Rumination - strategies/what worked?

[GetInTheBinDave]

It’s literally ruining my life

i stew constantly on every social interaction.

i am not diagnosed with anything at the moment, but was under a psychiatrist for maternal OCD with both my pregnancies, for constantly believing my children would have birth defects

clearly OCD brain still lurks

told a person to stop smoking over my baby today- got a load of abuse. I know I’m in the right but I can’t stop thinking about it. Thinking they are going to burn my house down or jump me in the street.

i’ve had to stop talking about ‘other people’ in completely innocent contexts (‘Janet has started a new croquet class’ ‘Sarah isn’t enjoying travelling a long commute to work’) because I worry that anything I say will be taken out of context and ‘get back’ to that person and Janet will think I has said she’s shit at croquet and Sarah hates her job.

it’s literally paralysing me. I always have one thing I’m worried about. I don’t know that it’s like to be free.

it’s Stopping me making meaningful connections with people.

i have sertraline i have been ok’d to take but i don’t know if there is anything else that has worked for people

many thanks xx

My rumination is a trauma response. I spent my life trying every which way to think my way of out it all. Until I went ping and was hospitalised. I always thought I was an over complainer but with hindsight I’m a chronic under complainer.

Medication has helped so much. I’m on a mood stabiliser rather than anti depressant, as I was hospitalised for going too high not too low. I still have to work hard to keep my mind stable and have had to take early retirement.

In my experience, mood follows action so if I start ruminating, I ask myself if my thoughts are serving a purpose. If they’re not (for example, going over past conversations etc) I have planned topics to move my mood onto that are soothing for me. If that doesn’t work I move, walk, star jump, hop, walk backwards. Anything to get my body going. If all else fails, I doom scroll until the urgency of the thoughts dulls down… and then I get my body moving again.

Recognise you are ruminating. Distract yourself. Or give your self a statute of limitations (time limit) to be pissed off about said event, after which you're going to move on actively focus on positives, doing and looking for positive things.

I think how it can work in neurodivergent brains is that we have global thinking. We think one thing applies to, or wonder why it doesn't apply to, all situations. But that's rarely the case, there's context, timing, etc.

Accept some things are not your circus, not your monkeys.