Skip to main content

Rumination: A Maladpative Coping Style that Fosters Depression


Rumination is a maladaptive style of responding to stressful situations in which a person repetitively and passively focuses on the symptoms of distress and the possible causes and consequences of these symptoms. Ruminators mistakenly believe that by focusing on their past feelings, they can somehow have a better understanding of their emotions and this will help them solve their problems. The opposite is true: rumination makes people more fixated on their problems and feelings without leading to any active problem-solving to change the circumstances around these symptoms. Research shows that women are more likely to engage in rumination compared to men, which also makes them more prone for depression (Nolen-Hoeksema et al., 2008). Rumination fosters inactivity and can come in the way of getting things done. Many people confuse rumination with worry, but these two entities differ in the following ways (Lyubomirsky et al., 2015):
  1. Rumination is focused on the past while worry is focused on the future.
  2. Rumination revolves around themes of loss, meaning, and lack of self-worth whereas worry revolves around anticipated threats.
  3. Rumination involves viewing events as certain and uncontrollable while worry involves viewing events as uncertain and potentially controllable.
  4. Ruminators seek to gain insight while worriers seek to anticipate and prepare for anxiety.
To illustrate this difference, a person thinking about what went wrong at a meeting and trying to figure out the reasons for it is ruminating. In contrast, a person thinking about how they are going to prepare for a meeting and whether they are going to deliver during the meeting is worrying.

Rumination is an avoidance behavior that predicts the onset of depression and maintains and exacerbates it (Nolen-Hoeksema et al., 2008). It builds a case for a depressed person that they are facing a hopelessly uncontrollable situation and, therefore, they are not able to take action to overcome the situation. Compounded by irrational thought patterns such as jumping to conclusions, disqualifying the positives, or blowing things out of proportion, rumination makes a depressed individual come up with evidence that only supports why a certain situation is hopeless and that they might as well give up. This then provides them with a justification for inactivity and withdrawal because working on the solution for the situation is more painful than avoiding it (Nolen-Hoeksema et al., 2008). Other ways by which rumination worsens depression is by interfering with problem-solving abilities, reducing motivation to implement solutions, and by reducing social support (Lyubomirsky et al., 2015).

A related psychological construct is co-rumination. Co-rumination involves extensive self-disclosure between peers and rehashing the negative causes, implications, and feelings around problems. Although the discussion in co-rumination may encompass stress in an individual's life, what makes co-rumination a maldaptive style is that this communication is void of neutral or positive topics or activities. This in turn leads to people internalizing stress (Rose, 2002). Similar to rumination, research suggests that co-rumination is related to depressive symptoms and children with a higher level of co-rumination are more likely to have a diagnosis of a depressive disorder (Stone et al., 2010).

To summarize, rumination is a well-established risk factor for the onset of depression and also tends to make it chronic. There are proven techniques that target rumination and Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) is one such modality. 

To learn more about evidence-based self-management techniques that promote mental health and well-being, check out Dr. Duggal's Author Page.

HARPREET S. DUGGAL, MD, FAPA

REFERENCES

Nolen-Hoeksema, S., Wisco, B. E., & Lyubomirsky, S. (2008). Rethinking rumination. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 3(5), 400-424.

Lyubomirsky, S., Layous, K., Chancellor, J., & Nelson, S. K. (2015). Thinking about rumination: the scholarly contributions and intellectual legacy of Susan Nolen-Hoeksema. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 11, 1-22.

Rose, A. (2002). Co-rumination in the friendships of boys and girls. Child Development, 73, 1830-1843.  

Stone, L. B., Uhrlass, D. J., & Gibb, B. E. (2010). Co-rumination and lifetime history of depressive disorders in children. Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychology, 39(4), 597-602.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

10 Poor Listening Styles to Avoid

When we talk about communication, we mostly focus on speaking, writing, and reading. Listening is seldom emphasized as a primary form of communication, even though listening enables us to satisfy an individual’s deep psychological needs – to be understood, to be affirmed, to be validated, and to be appreciated (Covey, 2020). We mostly listen not to understand but to prepare response, judge, or interpret information through our own motives and frame of reference. These poor listening styles can be subsumed under these 10 categories (Covey 2014, Harvard Business Review Press, 2019): 1. Spacing out or ignoring is when you zone out because you are too preoccupied with your own thoughts. This does happen to all of us, but you don’t want to be labelled as a spacey person if this keeps happening to you.  2. Pretend or removed listening is where you may be multitasking and give the speaker the impression that you are paying attention using fillers like “yeah,” uh-huh,” “right,” “cool” or thr
Post a Comment
Read more

The Art of Everyday Mindfulness

What is Mindfulness? If your notion of mindfulness is a practice starting with a phrase like, "Take a deep breath and close your eyes," then you have mostly bought into the myth that the only effective way of practicing mindfulness is guided meditation .  However, if you know what mindfulness entails, you can incorporate it in your daily routine in an informal way without relying on popular apps that have commercialized a practice known to humans for thousands of years.  Mindfulness-based interventions are well-validated treatment approaches that not only promote well-being and resilience but also have been found to be effective in anxiety, depression, chronic pain, and substance use disorders (Wielgosz et al., 2019). Mindfulness has two components: (a) orienting one’s attention purposefully to the present moment, and (b) approaching one’s experience in the present moment with curiosity, openness, and acceptance (Bishop et al., 2004). The state of mindfulness is described as
1 comment
Read more

Value-Based Goals: The Antidote for “Success Depression”

A disconnect between your present accomplishments and your core values may make you suffer from success depression  wherein despite “having it all” (e.g., successful career, stable relationships, healthy children, etc.), you still struggle with depression and view your accomplishments as hollow (Zettle, 2007). The cure for this malaise is to clarify your core values and have goals and actions that are driven by these values. Psychotherapist Russ Harris describes values as our heart’s deepest desires for the way we want to interact with the world, other people, and ourselves. They are what we want to stand for in life, how we want to behave, what sort of person we want to be, and what sort of strengths and qualities we want to develop (Harris, 2009). Values are subjective; what one may consider as a value (e.g., being famous) may be considered as being cocky by another person. Moreover, values do change with time. For instance, you may value social popularity and raising a family
Post a Comment
Read more