Not surprisingly given the painful experiences many readers have experienced living with psychopaths, letters to Lovefraud describe much troublesome rumination. This week and next I will be describing a two-pronged way of thinking about the problem of rumination – why it’s harmful to deal with these matters this way and next week (sorry to delay it) a very way that psychologists have found for processing such things.
Disclaimer
You will appreciate that I am not in a position to give psychological advice in this forum. What follows is not a recommendation but rather a way to think about what’s involved when one ruminates. If it makes sense to you please discuss it with a mental health professional.
What rumination is and isn’t
Rumination is unproductively, endlessly going over something in one’s mind. When one is troubled by something rumination is an attempt to resolve that distress – but it is a failed attempt in that it doesn’t resolve anything. Rumination is circular and all it succeeds in doing is entrenching pointless and demoralising regurgitation. “I should have…”, “Next time…”, “If only…”, “Perhaps…”, etc.
Rumination is not the healthy experiencing of true emotions, nor is it working something out or through. If rumination is circular, feeling and thinking are linear in that they lead somewhere; it’s important to be able to recognise the difference. When therapists and psychologists advocate stopping rumination they are not suggesting that one stops feeling or thinking. It is on the round-and-round, repetitious activity of rumination that is being addressed.
Why rumination is unhelpful
Rumination can increase anxiety, depression, and sleeplessness; it can interfere with clear thinking, ordinary life, and regular pleasures. It is importrant that we’re careful about what we ruminate on because it uses up valuable megabytes and entrenches stuck thinking patterns.
The bad news is that in the brain ‘neurons that fire together wire together’. So obsessing about something produces and then strengthens a neural pathway where a thought leads to a feeling which leads to a memory which leads to another feeling which leads to another thought, etc. The more we activate that neural pathway the stronger it gets and the more likely stray thoughts will lead to the pathway and strengthen it further. Thus people say thay they can’t switch it off, or can’t stop thinking about something.
The good news is that in the brain the rule ‘use it or lose it’ also applies. The less a neural pathway is activated the weaker the connections get. That means that seemingly fixed lines of thought can be unfixed. And, what’s more, because of the ‘neurons that fire together wire together’ rule, new preferred pathways can be produced.
Neuropsychology tells us that it takes about three weeks to form and strengthen a new neural pathway. After that it becomes easier and easier to go down the new pathway rather than the old one. Thus the stronger the new pathway becomes and the weaker the old one. (To be clear – the problem is not necessarily conquered in three weeks, but by then significant neurological changes have begun.)
To summarise, constant thinking about, worrying on, a topic will entrench it and make it harder and harder to avoid, and vice versa. In this sense thoughts are things, as Napoleon Hill said.
Yes, but CAN it be done?
How does one stop ruminating? Here’s an old Bob Newhart clip which heartlessly shows what’s required.
Sometimes people distract themselves as they would distract a child: No, don’t look there, look here! They turn the music up, they cook a meal, they change seats…anything to interrupt the the endless chain of ruminative thought. I’d be very interested to hear from readers what strategies they’ve come up with.
Here’s an example of an ‘ever-present’ thought going away for a spell
A Doonesbury cartoon has this conversation between B.D., a Gulf War veteran, and his therapist:
B.D: The thing is I just can’t stop thinking about Iraq. It crowds out everything.
Th: Okay, B.D., I want you to do something for me…
First, think about the worst thing you experienced in Iraq. Fix it in your mind, Okay?
All right, now I want you to tell me the birthdates of everyone in your family as fast as you can. Go!
B.D: Uh…July 21, 1919, May 27, 1921, September 16, 1945, October 31, 1950, January 11, 1951, May 14, 1992!
Th: Very good.
B.D.: So what’s that prove?
Th: You said you couldn’t stop thinking about Iraq. Well, you just did.
D.B.: But that’s…that’s cheating.
Th: By making yourself think about something else? How you figure?
B.D.: Well, I’ll be damned.
Th: No, I’ll be damned. I’ve never seen you smile before.
The point here isn’t that B.D.’s rumination problem is over, but that he sees that it can be over – that he is able to think about something else after all. Now it’s up to him, the therapist is suggesting, to practice that.
