My mom has finished her first round of chemo and radiation. After facing and getting through the part she dreaded the most, she has found herself in the Christmas spirit. She listened to the classic Christmas songs during her treatments and has now decided that she wants to decorate the house for Christmas early, tree and all.
I, on the other hand, am ready for Halloween. I bought new decorations to adorn the house and have started that spooky season in my traditional way – listening to one of my favorite podcasts: Spooked. Spooked is dedicated to nothing other than giving people a platform to tell their stories and tales of ghosts, ghouls, and the supernatural. It’s a perfect way to kick off this time of the year….in my humble opinion.
I have been listening nonstop for the past week and heard a story that started me down one of my famous ADHD rabbit holes. The gist of the story was the classic urban legend…girl driving down the road late at night sees someone walking alongside the road. As she gets closer, it becomes clear that something is amiss with the person walking. It isn’t a person at all, but a translucent apparition of a woman murdered by her husband. The story goes on to give the history and describe how this woman is in an unending cycle of walking the path she took that fateful night decades ago.
For whatever reason, I love this stuff. I’m always down for a good scary story, ghost hunt, murder mystery, etc. Naturally, I’ve learned a thing or two over the years. The type of haunting described in the Spooked story is classified as a “residual haunting.” This type of haunting theoretically happens when something traumatic happens and the negativity associated with the trauma leaves a type of imprint on the environment. This imprint basically records the events and they then play on repeat. Don’t @ me, I didn’t come up with this stuff…
So what does this have to do with mental health? My venture down the rabbit hole lead to an epiphany that this is same exact thing as rumination. Rumination is the term we use to describe the act of thinking the same thoughts and replaying all those cringe moments from our lives on repeat in our minds. These negative thoughts and images just go on an endless loop until we do something to stop the thoughts.
How does this all tie in? We’re essentially haunting ourselves. Read that again. Let it sink in. We’re haunting ourselves by reliving the same moments, thinking the same thoughts over and over again.
The question the storyteller on the podcast asked was why would this woman want to experience the worst moment of her life over and over. Man, none of us who ruminate want to relive these moments, but we just do it. It’s what our brain does. We already have an underlying belief that we’re stupid, we’re not good enough, no one likes us, etc. and these moments are our evidence. Whatever event we’re reliving in our minds created yucky feelings that imprinted on us and it plays on an endless loop.
My theory is that many of us with depression and anxiety end up making things worse for ourselves when we allow our thoughts and irrational beliefs to spiral out of control. We create a nightmare for ourselves that we have to live in because we aren’t working on healing the traumas that happened to us. The yucky feelings, fears, irrational beliefs are the monsters in the closet, the ghost on the side of the road, and the killer stalking us. Rumination is the unhealed moments ricocheting around in our minds – a direct beacon to what we need to work on. Thoughts and images screaming for a resolution where we give ourselves love, grace and acceptance.
We spend so much time and energy trying to avoid the things that make us feel yucky, we don’t even realize that healing is just on the other side of that avoidance. If this is something you struggle with, find a trusted professional and begin facing your demons. That’s why people say this phrase – we create or worsen our own problems. Sit with the yucky feelings. See that these feelings pass and there are things you can do to cope with them in a healthy way. You can stop the loop!
Unbound Light 