The word rumination comes from the Latin word "rumen". The rumen is the part of the stomach in ruminants where fermentation takes place. Now you may say, "What's that got to do with it? But just as with chewing the cud, from time to time we also think about the past, Maybe we keep bringing some plans for the future, worries, anxieties, concerns, over and over and over and over again in our minds and it chews them up, We chew, turn, chew again. Why did this happen? Why does it always happen to me? Should I have done it this way instead of that way? Would it have been better if I had said. Playing the event over and over again in your mind, poking and prodding, all this is rumination. According to the response styles theory, rumination is a person's repeatedly thinking about his/her emotional state and the possible causes and consequences of this state without taking action to solve a problem. In fact, rumination is not solution-oriented, even though it looks as if we are analyzing, as if we are trying to solve that problem, It's a fundamentally harmful way of thinking because we are problem-oriented and we don't take action as a result. So what can we do to cope with this situation? Let's talk about them. Our first point, as I always say, is to raise awareness about the moment. During rumination your mind is either in the past or in the future. They are often not aware of what is happening here and now. That is, they look but do not see, hear but do not listen. The bad thing is that for a ruminative mind this is a habit. So it is now automated. He is often distracted, distracted, unable to focus. Mindfulness is a great technique to recognize and change this habit. I have a video where I explain the details of the mindfulness technique and at the end I put a very short 6-7 minute exercise that you can do every day. I have added the link to that video to the comment I pinned at the top below. If you do that exercise regularly every day, you will be surprised to see how much your ability to be in the moment increases for at least a month. As we increase our ability to focus our mind on what is happening here and now, you will see that the worry and anxiety and sadness we feel will also decrease over time. There are other ways of actually practicing the mindfulness technique, other than doing that exercise on a regular basis. For example, a person recently wrote a comment under one of my videos. Every day I worry about different things. I've got things on my mind all the time. Now if you are obsessing about different things every day, then we can use this as an opportunity. Instead of worrying about different problems every day, you can worry about being able to see a different color every day. For example, today I will pay more attention to what I see, I will look around me more carefully and try to see the color yellow today. Let's see how many yellow objects I see today. What is he doing? It allows you to be in the here and now and look around with more awareness and attention, instead of your mind wandering off to other places. Choose a different color for yourself every day. One day try to see the color yellow. One day the color red. One day focus on the color blue. So what will happen? If you do it every day, after a while you will gradually increase your ability to stay in the moment. Now you can do this in the same way, by applying it to a routine that you do every day. What do I mean? There are various tasks that you do every day, routinely and routinely. What are these? Getting up in the morning, making your bed, eating, cleaning, walking to the bus stop, brushing your teeth. Like this. Choose a routine every day and try to do it slower and more mindfully, a few minutes slower and a few minutes longer. For example, today I chose to pick up the bed. When I make my bed today, I will make it a little slower and I will make it with awareness, staying in the moment, being there with the five senses. I will direct my attention to what is going on in the moment with my five senses: the sounds when I make the bed, the wind when I put the covers on, the wind on my skin, the feeling of my feet on the floor. The next day, maybe I chose to walk to the bus stop, and when I walk to the bus stop at work, I will walk with mindfulness. At the same time, for example, I will not listen to something with headphones and I will be in the moment with all my senses. I will look at the signs around, I will try to hear the sounds, maybe I will try to hear birdsong, maybe I will see what sounds are coming to me, maybe I will see what smells are coming to my nose. In other words, you can choose a different routine every day and practice staying in the moment in that routine. Mindfulness is not just about bringing the mind into the moment. This is just a phase. Apart from that, there is also the stage of noticing what is in the moment, that is, what is here and now, as well as being able to observe it without judgment and compassionately accepting what exists, and I have videos where I explain all these in detail. I am not talking here again about how to do this. You can find the links to the videos I explained in detail in the comment I pinned at the top. And the second important point is write, write, write. Writing is a wonderful, very simple but very effective healing tool. As long as our feelings and thoughts are not expressed, as long as they are suppressed, they try to come up again and again and try to make themselves noticed. See me, they say, I am here. Take whatever thoughts, worries, regrets, anger, anxiety, whatever is going through your mind and write them down with a pen and paper or open a word file on the computer. Put into words whatever comes to you. In this way, you will be able to concretize those feelings and thoughts in your mind, those scattered things. So it will be easier to cope. You will see it concretely in front of you and in a sense you will have emptied the garbage in your mind. On the other hand, when you take a look at your summer cottages, you will later realize that maybe you made some mistakes in logic, maybe you made some mistakes in thinking. You will clearly see how your thought flow is. The cause and effect relationship between events will perhaps become a little clearer for you. And maybe he will be able to see more clearly the irrational, irrational parts of those thoughts, as I mentioned before. Maybe you will be able to make an arrangement regarding this. Then I said to myself, "Özlem, my daughter, this cannot be like this. Thinking will get you nowhere. Get on with your work. Do you sometimes talk to yourself as if you were someone else? I mean by addressing yourself by name. This way of expressing emotions, experiences, thoughts and feelings is called the illeism technique or distancing. Ethan Kross, in his book The Chatterbox, The Nagging Voice Within and How to Deal with It. I mean, if somehow we can't stop the thoughts in our minds, if those thoughts come and go, what if I'm too tired, why did I do that? Why did I act like that back there? I wonder if I should have done this or that. Instead of using pronouns like I, me, my, why did Özlem do that there? Would it have been better if Özlem had done this instead of that? When you think or express in your own name, these thoughts have less impact on your emotions and bodily symptoms. I explain the details of this in my previous video, The illeism technique, our superpower against anxiety and stress. For those who are curious, I will add its link to the comment I pinned at the beginning.