Is all rumination bad? No
It might be that some rumination is part of one’s natural ways of coping. If, however, one is still obsessively thinking about something six months later, those mechanisms aren’t doing the job.
Can rumination actually be prevented? Sometimes…
I wrote a post once how I once narrowly avoided rumination:
At about age 10 I suddenly realised one day that eggs contain chick foetuses. (I say ‘realised’ because (a) in fact the eggs we eat have not been fertilised and so can’t produce chicks, but (b) it felt like a sudden insight.)
Horrified by the idea I began to think through the implications…. And then – here’s the relevant bit -caught myself in the act, as it were. In an early instance of metathinking I realised that if I continued this way that I would make it impossible for myself to eat eggs, to stand having eggs eaten around me…and so on. In short I saw that I was on the road to becoming what might nowadays be called a pro-lifer of the poultry world.
Vegans, please relax. Whether or not egg-eating is a bad thing is not the point here. The point is how to prevent oneself constructing a train of thought which in turn may construct us.
My realisation was enough and early enough to begin combatting the rumination. I stopped myself thinking about X (eating eggs is murder) and thought about Y (something else that caught my 10-year old mind).
No egg problems since.
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Let me know your thoughts and experiences.
I am so grateful for this blog. I continue to feel so humiliated by all this man has done to me over the years. I continue to ruminate every day because I keep having forgotten memories pop into my head. Everything I thought was true for over 13 years was all a total lie. I so agree with the quote from Findingmyselfagain: “I am able to stop loving, able to stop missing, able to stop caring —but I am finding it so hard to believe the ugliness I’ve discovered in another human being that professed so much love for me.” That is exactly how I feel. How could there be such evil in a human being that you trusted with all your heart?
I hate when I hear from people, “just move on, it is what it is”. That’s fine if you’re dealing with a “normal” situation, but we are all not. These people we have let into our lives have deceived us, betrayed us and manipulated us. It’s not possible to just move on. I believe it is going to take a very long time for me to get over this. I think part of the healing process involves a bit of ruminating so that you can process the thoughts and eventually get them out of your head.
He has moved on with no problem. But, these are people with no conscience, no remorse, empty souls. We are human beings with real emotions. We need to work through all of our thoughts and emotions so that we can move on.
I know that ruminating too much is destructive, but some is necessary. The thing we can’t do is let them get to us so much that we continue to focus on them and lose ourselves even more. We have to put ourselves first and stop letting them continue to control our thoughts.
This whole healing process is so difficult and painful. It is a relief to read some posts of people that have been healing for years and truly have moved on. I thank them for their insight and helpful words.
Good luck to all of us.
“He really does not deserve my mental effort.”
Amen, Beverly. I’m finding as I get older, this applies to anyone, male or female, who does not have my best interests in their heart as I do them. Makes it much easier to just walk away if someone is mistreating you.
As a person who grew up with the idea constantly reinforced that I was to love those who mistreated me and ignore what they were doing, the best boundary I can have is to walk away at the first sign of someone manipulating, abusing, lying or hurting me.
Not a bad boundary, I think.
Almost_free, I like to use the “term” obscessing rather than rumination. Thinking, analyzing (in moderation) is I agree “necessary” to “getting your head around it” and learning what hit you–what actually happpened instead of the “fog”—but at the same time if you obscess over it forever you will never heal.
At some point you have to let the pain go, but the “oh, just get over it” comment is very invalidating of the huge traumas that victims have lived through. It shows that the person saying that does not comprehend (maybe can’t relate to or comprehend) what has happened to you.
It is almost, I think, like saying to some one who has recently lost a loved one though death, “oh, get over it”—the grieving process (and all it’s steps) is NECESSARY to healing. Believe me, we are all in some stage of the grief process even though we have “only” lost our fantasy love. There is no “time table” on how long grief resolution takes, it takes different times for different people depending on multiple factors such as the “importance” of the loss, the coping skills of the person who had the loss, and the support that they have.
It is “normal” to think about the loss, to cry about the loss, to be angry for the loss, to try to “bargain”and make the loss “not real” or to recover the lost, but eventually, the process should lead to acceptence and resolution of the loss.
