Intrusive negative thoughts can feel like a relentless hamster wheel. Here’s how to break free and find relief.
An incessant stream of repetitive thoughts typically badgers Christine E. when she’s alone, or at night — when she doesn’t have someone or something to distract her.
The rumination happens most when she’s depressed, and tends to revolve around wondering what she must have done to create certain situations. For example, at work she had been bullied by several supervisors, which led her to continually focus on how she must have been responsible for their intimidating behavior.
“It feels like a scrambled mess in my head, an explosion of thoughts,” describes Christine from Indiana, who has bipolar 2 disorder. “Nothing makes sense. It’s a feeling of being out of control.”
Rumination is obsessive thinking that interferes with normal functioning. The steady stream of thoughts — often dwelling on negative feelings — can feel like the constant turning of a hamster wheel.
Research has consistently linked rumination with the onset and persistence of depression. It can diminish critical thinking and problem-solving; lead to insomnia, anger issues, and substance abuse; and push away critical social support.
Understanding Rumination’s Effects on Bipolar Disorder
Little research has been done, however, on how rumination affects the depressive or manic states of bipolar disorder. An older study published in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology, found that the more severe the illness, the more severe the rumination.
Ruminating about both negative and positive emotions was associated with greater depression frequency, while ruminating about only positive emotions was associated with greater mania frequency.
Even though her therapist has assured her that most people would experience similar feelings when intimidated, Christine continues to wonder.
She references the origin of ruminate — Latin for chewing cud.
“Rumination is like fermenting in your brain,” Christine says, “going over and over and over. It keeps you up and you can’t go to sleep. It just won’t go away.
“And we can do an even better analogy,” she adds, going back to the cow’s digestive system, “because then eventually it becomes [expletive], pardon my language.”
Calming Techniques: Finding Relief Through Art and Mindful Focus
The key to stopping these circular musings is to realize that rumination is a rabbit hole.
Licensed psychologist Sally Winston, PhD, founder and executive director of the Anxiety and Stress Disorders Institute of Maryland, also refers to rumination as “unproductive looping” and “misery-making thinking.”
“It is round and round,” says Dr. Winston, co-author of Overcoming Unwanted Intrusive Thoughts. “It addresses unanswerable questions, it ‘yes, buts’ itself when you try to reassure or plan, and it never settles down.
“In the internal arguments between your ‘rational’ and ‘irrational’ mind, the irrational always seems to return for more. Distraction only works temporarily. Rumination seeks impossible guarantees of certainty and security and safety.”
This is how worrying works, she explains: First, enter unbidden, unwelcome, automatic, and generally anxious thoughts or questions, followed by attempts to make the distress brought on by the thoughts or questions go away.
RELATED: 5 Ways to Stop Intrusive Thoughts in Bipolar
But while there is an illusion that you’re working on a problem, in depression, intrusive thoughts focus on themes of guilt, worthlessness, hopelessness, meaninglessness, self-critique, or self-loathing.
“You just think about negative things,” says Christine. “Thinking about ‘I should have done this,’ ‘I should have done that,’ ‘Here are all the bad things I’ve done,’ ‘Here are all the failures I’ve ever had,’ ‘Here are all the things I’ve done to put myself in this position, and it’s all my fault.’ There’s real self-reproach.”
To calm her brain, particularly when those unceasing thoughts bring on panic, she brings out her colored pens and coloring book filled with images of animals, plants, and flowers.
Shares Christine: “I could be starting it while crying and still breathing funky, and then after a few minutes of physically doing something that’s not stressful — and my brain has to focus on that — I realize I’m out of it, you know? It’s weird, but it’s good. It’s very effective.”
The Connection Between Rumination and Low Self-Esteem
There’s a difference between rumination and obsession.
“An obsession is a type of distressing thought that emerges from the unconscious, while rumination — from the ego, or conscious mind — is typically a type of compulsion people engage in to neutralize the obsession itself,” says Daniel Garcia, PhD, a licensed psychologist and executive director of the MendCenter mental health treatment facility in Houston.
“Another way to think about this is that an obsession is experienced as a specter emerging out of the unconscious, and rumination is our conscious mind’s attempt to defend against it,” explains Dr. Garcia.
RELATED: Self-Esteem and Bipolar Disorder: Here’s How to Feel Good About Yourself
Garcia sees a correlation, however, between rumination and low self-esteem. Unconscious thoughts associated with low self-esteem, such as “Something is missing in me,” can produce anxiety, for instance. People struggling with anxiety can feel compelled to ruminate in order to assuage the distress — “as a way of suturing the gap that provoked their anxiety,” says Garcia.
That can go on and on for years, even decades.
Childhood Trauma in Adulthood: Navigating the Impact of Parental Relationships
“Low self-esteem is the ‘house built on sand’ from earlier developmental experiences that can plague someone throughout life,” explains Lawrence Dugan, PhD, a psychologist in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Becky from Wisconsin, can relate. She was raised by a mother who struggled with bipolar mood episodes — but was undiagnosed and unmedicated while Becky was growing up. Her mom’s fits of rage “came from nowhere,” she says.
