Mostly it’s just for cows.

Ruminant animals (such as cattle, buffalo, and other grass-eaters) must chew and chew and chew their food before it can be usefully digested. The phrase “chewing their cud,” is the phrase we more commonly use instead of “rumination.” For cows, it’s an excellent process and we benefit from it in all of our dairy products.

Rumination has a somewhat different meaning in psychology. It’s when we attempt to “digest” a negative situation through repeated mental review. It’s when we replay old betrayals, emotional wounds and unpleasant happenings.

Unlike cattle, our rumination does not produce anything worthwhile—in fact, rather than digesting this old information, we tend to refresh and relive it. Nothing is solved and the matter just upsets us again.

It’s good to learn from our mistakes and to make adjustments in our thinking and our behaviors. This is not the same as ruminating. Ruminating is just replaying the situation again and again and again. We chew our “mental” cud and make ourselves feel worse by the minute.

How can we stop ruminating? According to Madeline Vann, MPH, we distract ourselves. We can:

• Ring a bell or make a noise.
• Say “STOP!” or “NO!” (aloud works best).
• Snap a rubber band on our wrist.
• Purposefully think of something positive.
• Engage in a physically distracting behavior—whistle, exercise, meditate, watch TV, read a book, call a friend, etc.
• Postpone rumination—make an appointment with yourself to ruminate later. When the time comes you may not even feel like thinking about it any more.

After a period of initial “learning and adjusting,” there really is no purpose for replaying past events. In fact, Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky, from the University of California, Riverside, has reviewed much of the research on rumination:

“These studies have shown that repetitive rumination about the implications of one’s depressive symptoms actually maintains those symptoms, impairs one’s ability to solve problems, and ushers in a host of negative consequences.”

Whew! Let’s end those sleepless nights. Let’s put a stop to that automatic replay of past distress. Let’s let the past stay in the past.

We’ll leave the rumination to the ruminants!