Many people believe that their rumination is driven by a terrible event — one with negative consequences that may continue into the future.

When people begin the healing journey to address the pain of rumination, they often arrive at a second realization: the problem is the rumination itself — the habitual patterns the brain has developed to go anxiously over and over the same situations. And while this recognition is a genuinely useful step on the healing journey, it is missing a critical piece.

Research has shown that the main thing that drives and maintains rumination is actually the judgments we hold about the emotions we are feeling. Understanding this is important — and it will make an enormous difference in your progress toward a more peaceful mind.

Almost whenever we experience an emotion, we simultaneously form a judgment about that emotion. Researchers call this secondary appraisal. Here is how it works:

An event occurs. You have an initial emotional response — anger, grief, sadness, confusion, or even something positive. This is your primary appraisal: the first, immediate emotional reaction to the situation.

Almost instantly, your secondary appraisal kicks in: you form a judgment about that emotion. You evaluate whether you like it or dislike it. More importantly, you judge whether you should be having it, and whether you can handle it. And it is these negative secondary appraisals — not the event itself — that drive and maintain the rumination.

Negative secondary appraisal sounds like this:

• "I cannot handle this emotion."

• "I will never get over it."

• "I am overwhelmed. I cannot cope."

• "I should not be feeling this way."

• "I should not feel this angry. That is a bad thing."

These judgments are what sustain the rumination loop. Negative beliefs about emotions generally fall into one of three categories:

1. The emotion is overwhelming or uncontrollable

2. The emotion is shameful

3. The emotion is damaging — that it could ruin you

A difficult situation occurs — and it may also be tied to something in the future you are dreading. Both the past event and the projection into the future bring up intensely negative emotion. The rumination begins: going over and over what happened, what should have been done differently, why you or someone else behaved a certain way, and how the past event will impact what happens next.

Woven through all of that rumination are the judgments about the emotions themselves — whether you can handle them, whether you should be having them, and whether you will ever recover from them. Those judgments intensify the distress. They activate your brain's fight-flight-freeze response and your anxiety symptoms, because you are so desperately trying to avoid feeling the feelings the situation brings up.

It is actually the fear of emotion that is driving the rumination — not the event itself.

The first tool has four steps. When possible, write these steps down. If you cannot, say them out loud. Simply naming your emotions creates perspective and distance.

Step 1:
Identify the thought pattern as rumination. Your thoughts are going over and over a situation from the past or the future. Once your observer brain — the part that looks at your thoughts rather than being consumed by them — can step in, label the process: "This is rumination. It is not helpful."
Step 2:
Name the feelings you are experiencing right now. You might be feeling anxiety, regret about what happened in the past, dread, fear, or shame. What feelings are coming up for you in relation to the event you are ruminating about?

Step 3:
Identify what feeling you are trying to avoid. Your brain is going over and over the problem, but the main goal of that rumination is not to solve the external situation that occurred. The rumination wants to resolve things so that you never have to feel that emotion. It might be the same emotion you named in step two, or it might be a different one. Name it: "I am trying to avoid feeling shame." "I am trying to avoid feeling worthless." "I am trying to avoid feeling angry, because I think anger is bad."

Step 4:
Identify what beliefs you have about the emotions you are trying to avoid. What do you believe about your ability to handle them? What do you believe about your right to have these emotions?  These are the negative secondary appraisals sustaining the loop. 

Once you have identified the beliefs you hold about your emotions, the next step is to create some distance from them by rephrasing them. This technique is called diffusion, and it works with the observer brain to help you stop being entirely consumed by and fused with your thoughts.

Instead of "I cannot cope with the anger I am feeling. I should not be having it," rephrase it as: "I am having the thought that I cannot cope with the feeling of anger. I am having the thought that I should not be having it."

This rephrasing is actually accurate. Whether you should or should not be feeling anger is debatable — but it is true that you are having the thought that you should not. 

Diffusion helps you loosen the grip of beliefs that may be genuinely harmful to you. It is a powerful way to step back from the cycle of completely believing all of your thoughts.

This tool takes practice, but it is transformative. 

Emotions provide a tremendous amount of information about what we value, what we dislike, and the world around us. Emotions are not inherently good or bad. The behaviors we engage in once we feel an emotion might be judged as helpful or unhelpful — but that is the acting out on the emotion. The emotion itself is simply a signal.

• Anxiety often signals that something matters deeply to you.

• Anger may signal that a boundary was crossed or that you felt disrespected.

• Sadness marks a real loss.

These emotions are uncomfortable and unpleasant. You do not have to enjoy having them. But if you can begin to treat them as uncomfortable rather than shameful or dangerous, you do not have to view them as threatening. You can begin to examine what information they are actually offering you — and respond to the situation rather than react to it.

I have a number of videos on what different emotions tell us, what information they are communicating, and how that can be really helpful. This is often referred to as emotional intelligence: understanding what our emotions mean and then making thoughtful, reasonable responses to them. (Click here for emotional intelligence playlist)

Many of the beliefs we hold about our emotions developed very early in life, often from dysfunctional situations we were in as children. They are tied to our negative core beliefs. 

If you would like help exploring what negative core beliefs you might be carrying, I have a free PDF — Transform Your Negative Core Beliefs — that many people have found super helpful in both identifying those beliefs and beginning to take steps to overturn them. The link will be in the description and I will show a QR code on screen as well.

To summarize: the rumination loop is driven by the feelings that come up for you around the event, as well as the beliefs you hold about those emotions. 

To reduce your rumination, you do not need to change the emotions that come up from the event. What is needed is to accept the emotions — not fear them, not push them away. Learn to sit with them. Emotions peak and then ebb, and usually, if you do not maintain them with a great deal of thinking, they may peak and ebb within about 30 minutes or so.

The second piece is to question the beliefs you hold about your ability to handle these emotions, and about your right simply to have them. We are human. We have all sorts of emotions. Pretty much everybody struggles with difficult emotions because they are so unpleasant. But when you can move them into the 'unpleasant' category — rather than the 'horrible, I cannot cope' category — you will be able to have a great deal more internal peace.

Please comment below if you have any questions! See you next week :)