rumination remedies
What helps you break up or calm yourself during a rumination cycle? In the calm that follows that mental storm, how might you take one step toward remedying those ruminations?
Psalm 131:1 Holy Being, my heart is not haughty; my eyes don’t lift too high up. I don’t ruminate on things too big or too sublime for me.
Of all the psalms, I hold 131 closest to my anxious heart.
I have a tendency to catastrophize; I lose sleep to racing thoughts that tangle up my personal troubles and larger-scale strife.
My brain tries to fixate on everything at once — all my own stressors, all the enormity of the world’s suffering — and I end up frozen in dread and despair.
Psychologists call this anxious thought spiral “rumination” — your brain chewing negative thoughts like a cow chews cud back and forth.
The word I’ve translated “ruminate” comes from the Hebrew for walk, in a form that can convey repetition — the psalmist reminds themself not to mentally pace around and around issues too complex for one finite human.
When I find myself ruminating — especially on wide-scale issues like bigotry or climate change — I often pray Psalm 131 to interrupt my anxious thoughts.
What's the Psalm or scripture that interrupts your anxious thoughts? Take a moment, write it down, and put it somewhere obvious. When your anxiety rises this week, remember, read, or recite it.
As you calm yourself in those moments, imagine one small thing you might do to remedy your ruminations.
—Avery Arden