Nearly a year ago my wife, my son, and I went through what I would describe as a traumatic experience. My son who was just a little over one sustained burns on his body, primarily on his feet and hands. This experience kicked off a series of problems or challenges that we have faced and continue to face as a family.
Both my wife and I are armchair psychologists, we love to learn about psychology but clearly do not have any formal training. My wife taught me in her studies a concept called rumination. I had heard of this before, but nothing clicked for me. The Mirriam-Webster dictionary defines rumination as “obsessive thinking about an idea, situation, or choice especially when it interferes with normal mental functioning.”
If you are like me, this definition lacks contextual power to feel like I can understand and make use of it in my day-to-day life both at home and at work. The reframed definition my wife shared with me changed my perspective.
Rumination is trying to solve a problem that cannot be solved by thinking alone
This definition does have contextual power, I feel I can apply this to my life.
Is this an excuse to avoid the deep work of thinking through a problem? Absolutely not. You and I both know of a time when a challenge in our lives consumes our minds and no additional amount of thinking was going to resolve it. Some individuals are more prone to rumination than others, but we all do it.
The challenges my wife and I have faced over the past year have led to much rumination. It can feel hard and heavy and with so much uncertainty we want to work out things alone to try to find some level of certainty. This excessive mental work to strive for certainty does not serve us as a couple and as a family.
A leader, whether in a family, workplace, or community, will think deeply about problems and move to action. They do not spend an inordinate amount of mental energy on challenges that cannot be solved by thinking alone.
Rumination is real and can contribute to feelings of great feelings of anxiety and overwhelm. There is no “silver bullet” to reducing your rumination. Very little (that we can find) is written or researched about how to work through rumination but these are steps that have worked for me:
- Think deeply about the problem
- Create a plan
- Take action on the plan
- Trust the plan and stop thinking about the problem
The hardest part of these steps is the last bullet. Trust the plan and then let go. Things will happen as they happen, and we will adapt to those changes. Give these steps a try the next time you are ruminating and see if you can begin to retrain your brain to respond differently one step at a time.
