How does ruminating assault the mind and body and what should you do?

I was scrolling on my Facebook page when I noticed a friend had posted, “Give yourself grace and forgiveness for any mistakes that you have made in your past.  When you dwell on a mistake and beat yourself up for it, that does nothing positive for you.  It was meant to be a life lesson, not a life sentence.”  

I don’t know if he wrote it or copied it from someone else, but I liked it so much I wanted to share it. 

So many of us dwell on the parts of our lives that we regret or don’t like.  This includes the things that aren’t going our way.

We often think ruminating is thinking of solutions.  That's not ruminating, that's emotional processing. Ruminating is dwelling on the situation with anger, self-blame, blame of others, and self guilt.  This causes depression, anger at self or others, sadness, and even apathy.

We ruminate over these dislikes.  Sometimes, we beat ourselves up over it, othertimes we blame it on someone else.  Either way, we seem to have a hard time letting it go.

When we are in this, "my fault, your fault" mentality, we harm ourselves.  

    1. Our attitude suffers, which means that the way we respond toward our friends, family, and loved ones, suffers.  

    2. Our negative energy fills the room, making everyone uncomfortable. 

    3. Our thinking becomes blocked and foggy.  

    4. We are not clear-headed enough to make good decisions.

    5. Our immune system shuts down as our bodies think we’re in a fight and need to focus on pumping out more adrenaline. 

    6. Our digestion also shuts down because it also thinks we’re in a fight.  

    7. You may even start feeling ill, not quite yourself. 

    8. You lose energy.

    9. You become someone you don’t like, and those around you don’t like this part of you either

    10. It becomes a heavy burden that you carry through life, and many of us don’t even realize that we are doing it.

Please stop beating yourself up.  Please stop blaming someone else for the things in your life that you don’t like. Everyone of us has made mistakes in our lives.  That’s what life is, a series of lessons that we are here to learn.  

What can you do instead?  

1. The first step is to become aware that you're doing it.

2. Learn to recognize it and then ask yourself if it's true. Say you're blaming your circumstance on your neighbor. Askyourself, if it is true that the neighbor is causing the issue. If yes, ask yourself how you know this to be true. Thenask yourself, what your proof is.  Then ask if you know that proof to be true.

      3. Practice mindfulness.

      4. Find activities that can distract you.

      5. Challenge yourself to let go of negative thoughts.

Learn the lessons. Grow from them. Become a better you, a kinder, more understanding you. Be the loving person you were born to be.

Forgive yourself.

Forgive others. 

We are all learning as we go.