As a mother of two daughters, Becky, who was diagnosed with bipolar 1 disorder at age 25, vowed to parent differently. But this pledge caused continuous rumination about a bleak future.
“I’d think, ‘I’m not raising my kids like that.’ But I’d also keep thinking, ‘They won’t finish high school. They’ll go to jail. They need to be better than me.’ And I would constantly go back to that, over and over and over.”
RELATED: Healing From the Past Trauma of Undiagnosed Bipolar Disorder
The constant dwelling ultimately led to overbearing behavior with her daughters — one of whom developed anxiety. Looking back, Becky acknowledges she took things too far, especially during depressive episodes.
“I thought at the time that the rumination was helping me, but it really wasn’t. Everybody was telling me it wasn’t,” she recalls. “I should’ve backed off. But I couldn’t stop thinking about my mom. I was fighting with it all the time.”
Becky’s mother, who is still in her life, continues to feed her ruminations. These days, when she’s in a depressive episode, her thoughts tend to center on why she can’t be good enough.
“I’m dragging, crying, in bed all day, wondering yet again what I ever did for her to hate me,” Becky says. “This is childhood yet in adulthood.”
In recent years, Becky has learned, at her counselor’s recommendation, to put up “rubber walls so she can’t come inside,” she says. “You know that saying, ‘I’m rubber, you’re glue, whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you’? It’s like that, so what she says bounces off me. I’m stronger now.”
Dr. Dugan invites his patients to recount, in writing, the lowest points in their lives and the triggers for each, and to then talk about the feelings each of those experiences produced.
This is most helpful when done under the guidance of a therapist, Dugan adds: “When someone ruminates regularly, in my opinion, they will need to seek counseling or else the rumination is likely to reoccur.”
Redirecting the Mind: Distraction as a Powerful Antidote
When you can’t find an “off” button for your thoughts, try not to will yourself to stop ruminating. That’s because when we tell ourselves not to do something, we start thinking about what we’re not supposed to do.
“Instead, distraction works a lot better,” says Everett L. Worthington Jr., PhD, a clinical psychologist in Richmond, Virginia. “If we try to get our minds going in a more positive direction, that wipes out the negative thinking without thinking about it.”
Diagnosed with bipolar 1 in 2002, Steve Nawotniak of Lancaster, New York, gets in a cycle of negative thoughts when he convinces himself that he can’t do things well, or feels like he’s somehow broken.
As a certified peer specialist working in the mental health field, Nawotniak has devised several strategies to prevent himself from continually asking, “What’s going to go wrong? What are the mistakes I’ve made in the past? What mistakes can I make in the future?”
He outlines these strategies in his book Bipolar Life Hacks: Keys to Loving Life with a Bipolar Disorder. The first is psychological flexibility, “having tools that support me in living an empowered relationship with the discomfort,” he says. “So not trying to fight it, not trying to white-knuckle through it or make it stop.”
Letting Go of Judgment: Embracing Uncomfortable Experiences
One of those tools is an “acceptance ladder” with five rungs. From bottom to top: feeling hopeless and like a victim; judging the situation as unfair and difficult; seeing the situation as uncomfortable but not good or bad; asking what the situation has to teach him; and appreciating the situation as a gift.
“All I can do is identify what rung I am on right now, and how do I go one rung up?” Nawotniak says. “So when I’m in difficult mode, I can’t entertain the rumination as a gift because it’s hard and I don’t want it. The only thing I can look at doing is letting go of the judgment and letting it be an uncomfortable experience.”
Deep physical pressure also helps “ground me out of the racing thoughts,” says Nawotniak, whether that’s wearing a compression shirt, lifting weights, or feeling the resistance of a mower when trimming the lawn.
RELATED: Breaking Free From Obsessive Thoughts in Bipolar Disorder
Lastly, to get out of his head and into the moment, Nawotniak turns toward slow, deep breaths. He describes the relief they bring by comparing his ruminations to the wind in a brutal snowstorm.
“It’s cold outside and it’s snowing, but it’s the wind that makes it real biting,” he says. “If you can get around to the corner of a building, it’s still winter, it’s still snowing, and it’s still cold, but you’ve gotten out of the wind and aren’t getting beat up by the storm anymore. Deep, slower, fuller breaths from my belly is like getting out of the wind.”
Even if not entirely. When it comes to his ruminating thoughts about mistakes or other failures, Nawotniak adds: “I may still have the thoughts and the anxiety and the depression, but this gives me a little room around the experience so it doesn’t own me as much.”
Editorial Sources and Fact-Checking
- Gruber J et al. Hooked on a Feeling: Rumination About Positive and Negative Emotion in Inter-Episode Bipolar Disorder. Journal of Abnormal Psychology. November 2011.
UPDATED: Printed as “Finding the OFF Button,” Winter 2022