A shared practice
How to Stop Ruminating
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Created bySean Fargo
Part 6 of Sean's inner-critic series — recorded in his own voice.
In Sean Fargo’s own voice5 min
Read along — the full script
Welcome back. We're now on day six of dealing with the inner critic. I'm Sean Fargo. Have you ever made a mistake or felt like you had a really bad day and you can't stop thinking about it? Where you replay the events over and over and over in your head to the point where it just drives you crazy?
Might be laying in bed just rehashing the stupid thing you said or the dumb thing you did, or how somebody probably doesn't like you anymore because of what you did, and you just can't get it out of your head, and you're just ruminating over and over. You're on the train or the subway or going to work, and you just can't stop thinking about it. It's not actually like you're solving the problem or getting down to the crux of the matter.
You're actually just repeating the same thing over and over. Mindfulness can help. That's the bottom line. Mindfulness can bring your mind back to the present moment, to what's actually happening in the moment, to bring a kind curiosity to the unfolding present moment.
And what that does is it decreases the fuel of your ruminating mind. It takes away the power of the repeated thoughts, to the point where they lose steam, to the point where you tend to notice your surroundings more, your body tends to soften, and you're able to think more clearly. You're able to actually see the same situation through a different lens.
A lens that had probably never occurred to you before in the middle of ruminating over and over with a negative incantation. So invite you to practice this coming back to the moment, coming back to your senses, quite literally, senses of taste and touch and hearing and seeing, thinking. So I invite you to notice when you're ruminating and come back to your body.
To notice feeling of gravity as you touch the chair or the ground or your bed. To notice what that feels like. To come back to your sense of hearing. Noticing all the sounds around you. Not getting lost in what it is that's creating the sound, but in the actual sounds themselves, the raw physical data, the rhythmic waves of sound as they hit your ear.
The colors around you, coming back to your sense of sight. What colors do you notice all around you? Maybe there's shades of gray, and maybe there's some bright colors. Just noticing all the different shades of colors. And coming back to your sense of touch.
What do you feel on your skin? Maybe there's a sense of pressure or texture. So this is the practice of mindfulness, of kind curiosity. So the next time you find yourself ruminating, next time you find yourself just repeatedly rehashing some situation, come back to the senses.
Thank you for joining me in this exercise today. I look forward to being with you again tomorrow for our next session on day seven of dealing with the inner critic.
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