A doctoral thesis can be written by Silvia L. on the X case. All her friends and acquaintances know what it is regarding because no one has been able to get rid of the long gatherings in which, of course, you have to go with a formed opinion and take sides. The subject has gone from being peripheral to being the backbone of all conversations, and when it seems that it is going to wear out following so many rounds, Silvia finds a new edge and the loop is reborn with renewed strength. To Silvia, of course, her X matter brings her upside down. She does not think of anything else, and everyone with her.
These obsessive ideas, which come and go, repeat themselves over and over once more and colonize your mind are known as ruminative thinking. Think of a cow or any other mammal that chews the cud. They are animals that digest food in two stages: first they consume it and then they perform rumination, which consists of regurgitation of the digested material. Well, this roundtrip of the same issue, always half-elaborated and undigested, illustrates Silvia’s way of approaching issue X. Do her friends help her by entering the loop or should someone stop this?
“It would be better not to ruminate, but you don’t choose, it’s part of the trauma,” says the psychoanalyst Mariela Michelena which graphically describes how someone with obsessive thinking sees life. “When you have a trauma it seems that the world is filled with pos-its reminding you of everything, all the time. You do surveys among friends and brainy text analysis of each WhatsApp. The worst thing is that little is made clear because everyone has their opinion and the result is not binding, ”she adds. In the end, Silvia L. is only going to keep the version that reaffirms what she wants to believe. She will do what she wants.
When Silvia L.’s friends meet to talk regarding the X issue —and they do it several times a month, and three or four times a day on WhatsApp— they are supporting her, showing her that they are there for her, in good times and also in bad times. Infinite loop. This circumstance is called corruption. Now imagine a herd of cows chewing and passing the rumen bolus —that’s what it’s called— from the left cheek to the right, and vice versa.
Corrumination has been the subject of several clinical trials because it is not so clear that it is healthy to amplify problems by talking regarding them all the time and contaminating your social circle, which might perhaps help you get out of the hole if it were possible to talk regarding something else. In this studypublished in the magazine Cognitive Therapy and Research, define corruption as “the activity of repetitively and passively analyzing a problem with someone close, usually a friend”. His conclusions are ambiguous. On the one hand, they say that it is a behavior that “predicts depression”, but on the other hand, they concede that it strengthens bonds and personal relationships. Some gender differences were found in this work. The authors pointed out that women were more likely than men to corrupt with their closest circle.
“Women share more intimacy than men, who tend to talk more regarding facts and events than regarding their emotions,” corroborates the psychotherapist Isabel Larraburu. In her opinion, “joint rumination, if it has a negative nuance such as complaints, criticism, discomfort, anger, and all the emotions that imply suffering, has the effect of becoming fattening and chronic.”
“Ruminating sometimes amplifies problems and other times wears them out,” Michelena chimes in. For this psychoanalyst, the rumination that comes following a trauma is part of mourning and serves to exhaust memories. “For example, following the death of a loved one, there is a need to obsessively repeat memories of him because that person is very present, but this repetition will also help to erase them.
Why do we run?
During the corruption we revisit what happened a thousand times, we imagine new endings, what we would have said and done with what we know today, and how our behavior might have changed things. Our public will give us or take away the reason, they will provide solutions, what they would have said or done, or worse, they will remind us how many times they warned us that issue X was going to happen. For experts, the problem with corruption is that, on the one hand, it is passive and, on the other, it tends to focus on negative thoughts or hypothetical twists in the script that are no longer going to happen. An excess of conjugations in the subjunctive that paralyzes and plunges the ruminant into absolute passivity. “Rumination is often an illusion of control, the fantasy that there is something that you might have changed or that you can change now. And the truth is that the “what if he had done” or “what if he had said” are useless. You have to focus on what is happening here and now ”, Michelena says that she remembers that rumination is usually contrary to action.
we ruminate because it makes us feel better. The social support that involves everyone, even pseudo-acquaintances, siding with your cause is important for physical and emotional health. However, several studies, including this in a meta-analysis recognize that, although the joint, repetitive and unproductive rumination of a problem is associated with high satisfaction towards friends, it also has “maladaptive components” that are related to moderate levels of depression and anxiety. This paper also points out that it promotes a passive attitude.
“I would distinguish between ruminating, which is a story in a loop, and sharing. Sharing involves a healthy exchange of information with friends or loved ones. A “back and forth” exchange, Isabel Larraburru says that she believes we ruminate to “seek relief from a hypochondriac or love obsession, or a complaint that does not seek an answer. Rumination can arise from a habitual and entrenched complaint, from the need to repeat an idea that has no solution because it is hypothetical or future”.
The complaint as a social tool The American psychiatrist Tina Gilbertson, bestselling author Constructive Wallowing, explains in his book that, since in modern societies we are not very good at expressing our feelings, it is quite common to complain to express an emotion. “Sharing emotional content with someone is a vehicle for bonding, we especially like to use complaints as a social tool,” she writes.
But what the cited studies warn is that making complaining the main focus of our relationships causes us to linger too long on our dramas, big or small, and triggers a stress response. Furthermore, ties that are built solely on mutual dissatisfaction are fragile, and often dissolve once the problem of one of the ruminants has been resolved.
“I think it would be good to identify our thoughts before sharing them. Negativity in general, if it is communicated and shared, can infect and influence the environment, shared rumination might perpetuate certain obsessions and depressive catastrophizing”, says Larraburu who, like Michelena, does not believe that corruption itself can cause nor transmit depression to other people. It is the duration of the loop that can poison our relationships.
A good way to realize that one is involved in the loop of corruption is to ask these three questions that the APA recommends (American Psychological Association, for its acronym in English): Have we talked regarding this problem before? Do I have something new to tell or am I repeating myself? And finally, am I speculating on what might have been and wasn’t? If you’ve entered the loop, you’ll already know the answers, and it’s probably a good time to stop.
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