The “normal,” or expected time, in the lost of a spouse is from 1 to 3 years. The death of a child, or other terrible and unexpected and unusual losses can take even longer and still be within the range of “normal.”
How much upheaval and how much you had in terms of care, time, etc. you had “invested” in your Psychopath will also determine how “long” resolution takes.
If you have suffered other stresses at the same time, such as financial losses, job changes, stalking, moving residence, anxiety about children,your safety, etc. etc. these can ADD to the time taken to resolve not only the P but the entire “mess” that goes with it. Almost 4 years after the death of my husband, I am pretty well in acceptence of the loss of my husband, though, of course I still miss him. The trauma with the multiple Ps and the fact that I was deeply invested with these disordered persons, and barely got out with my life ON TOP of the grief I was suffering due tomy husband’s death, made the relative trauma worse as I had less resources available to deal with the Ps.
Dealing with the Ps when you are “tired” and “worn out” by other stressors makes it much more difficult to “deal” with them.
There were months where I could do NOTHING but obscess about the DETAILS of every injury they had done to me. Now, that I am healing, or at least well on the road to healing, the DETAILS are not import to me emotionally and don’t elicit the same PAIN in my gut that they did previously when it was all so raw.
I am also very fortunate that one of my sons was by my side the entire time for support, and one that was distanced from me by the Ps smear campaign has restored our relationship even more close than it has ever been, since he has first hand seen the devestation that can be done by these disordered and EVIL people. He too, though, has suffered grave losses of people he trusted and loved, when he realized that they were also DISORDERED—his wife of 8 yrs tried with her P BF to kill him. His P-brother had fooled him, and deliberately let the other Ps “do evil” knowingly. So he has lost a “Friend” a “wife” and a “brother”, had to move out of state, get a new job, suffered financial devestation, on top of the fact that he is no longer able to trust my mother (his grandmaother) who has malignantly enabled these people and would today if my son didn’t keep a “clamp” on her by telling her he would go NC with her if she continued this behavior. He is now her only blood relative that will even converse with my mother, and he dosn’t trust even her to tell the truth without EVIDENCE. So my son has also lost a great deal and is starting from scratch learning about Ps and what they are capable of. Fortunately, over all, he has good sense and is LEARNING FAST. As well as, he has his other brother and me for support and understanding—and he knows that we have been in THAT FIRE ourselves. And he knows that WE DO KNOW how he feels about it all.
The restoration of my relationship with him has been “worth it all” in the end and I would have gladly paid that price for the restoration of the relationship. So good can come out of their evil designs. I have all the Ps out of my life, NC, and as well, am working on healing, and PEACE. Peace which is starting to “feel odd” as well, no drama or toxic people in my life.
Let yourself go through the grief process and all the “stage switching” that you will go through as you progress on that road. It wont go “straight” though, you will bounce back and forth between different stages from sadness to anger, from anger to bargaining, from bargaining to denial, etc. and back and forth and back and forth, but even with 2 steps forward and one backwards, youj will progress.
Read some books about GRIEF resolution, and you will see the similarities of how your feelings are involved in that part of it too. LEARNING about all aspects of it is a good way to help yourself and realize what is “normal” and what is pathologic in the processes. Good luck and God bless you.
Oxdrover. I too believe and have faith in the way that my physiology goes through its ‘own’ order to adjust and rebalance itself even though I may not understand it. When I was with him I felt that I was in torment – a kind of mental hell, but six months later without him, that feeling has now gone and I am more calm. You are right, I have found myself going through the different stages back and forth and it is not a straightforward process. What I have found though is that when I feel angry again, it is not the intense hurt anger I felt the first times, but nevertheless it still needs a voice.
I too have been told ‘get over it’ but I think this is because the listeners are feeling mind blown by listening to the details, it is too much to take in and they feel overwhelmed.
My story in comparison to other people here is small and I am in awe at the living nightmares that people have survived and from what I have read I can think of nothing worse.
