Life hack #21: Your secret weapon against rumination and intrusive thoughts
Life hack #21: Your secret weapon against rumination and intrusive thoughts
[00:00:00] Life hack #21 Your secret weapon against rumination and intrusive thoughts. So just to be clear, rumination is the repetitive behavior or pattern of thinking, which is often linked to negative feelings and this is usually in a break up. It's contextually about the break up. It's thinking about your ex, thinking about the last conversation you had, thinking about the future conversations you'd like to have, and no break from this line of thought.
It just haunts you. It goes to the grocery store in your head with you, like it's there. Rumination is tough. It's very tough. And intrusive thoughts are similar. I get those as an ADHD brain sometimes. Sometimes you just don't want to let yourself go to a certain place of, you know, thinking about certain things so that you don't hurt yourself, right?
So it's not helpful to picture your ex sexually with a new partner. That's just like self harm if you think about it, unless you're healed, right? So these can be intrusive thoughts. If you feel like you're seeing these things in your mind's eye or like you're thinking about them and you don't really want to be, right?
This is something I personally have struggled with for sure. And I'm going to tell you, and first of all, you'll notice by my tone [00:01:00] that I'm a bit mentally lazy when it comes to meditation. I have an ADHD brain. It thinks fast and I don't really adapt well to a lot of the meditations or things like that.
Like I've tried, I'll do it for a couple of minutes and then I'm be like, just itching to like go do something else. It's, I struggle, right? And so the reason that I am going to introduce the real secret weapon with laughter, honestly, is because it's the only thing that made me do it. And it's mindfulness meditation.
So mindfulness meditation, it redirects our attention to the present experience. This can actually help shift the ruminating behavior in our heads. And we can actually intervene in the present moment. So it also focuses on behavior such as acceptance and openness, compassion, and especially non-judgment.
So you're not supposed to judge the thoughts in your head, you know, with mindfulness, you're not supposed to get mad at yourself if you have a thought while you're supposed to be meditating. That's the part I struggle with because I'm like. You know, like, get with it. Like, you know, shut up [00:02:00] in my head, right?
Um, and like, stop thinking. Like, you can't stop thinking. So the important thing is to not get mad at the thinking, to just watch the thinking. Like, beautiful little puffy clouds going across the sky at a pace, and eventually they just drift out of your sight. That's mindfulness meditation in terms of, like, looking at your thoughts.
And so you don't have to get upset that you're having a negative thought, but what you could do is just focus on the fact that it's temporary, don't judge it and let it slowly drift out and be processed through. And then the next thought comes in. I love that mindfulness is super huge in terms of healing, healing modality for people.
This is a huge thing you could do. It's free. You do it in your own brain. Um, and you know what? If you aren't yet on board with mindfulness meditation and then you go through a break up and cannot get a moment of peace without being emotionally haunted by your ex then you might want to decide to look into mindfulness meditation specifically about your ex or your anger or guilt or grief because you can go to youtube, you can go to podcasts and you can get people to help walk you through a [00:03:00] meditation for those specific themes, right?
So if you've never found a use for mindfulness meditation before, then this could be its opening and it is helpful. And here's why. You're not a victim to these thoughts anymore. You're no longer just living life without the ability to control your mind. What it is, is it gives you a weapon against intrusive thoughts, a weapon against rumination and an ability to fight back and say, you know what?
Thanks for the thought. I'm going to move past it. Now I'm going to focus on what I'm making for dinner. It can be a pivotal choice. You know how you could pivot on your back heel, like pivot on a foot? This is pivotal. You can decide. You know, thank you for the thought for the 15th time today about my ex and the girl he left me for, but I've decided to focus on my Uber Eats order now, you know, and so you can actually shift.
I'm never going to be a teacher on mindfulness. I just think that I'm struggling as much as anybody else would with a similar brain, but when it comes to ruminating [00:04:00] thoughts about your ex, sometimes you're desperate AF to like get some help. And so mindfulness meditation can give you, give you the space you need to have a break from that haunting experience.
So mindfulness meditation, it can be there for you when you need help with intrusive thoughts, ruminating about your ex, ruminating about the pain. It's not always helpful to sit and, you know, circle around the same topics over and over, right? So at least with mindfulness meditation, you have a weapon, you have, uh, uh, you know, a fighting chance against these things and you can, you know, meet yourself in the present moment to decide whether or not you're going to take control or not.
