~ Working with Ruminating Thoughts & Emotions About the COVID19 Pandemic ~
If you anything like me, your mind is filled with ruminating thought and emotions about the COVID19 pandemic. Thoughts that repeat themselves over and over again and then proliferate into emotions, which get stronger as my mind goes around and around in circles.
Ruminating thoughts and emotions can be very frustrating and they rarely serve us well. Although it can be good to allow yourself the time and space to think about things that are important, when it becomes rumination it is not. For example, if you find yourself thinking about a particular problem in order to come up with the best solution, you’re probably not ruminating. You may be exercising your creativity muscles. But if the thing on your mind is beyond your control, like the pandemic, or has no solution, then you might want to ask yourself if you are ruminating.
So if you find yourself ruminating about COVID19, you might want to try to get out of this unhelpful pattern. One way of doing this is called mental noting. This is the practice of using a label to gently and silently name whatever you are experiencing. It can take a while to learn but with practice, it can become second nature.
Noting or labeling interrupts rumination and gives the mind something else to think about. It does this by changing our thinking so it becomes very simple and basic, rather than letting it stay caught up in the pattern of rumination. In contrast to most thinking, noting is not discursive. It does not involve analysis or judgment. Rather, we give our current experience a simple one-word label. For example, if you notice a sound you might say to yourself “hearing”. Other common sensory mental labels include seeing, touching, and feeling. You can also give your sensory experiences more precise labels, such as warmth, coolness, pressure, tightness, and so on.
Similarly, thinking can be labeled simply as thinking. Or you can be more precise and note the type of thinking - wanting, planning, resisting, and the like. As well, you can label emotions. For example, fear, sadness, grief as well as happiness, joy, or excitement.
It's important that the noting be done gently and with kindness. Labeling is not a judgement or a criticism; it is simply an acknowledgement of an experience. Usually, a specific label is repeated until the experience being noted disappears, is sufficiently acknowledged, or is no longer predominant.
This practice has many benefits. The primary one is that it keeps you in the present moment. The mind is less likely to wander off, if one keeps up a steady stream of relaxed noting. And when the mind does wander, this practice can make it easier to reestablish mindfulness. A second benefit is that it disrupts discursive and repetitive thinking, in other words rumination. A third benefit is that it acknowledges whatever you are experiencing and the clearer the acknowledgement, the stronger your mindfulness will become. Furthermore, the more you acknowledge your experience, the easier it becomes to identify your patterns and your beliefs and assumptions about life. Noting can also help maintain a non-reactive form of attention. When we can calmly note what is happening in our experience, we are less likely to get caught up in emotional reactions.
Each person can find his or her own way of noting – it isn’t a fixed technique. And as circumstances change, how one does this practice may change. For example, as your mind gets used to this practice, you may want to reduce the relative loudness or intensity of the noting.
This practice has at least one downside, however. This is that it is easy to think too much about what word to use. It's helpful to let a label arise naturally and without a lot of thought, perhaps giving only 10% of your attention to finding one. And if you don't find one, it's OK.
So if you find yourself ruminating about the COVID19 pandemic, I invite you to try this noting or labeling practice and see if it works for you.
Ruminating thoughts and emotions can be very frustrating and they rarely serve us well. Although it can be good to allow yourself the time and space to think about things that are important, when it becomes rumination it is not. For example, if you find yourself thinking about a particular problem in order to come up with the best solution, you’re probably not ruminating. You may be exercising your creativity muscles. But if the thing on your mind is beyond your control, like the pandemic, or has no solution, then you might want to ask yourself if you are ruminating.
So if you find yourself ruminating about COVID19, you might want to try to get out of this unhelpful pattern. One way of doing this is called mental noting. This is the practice of using a label to gently and silently name whatever you are experiencing. It can take a while to learn but with practice, it can become second nature.
Noting or labeling interrupts rumination and gives the mind something else to think about. It does this by changing our thinking so it becomes very simple and basic, rather than letting it stay caught up in the pattern of rumination. In contrast to most thinking, noting is not discursive. It does not involve analysis or judgment. Rather, we give our current experience a simple one-word label. For example, if you notice a sound you might say to yourself “hearing”. Other common sensory mental labels include seeing, touching, and feeling. You can also give your sensory experiences more precise labels, such as warmth, coolness, pressure, tightness, and so on.
Similarly, thinking can be labeled simply as thinking. Or you can be more precise and note the type of thinking - wanting, planning, resisting, and the like. As well, you can label emotions. For example, fear, sadness, grief as well as happiness, joy, or excitement.
It's important that the noting be done gently and with kindness. Labeling is not a judgement or a criticism; it is simply an acknowledgement of an experience. Usually, a specific label is repeated until the experience being noted disappears, is sufficiently acknowledged, or is no longer predominant.
This practice has many benefits. The primary one is that it keeps you in the present moment. The mind is less likely to wander off, if one keeps up a steady stream of relaxed noting. And when the mind does wander, this practice can make it easier to reestablish mindfulness. A second benefit is that it disrupts discursive and repetitive thinking, in other words rumination. A third benefit is that it acknowledges whatever you are experiencing and the clearer the acknowledgement, the stronger your mindfulness will become. Furthermore, the more you acknowledge your experience, the easier it becomes to identify your patterns and your beliefs and assumptions about life. Noting can also help maintain a non-reactive form of attention. When we can calmly note what is happening in our experience, we are less likely to get caught up in emotional reactions.
Each person can find his or her own way of noting – it isn’t a fixed technique. And as circumstances change, how one does this practice may change. For example, as your mind gets used to this practice, you may want to reduce the relative loudness or intensity of the noting.
This practice has at least one downside, however. This is that it is easy to think too much about what word to use. It's helpful to let a label arise naturally and without a lot of thought, perhaps giving only 10% of your attention to finding one. And if you don't find one, it's OK.
So if you find yourself ruminating about the COVID19 pandemic, I invite you to try this noting or labeling practice and see if it works for you.
