think about a lot. It’s much easier to see in others than in ourselves. We can feel very sorry for ourselves, which is actually a trap that keeps us suffering. In friends, it is easy for us to advise them to “let it go”. We should give ourselves the same advice.
She gives us an example to work with:
“My partner’s so selfish and he doesn’t care about me. I do everything, my partner doesn’t pull his weight, he just doesn’t care about me at all. If he cared about me, he would do X, Y, Z thing. That kind of story that we tell ourselves is so seductive and can really run amok inside us. It is so powerful and persuasive, and inevitably alters our emotional state in a negative way.”
The first strategy she gives us is Byron Katie’s Four Questions.
“The first question is, is it true? Is it true that my partner doesn’t care about me? And the second question is, can you be absolutely certain that it’s true? The third question is, how do you react when you believe the thought? What does it do to me to believe this thought? Who do I become? What does it do to my body? What does it do to my emotional state? And the fourth question is, who would I be without the thought? Who would I be without the thought that my partner doesn’t care about me?
The lightness that I feel in my being is almost instantaneous.”
Her second strategy moves from thinking to feeling.
“The next key piece is recognizing that oftentimes, obsession and rumination, being stuck in your head overthinking is a function of anxiety and anxiety is a body experience.
If I’m having all of these obsessive thoughts, I am probably in a stress state in my body. I’m probably in my sympathetic nervous system, which is where we are when we’re in our fight or flight mode, when we’re very mobilized and everything speeds up.”
She says we need to do something with our bodies to shift this unpleasant, anxious energy.
“It might be going for a brisk walk, going for a run, getting up and doing jumping jacks or shaking your arms and legs. Going to the gym, lifting weights, any movement that takes you out of your head and puts you into your body allows the energy that is currently being expended on obsessive thinking to be channeled into something that actually allows that energy to move and discharge rather than just swirl around.”
Her third strategy, which I actually find tremendously useful, unfortunately can take some time.
“Recognising that when we’re obsessing about someone or something, it’s almost always a product of some wounded part of us, some insecurity.
When we obsess about someone who rejected us, it’s because we probably were already obsessing about some story of unworthiness or not good enoughness, or some way in which we perceive ourselves to be defective. And so we just take someone else’s behavior as an opportunity for us to keep reinforcing those painful stories. And so what you’ll notice as you do this work over a longer period of time, is that you will naturally be less prone to obsessing about things, people, and situations.”
This strategy is good if you see patterns in your reactions to certain things that upset you. It’s a way to cut it off at the source. So for the example of my partner doesn’t care for me, there might be something deeper at play. Maybe you have always felt this way in relationships and are in some way complicit in the cycle.
There’s lots more in this one if you want a listen in full…
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/on-attachment/id1620471393?i=1000670575632
If or when I next find myself in obsessive rumination, I will first follow Stephanie’s “body” strategy. Jumping jacks, shaking, going for a brisk walk, throwing around some kettlebells, to get that anxious energy moving through me.
Then I can ask myself the four questions. Most likely, I won’t get past one and two as it probably isn’t true and/or I don’t have enough evidence to prove to myself that it is certifiably true. I can recognise that I am feeling horrible and struggling to sleep, which makes me even more upset, and imagine what it would be like to let these unhelpful thoughts go. What is thinking going to change about the situation anyway? This takes a lot of discipline as it is hugely seductive to keep picking at the scab and allowing the thoughts to take up valuable space in your head.
Finally, I can journal on the issue when I am feeling a little less sore to see where I may be repeating a cycle that is not healthy or productive. Then I can get back to the important business of watching Aria pick things up, bash them together and then put them into her mouth.
PS. Aria took her first steps at 9 months and 4 days old. I am immensely proud.
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