Rumination

[NOTE: please read the second and third paragraphs from this post before continuing. Important–don’t skip reading them!]

In many ways, we C-PTSD sufferers are our own worst enemies. I don’t mean that in a shaming way, of course, but rather in a compassionate way, and with the intention of motivating us to stop one bad habit of ours in particular: rumination.

We can be obsessive in going over our pain, again and again, with no end to the ruminating in sight. Why? What psychological purpose does it serve? What emotional need does it attempt to satisfy? It seems masochistic, for all we seem to be doing is feeling an endless replay of a tape loop of old pain.

Are we hoping to discover some new insight as to why things happened the way they did (with our abusers)? That’s how it seems to me, whenever I ruminate about the family that messed with my mind throughout my childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood…right up to my (probably) narcissistic mother’s death.

Here’s the thing: after our narcissistic abusers are gone, the mental abuse continues in our victimized heads; we do it to ourselves. We become our own psychological abusers, however much we may not want to.

I have a tendency of waking up after only three or four hours of sleep (needing to use the washroom); then, when I go back to bed,…all the bad thoughts come back into my head. My inner critic reminds me of many a social failure I’ve had, hurtful things the family said to me, whether in the recent or the remote past, or worse!…imagined cruel retorts to anything I might say to assert myself. After that has started, I can generally forget about getting the other four or five hours of sleep I need. Sound familiar?

So, how do we stop all this ruminating? One obvious thing we should do is mentally to say to ourselves, “Stop it!” as soon as we realize we’re doing it again. Even more obvious, though, is that this is easier said than done.

It might help to remind ourselves of why we need to stop. Keep your list of reasons short and sweet, so your mind doesn’t wander off into more nonsense. Here are mine:

1. Rumination doesn’t help me at all.
2. Rumination is an addiction. Kick the habit.
3. I already know how I feel about my abusers. Why go over it again?
4. I already know why I feel that way about them. Why analyze it again?
5. I call them abusers for a reason.
6. They have the problem, not me. (See #3, 4, and 5.)
7. My faults are no reason to gaslight me. Abuse doesn’t improve people.

Another good thing to do is to use those good inner voices I wrote about in other posts, and imagine them saying loving things to you, to bring you out of the bad thoughts.

I imagine my new, internalized good objects saying such things as the following. Father: “It was all them that did the bad. None of it was you, son.” Mother: “You’re a beautiful, wonderful human being, and we love you. We’d never treat you so hurtfully. You need to forgive yourself for your faults. We won’t judge you so harshly.”

As you can see, we all need to practice self-compassion: 1) speaking these words of kindness to ourselves; 2) remembering how everyone experiences these feelings of failure and suffering, in one form or another; and 3) being mindful of whenever we lapse back into bashing ourselves.

For all this to help you, you have to practice it regularly. Remember that the reason you doubt your justification to go no contact, to think well of yourself, and to recognize that your abusers really wronged you (i.e., you are not being over-sensitive) is because they’ve programmed you to think that way, to control you.

We call them abusers for a reason. We also call ourselves victims for a reason. It’s high time we put the feelings of victimization behind us.