LilOrphan. A great boundary, especially for those of us who were children brought up in dysfunctional households where we had to comply with all sorts of ragged behaviours, we are finally growing up too and refusing to be like that any longer. My mother developed schizophrenia after being dumped with two young children (me and my bro) by my narcissistic father. I was then put into care and rarely saw my father ever after that. My mother was left as a single parent to work and bring us up on her own. I yearned to have my father back – how could he desert me and leave me to go into care and leave my very mentally unstable mother to bring us up without any practical or financial help at all from him ever -after 50 years this veil has been lifted and I now know my father was a narcissist and I have learned this as a result of being with a Narcissist boyfriend who felt so familiar and I knew how to ‘behave’ with him, their was a strange comfort about being with him and the pain when he was distancing and cancelling hit the very painful early childhood buttons I felt – like Katalyst said, I have been given the opportunity to really understand myself (both my parents are now dead) and I might never have had this opportunity. Would I have been able to learn this lesson through love, possibly not.
Hi Ox,
You said:
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“but the ‘oh, just get over it’ comment is very invalidating of the huge traumas that victims have lived through. It shows that the person saying that does not comprehend (maybe cant relate to or comprehend) what has happened to you.
It is almost, I think, like saying to some one who has recently lost a loved one though death, ‘oh, get over it’, the grieving process (and all its steps) is NECESSARY to healing. Believe me, we are all in some stage of the grief process even though we have ‘only’ lost our fantasy love. There is no ‘time table’ on how long grief resolution takes, it takes different times for different people depending on multiple factors such as the ‘importance’ of the loss, the coping skills of the person who had the loss, and the support that they have.”
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I whole heartedly agree with everything you just posted. In addition, I would like to add that statements such as “oh just get over it” are not only invalidating; but actually very traumatizing and abusive in their own right (even if unintentional) b/c it sends a signal to the victim “something is WRONG with you”; that “you are damaged or flawed” … which IS abusive! Without even realizing it – you’ve been victimized again!! All the more reason to surround yourself and ONLY confide in SUPPORTIVE people. There are some who’ve never experienced the ‘wrath’ of a psychopath but CAN and DO separate their lack of experience from yours and realize that – whether or not they *understand* it; it was very traumatic for you – and they treat you with kindness, RESPECT and empathy. (minimizing your experience and/or reaction to it IS NOT respectful of or for you!) These folks are somewhat rare b/c I believe most in the general population have to have the ‘experience’ in order to be able to identify with you; relate to what you are going through and then be able to be supportive. Some people just cannot empathize with what they do not know or understand. Support is essential in recovery! Not everyone fits this bill. I personally have found, that finding those who have had similar experiences have been the most beneficial in my own recovery. Reciprocity is truly worth MORE than it’s weight in gold.
Loux2, some people have difficulty expressing “painful” emotions. Some people avoid funerals because they can’t cope with seeing the grief of the family. Or maybe it is thinking about their own eventual deaths that causes them to avoid the displays of other’s griefs.
Growing up, I was socialized to “keep your dirty linen” at home, and that you had to “appear” as if everyting was hunky dory even if your world was falling apart. I relize now that is completely wrong, but at the same time, sharing your “story” of “trauma” with casually met people isn’t good either. There needs to be some middle ground.
In listeningn to the posts of many people I perceive the “grief” process in their pain, and their lack of knowledge of this very normal process of healing after loss. What should be normally expected when we suffer a trauma/loss from interaction with the Ps?
Stress of loss, or multiple losses, also contributes to the grief and the inability to cope with it, the prolongation of the grief from lack of understanding that what you are going through is “normal” and “to be expected.” Education about grief and loss doesn’t “cure it” but it does reassure each of us that we are REACTING NORMALLY. That our symptoms both mental, emotional and physical are NORMAL. Intense, but normal. At least you are reassured you are not losing your mind!
Even knowing the process for grief resolution, you must still go THROUGH the pain. You cannot go around, over, under, but must EXPERIENCE it, FEEL it, as hurtful as it is, you have to endure it in order to overcome it.
