How You Can Stop Ruminating Thoughts Through Metacognition.

It’s not the thoughts that hurt you, but thinking that you can’t control them.

Ever had a thought play on a loop inside your brain? Perhaps it’s a negative thought, a worry or a fear. When we continually wash and repeat the same thoughts over and over in our brain this is called rumination.

Ruminating can cause so many uncomfortable emotions, including depression and bouts of anxiety, making us feel out of control.

Thoughts are just thoughts- they can’t hurt you. However, continued unconscious obsession over certain thoughts, such as fears or worries about worst case scenario’s can cause us to feel extremely down and out of control.

So you’ve fallen into a trap of having these seemingly uncontrollable thoughts that you find yourself ruminating over for hours, days or even weeks. How do you stop them?

Our brains have been programmed since the beginning of our existence to protect us. And often our brains think that they’re protecting us by putting a fear or worry into our thought loop and then obsessing over it, because if it creates a fear then the next natural step is to prevent that fear from coming to fruition.

Our brains aren’t always right though. They don’t always have our best interest in mind, and most likely, that obsessive fear you’re ruminating on will not come true.

There is another thought pattern that our brains have the capacity for, and that is megacontion.

Megacongition is the act of thinking about what we are thinking about.

Sounds complex right?

Well it’s not.

It’s very simple actually, and it can be applied actively to help with rumination.

The act of thinking about what our thoughts are about can take us out of the loop of fear that causing powerful emotions to overtake us, and bring us back into reality.

Here’s how to do it;

Next time you find yourself worrying about something, say you think you are having health anxiety and worrying that the pain in your leg is not just a muscle pain from the gym, but in fact it’s quite possibly a tumour or something horrible; what I want you to do is catch yourself and say out loud, “I am thinking about the pain in my leg being a tumour”.

It might seem a bit too simplistic at first. But I’m telling you that by acknowledging your thoughts and classifying them as just that; THOUGHTS and nothing more, you will relieve that loop of rumination.

You can do this for any thoughts that you have, and even in a real panic state of emotional stress such as a panic attack. You can pull yourself back to the present by saying “I am thinking about _____” and recognizing it as as a thought and not as something that is really happening.

That is the power of metacongition.

Have you ever realized that you are thinking about your thoughts? Comment below if you’ve tried this and how it worked for you.

Hear more on my podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/wealthy-optimist-podcast/id1514471062?i=1000554139403