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Hey, Nathan Peterson here, OCD and anxiety specialist.
Learn how to stop rumination, a common obsessive thought pattern in anxiety and OCD, with practical tips and expert guidance from Nathan Peterson.
Key Takeaways
- Rumination intensifies anxiety and OCD by trapping individuals in negative thought cycles.
- Exposure and Response Prevention is a proven strategy to reduce compulsive behaviors linked to rumination.
- Accepting thoughts without judgment or responding with playful indifference can weaken rumination's hold.
- Focusing on what you can control and engaging in present activities helps break the rumination cycle.
- Changing your relationship with thoughts, rather than stopping them outright, leads to long-term improvement.
Summary
- Rumination is a repetitive, obsessive thought pattern that fuels anxiety, OCD, and stress.
- It involves overthinking negative experiences and worst-case scenarios, leading to panic and compulsive behaviors.
- Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) is an effective method to break the rumination cycle by facing triggers without engaging in compulsions.
- Start by identifying and categorizing ruminative thoughts into past, present, and future, and assess your control over them.
- Changing your response to these thoughts, either by acknowledging them without judgment or responding with indifference, can reduce their power.
- Rumination is not problem-solving but repetitive thinking that increases hopelessness and prevents moving forward.
- Mindfulness techniques, such as setting timers to observe thoughts without judgment, can help manage rumination.
- The brain struggles to accept lack of control, so retraining it to stop giving power to uncontrollable thoughts is key.
- Focusing on present-moment activities and tangible actions helps shift attention away from rumination.
- Nathan Peterson offers a step-by-step course, 'Master your OCD,' to support recovery from OCD and anxiety.
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
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That good old rumination.
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It plags us all, the overthinking, the anxiety, the stress.
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Let's discuss why rumination fuels anxiety and OCD and I'm going to teach you how to stop it.
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Rumination is an obsessive thought pattern that many people with anxiety and OCD experience.
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It can be so extremely debulitating.
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It's an endless cycle of thoughts that can lead to feelings of anxiety, stress, and depression.
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Making it difficult to move forward.
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In this video, we're going to explore the reasons why radiation is so harmful and I'm going to provide you with some practical tips on how to stop it.
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Well, I use the word stop it, but we'll we'll get there.
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So let's get started.
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Radiation is an obsessive thought pattern that can occur in many different situations.
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It's essentially just repetitive thoughts over and over and over and over and over and over and over.
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Could be about anxiety, stress, depression, past mistakes, why did I do that, could this happen, can I problem solve this even though there's no answer to it?
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And we tend to focus on those negative experiences, negative thoughts.
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Those are the ones that are re-playing over and over again.
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It's not the positive things.
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It's the what if that can lead to this distorted perception of reality.
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Making it difficult to see these things in a more positive light.
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Rumination fuels anxiety and OCD.
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It keeps people stuck in the cycle of this negative thinking.
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The worst case scenarios.
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They escalate.
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Often people feel panic.
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They feel fear.
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It's difficult to break the cycle.
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This often leads to compulsive behaviors.
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Those are the things that people do to get these thoughts to just stop.
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Or their problem solving it.
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As it can feel so overwhelming, there's often depression that comes along with this.
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So this is what you hear for.
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One of the most effective ways to stop ruminating is through exposure and response prevention.
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It involves exposing yourself to those things, those triggers that cause anxiety.
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Or even the obsessions.
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And you also prevent yourself from engaging in any safety behaviors or compulsive behaviors.
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This helps break the cycle of anxiety and OCD, allowing you to move forward.
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So here's where you start.
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First, recognize what you're even culminating about.
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Write them all down.
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Put them in three categories, past, present, future.
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Then we take each one and you identify if you have control over it.
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I would bet you the thing you're fearing or culminating about is something you have zero control over.
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Whether it's already happened or it's something that could happen.
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Which takes us to the next point.
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Why are we thinking about something we have zero control over?
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Well, because our brain has a hard time accepting that we have zero control.
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over it.
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Because that's the brain's job.
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But we need to give it a new job.
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We're not giving that any power anymore.
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When your brain is thinking, thinking, thinking.
