“Don’t dwell on what has passed away, or what is yet to be”, rasps Leonard Cohen in what I consider to be one of his finest songs, ‘Anthem’.
But for many people, that’s easier said (or sung) than done! If you’ve ever found yourself running through a past conversation over and over in your mind, thinking of all the things you wish you’d said (what I call the ‘coulda woulda shouldas’); or fretting about something that happened years ago but still plays on your mind; or losing a night’s sleep while you obsess over a mistake that you made; then you know what it’s like to ruminate.
The 2 components of rumination are reflection and brooding. Reflecting on a problem isn’t bad in itself; it can sometimes lead you to a solution. But when combined with brooding, excessive reflection tends to make you feel like a helpless victim of circumstance instead of a proactive problem-solver, and it puts you in a bad mood to boot.
Rumination is, in fact, one of the key thought patterns associated with depression, and helping people to stop ruminating effectively reduces the symptoms of depression (1).
Now, a new study (2) on the biochemical effects of rumination has shed new light on how it may contribute to depression. To help make sense of the new findings, there are a few things you need to know about depression.
Firstly, the ‘biochemical imbalance’ theory of depression – which many doctors still desperately cling to – has been consigned to the dustbin of medical history by researchers, who have found no evidence to support it (see my article, 5 reasons to think twice before taking antidepressants).
Secondly, many mental health researchers are now focusing on the links between inflammation and depression. Levels of inflammatory chemicals such as tumor necrosis factor-a (TNF-a), interleukin-6 (IL-6), interleukin-10 (IL-10), and C-reactive protein (CRP) have been found to be elevated in depressed people (3), with the highest levels seen in those contemplating suicide (4). Inflammatory chemicals produced by fat cells are believed to contribute to the higher rates of depression found in obese people (5), while the higher risk of heart disease seen in depressed patients is thought to be linked to their increased level of CRP, which is a risk marker for cardiovascular disease.
Now, back to that new study! Researchers asked 34 healthy young women to give a speech about their candidacy for a job to two interviewers, who wore white lab coats and no expression on their faces (pretty stressful, huh?)
Afterwards, half of the women were asked to reflect on their performance in the public speaking task, while the other half were told to think about neutral images and activities, such as sailing ships or buying groceries.
The researchers drew blood samples from each woman, and measured the levels of the inflammation marker CRP. They found that CRP rose in all the women immediately after the stressful task, but the women who dwelt on their speech had significantly higher CRP levels, and those levels continued to rise for at least one hour after the speech. On the other hand, CRP levels sank back down to baseline in the women who thought about other things after their speech.
Lead researcher Peggy Zoccola points out that
“More and more, chronic inflammation is being associated with various disorders and conditions. The immune system plays an important role in various cardiovascular disorders such as heart disease, as well as cancer, dementia and autoimmune diseases.”
And, as I pointed out before, in depression. So now we have the ‘smoking gun’ linking a pattern of rumination to depression.
So now that we know that rumination is bad for our physical and mental health, the big question is, what do we do to stop it? (Aside from thinking about sailing ships and planning your next grocery shopping trip, that is :).)
And the answer is… EFT! Emotional Freedom Technique, or ‘tapping’ as it’s become popularly known, is a dramatically effective tool for breaking the rumination habit.
Unlike cognitive behavioural techniques which focus on attempting to train you out of rumination by changing the ruminative thoughts (which in my experience takes an awfully long time to master, with plenty of backsliding in between successes), EFT focuses on the emotions underlying rumination – worry, fear, regret, disappointment, feeling disempowered and so on.
Addressing these emotions through the process of tapping on acupuncture points on the face, body and hands while simultaneously ‘tuning in’ to the emotions you’re feeling brings about emotional relief very rapidly – often within a few minutes. And, interestingly, once the emotional intensity drops, people start to spontaneously have the more adaptive, positive thoughts that cognitive behaviour therapy strives for so long and so hard to achieve!
As an example, last week a client of mine, whom I’ll call Sasha, was struggling with an issue that had happened at work. A colleague snapped at her out of the blue, and she was so dumbstruck she just stood there like a zombie and said nothing.
Ever since, she’d been obsessing about what she should have said to put her workmate in his place. Her rumination was interfering with her sleep and making her grumpy with her kids.
We spent about 10 minutes tapping on the emotions she was carrying about this incident – anger at him, anger at herself for ‘copping it’, regret, ‘woulda coulda shoulda’ – and by the end of it she was laughing uncontrollably at the incident, and feeling completely emotionally detached from it.
She reported to me by email a couple of days later, that every time she sees her colleague now, she starts to giggle at the memory of the incident – not a bad result for a woman who was losing sleep over it!
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