Rumination to me is chewing the cud, just like a cow, examining the things you ahve “swallowed” again to get “meaning” out of them, however, obscessively rechewing over and over and over is definitely in my mind counterproductive. A cow would starve to death if she did that, and we emotionally “starve” if we do it too. At some point, you have to “swallow” it. It may be weeks, months, years, before you have re-chewed, gotten the meaning out of, and reswallowed every piece of important memories, but once you have done so, those DETAILS don’t seem to have any emotional pain attached to them any more.
I can think about my late husband and laugh at our jokes, smile when I rememeber him, and still miss him, but those thoughts are not painful any more. I have resolved the grief process WHERE HIS DEATH IS CONCERNED.
My grief at the loss of my “fantasy” relationship with my very dysfunctional mother is more recent and though I am resolving it rapidly I think, there are still some aspects of anger, etc. that are there from time to time.
The grief process is also a LEARNED process. We are taught how to grieve if we are given the opportunity.
Children who lose a pet grieve over the loss of this animal. Many times I see parents run right out and get the child another puppy or kitten to keep the child from grieving for the first one appropriately and completely. The child may cry and feel sad at the loss of the first animal, and at some point they will resolve that grief and be ready for another pup or kitten, but I do think that they should not be prevented from grieving. Grieving for the loss is a very important learning experience for the child, in my opinon.
Grieving is never easy if the loss is important, and is in proportion to the importance of the perceived loss. With some of our friends, people who genuinely love us, they are at a loss to comfort us and say things like “I know JUST how you feel” when you KNOW that they have no idea.
A positive, silent listener who just says “I know you are in pain” is much more a supportive friend than one who says “get over it.” But again, learning how to be a supportive friend is something that we must be taught. It doesn’t come naturally.
The commonalities of our feelings about our P-encounters helps us (on forums and blogs) to feel that the other person DOES KNOW how we feel. Therefore we are more open to listening to each other’s views, even though we may not agree with them.
It is very affirming to also know that we are NOT ALONE in this experience as some of our real world friends seem to think that our story is too “out there” to be true.
I am very thankful for the internet friends that I have made and for the life-affirming advice I have had from some caring people whose faces and even names I will never know.
I find that healing over this relationship has become such a secretive and silent healing for me. I’ve had some people in my life say the “get over it-he’s a creep” statement. My mother, who heard more of the ups and the downs with him – basically understands the difficulty to disconnect from it due to the control they take over your mind… but over all I have had to come to a point with everyone that I basically pretend everything is fine and I’ve moved on. No one wants to hear anymore of the tragic happenings or feelings. I have not seen my S since December – which I guess to other people is “the past”… but getting all the mental over-processing to end is taking longer than I would hope.
Someone said above, exactly what happens to me.. that you suddenly remember things and in their popping up in your mind, brings with it a whole slew of emotions and feelings to get under control again. Sometimes I even remember situations that I now put together two and two.. and things dont equal up to four. Or I remember promises and lies that suddenly link together — its like my subconcious mind is still examining the evidence of all this and still coming up with determinations.
I do worry though about the toll that ongoing ruminating and ongoing dissecting of all this will do to our health. I run out of ways to distract myself from continuing to think.
I’m curious if anyone here has begun dating again? I have not but I guess all this ruminating needs to end before anyone can be given a fair chance with me. I find it hard to not assume everything everyone (men) say to me is a lie. Its not fair I know, but how do you make the thoughts stop?
hi guys, i read this once and copied it – i don’t recall where i got it – but it was something that helped me:
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Ways to Healing (from my experience):
You begin in shock. In disbelief. You may suffer from Post Traumatic Stress (I did). As you are beginning to re-remember, the feelings are going to be overwhelming.
Every emotion under the sun. Chaotic feelings. Tremendous ambivalence. Anger, hatred, vengefulness, murder, all the really nasty stuff. Terrible, soul-tearing loneliness.
This is normal, this is you being human. Feel all the feelings, cry an ocean.
This is grieving. I cried for 3 years, almost every day. I was comforted by this saying from mystical Judaism, “God counts the tears of women” (and men, I’m sure).
At the same time,
Learn everything you can about psychopathy and pathological narcissism. We are not talking just immature jerks here, or the abusive, but hardcore pathology.
Return to the past and remember and review in detail.