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Instead, we're going to see if it's on this list that you've created.
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And you're going to give various responses.
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You know that could happen.
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Sure.
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Hey, thanks for that.
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Totally.
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I love that you came back to my mind today.
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Sweet.
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Even during this test that I'm taking.
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That's awesome.
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Hey, right in the morning.
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Love it when you get here in the morning.
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We're kind of messing with the brain a little bit.
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Because when you agree with it, you're like, hey man, hope it happens.
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What a cool thought.
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I want more of those.
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Please come back.
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No, come back, come back.
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I'm so glad I said something embarrassing.
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I'm going to do it again.
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The brain's like, what are you doing, I'm warning you, you're in danger.
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That's why I keep thinking about it.
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What really ends up happening is that you're teaching your brain that the thought it wants you to keep problem solving that you have no control over is useless.
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Or the thing you're ruminating that happened in the past, you still have no control over is useless.
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So saying all these thoughts that means you want it to happen?
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No, no, no.
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The body even produces feelings of guilt and shame.
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Just because you like haven't figured it out yet.
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It's like, don't defi me.
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Some suggest that to stop ruminating, you allow yourself to accept that you're ruminating.
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Let the thoughts be.
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Don't move them.
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Don't answer them.
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Don't control them.
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Don't do any of the things I just said.
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Let them be.
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Different things work for different people.
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This is taking the mindfulness approach.
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Let me set timers throughout the entire day to take a moment to have a thought and practice not putting any judgment on them.
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And it might be like 30 timers a day.
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If the thought keeps coming, we welcome it.
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Let it be your buddy.
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The more we push it, the more it pushes back.
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Think of how your brain is really just trying to protect you, but it's really doing a poor job.
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So there's those two approaches.
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Literally do nothing or respond to it as if you just don't care.
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You might figure out which one works best for you.
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Think about your thoughts as a time machine.
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And it can take you to the future.
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When you radiate, you're using a time machine to travel to the future.
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But it hasn't even happened yet.
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You're imagining the worst case scenario.
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The problem is you don't actually have a time machine.
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And you can't predict the future.
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So, by focusing on the present moment, you can break the cycle of rotation and anxiety.
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You're wearing tricking you to think that you have a time machine.
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But you don't.
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It's important to remember that rotation is not problem solving.
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When we rut, we're not actually finding solutions.
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We're just replacing it over and over and over in our minds.
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This can lead to feelings of hopelessness, despair.
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And it makes it difficult to move forward.
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So, what do you have control over?
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Oh, I can go play with game right now.
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I can go have fun with my friends.
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I can go on a walk.
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Things that are tangible.
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That's where we want to live.
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Rumination can feel so automatic at times.
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Which is why we have these mindset and tools.
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And we set up these timers to be like, you know, I'm going to find you before you find me.
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We tend to believe that pushing the thought away is the smartest thing to do or to avoid it.
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I hear all the time on TV shows and movies and life.
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But what happens when we say.
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Think about something else.
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Do something else.
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We've just flagged this as important.
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So when we flag something important, it's going to keep coming back.
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We don't need it.
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Let's give it a different tag.
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Doesn't matter if there's a thousand thoughts, 10,000 thoughts a day.
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They actually do start slowing down when we're just not giving it anything.
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So at the beginning when I said stop your thoughts, it's not literally stopping your thoughts.
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It's changing your relationship with these.
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Allowing them to reduce all on their own.
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Some people.
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Thoughts do stop.
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They just don't really have these negative thoughts as often.
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But everyone's going to have them.
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So it's not 100%.
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I do want to help you on your journey to recovery, which is why I created my step by step course.
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Master your OCD.
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I'm going to link that down in the description.
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If you found this video helpful, please give it a thumbs up and subscribe.
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For more mental health tips, this is the place you need to be.
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You are not alone.
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Also in the comments, tell me what you remind about.
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Other things your brain just will not let go.
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Thank you so much for watching.
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And I'll say.
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We'll see you next time.
Topics:ruminationOCDanxietyexposure and response preventionmindfulnessoverthinkingcompulsive behaviorsmental healthstress managementNathan Peterson