This is not obsessing- this preoccupation is very necessary for healing because you are starting from square one — what you thought existed, did not.
So you must find out what really existed- replace the pathway of emotion laden remembrance with the stark, unyielding reality.
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this is me again:
i agree with this – we need to go back over the relationship again and again to validate the reality we knew existed, but denied.
so actually, while we may not want to ruminate, it may be healthy for us to go back over these hurtful situations and revisit them in a healthier state of mind.
when we are safer to experience the rage and pain that we denied while we were with the S.
so i am not sure “rumination” is something we can deny. in my humble opinion, this is a process that needs to be experienced, step by step.
as we re-fill our lives with what we knew before the S, i truly believe the ruminations will stop.
keeping the S out of our lives will help too. avoid where they go – don’t go to the romantic places you remember. NC is key.
as for me, i got 14 days of peace and today he sent me a text message. during that short period, i had some peace, i was able to accept that he is a scorpion and even while i still ruminated, i was able to laugh a little and reach out to new friends.
now, just seeing the text and i get the wind knocked out of me again.
it is so unfair that we are left with this nonsense all because we fell in love with someone.
lg
NO CONTACT—physical or emotional–is the easiest I think to deal with. While I was in contact with the Ns and Ps in my life I was so “out of it” emotionally and mentally I could not think logically or see past the pain. I over reacted to any stimuli.
NC at first physical only, because there was definitely mental contact from my end—I couldn’t get them out of my head—but as the physical no contact continued, I started to become “rational” again. At first I still wanted to contact them to “tell’m off but good” and as I refrained from that physically, I still “talked to them” in my head and “told” them what I thought of how they had treated me, so I had not acheived EMOTIONAL and MENTAL “No Contact”–as time went by though, the need I felt to “tell’m off” decreased.
Then, the need to “tell’m off” was gone one day. The need to obscess was also gone. I still think about the situation from time to time, or even a few of the details, but I am more logical and rational than any other feeling.
Accepting REALITY is much easier than wondering if we even see reality, or if we might be wrong.
I have always thought it is more anxiety provoking to WONDER if you have cancer than to be told that you have it for sure. When we are with the Ns and Ps we somenow keep the malignant hope alive that we can salvage the relationship some how, some way if we can just find the “magic words” to say. Of course we now know that there are NO magic words to fix the situation or the Ps.
Once we truly come to the conclusion that there is NO fixing it, I think that helps us get past the denial and the anxiety of trying to find those magic words. We finally accept that there aren’t any and that THEY will not change EVER.
At that point we are out of denial and more able to deal with the sad reality of what has happened.
I’ve been in the fog for so long that I am not sure what REAL peace feels like, but I am finding out—I even had to call my mother for business reasons the other day—and I did it without getting upset. I “broke” physical NC but the emotional NC is VERY MUCH intact. I am really kind of proud of myself as I have not had a single time in the last couple of years that even an e mail with my mother didn’t send me through the roof in spasams of emotional pain. This was a first!
I am “sad” or disappointed, whatever word you want to use, that I never have had nor ever will have a good relationship with my mom, or that I could ever trust her again. But I cna’t change that, I can only accept it as REALITY. It IS sad that anyone can be so disordered and dysfunctional, and I am sure that her remaining days will be lonely (I’m her only child) and anxiety ridden, but that was her choice not mine.I have forgiven her, gotten the bitterness out of my own heart, but forgiveness does not mean that I ignore the realilty of her TOXIC behavior, or that I can ever trust her again.
Life is moving on, I am moving on—and the overpowering feelings are quieting down to a calm and a peace. Acceptence of what was, what is, and who I am.
i dwell a lot. sometimes i waste whole days doing it. i would like to move on with my life and be happy and really live. but i get caught up by different things … i think a big indication of my lack of happiness/depression/frustration/status quo is my dwelling. when i start to dwell more that function it is a red flag for me about what is going on.
but i think writing of resentment and rumination is sort-of stupid. it is not as easy as cliche’s make it sound. maybe part of it can be helpful and other parts a waste of energy.
i am aware i am happier and more at peace when i am not thinking about any of those things though.