Rumination: The Human Operating System

Ecologists tell me other animals don't commit intentional suicide. What is so special/broken about humans?

I think the answer is rumination. For my purposes, rumination is defined as focused attention on one’s own internal cognition. Rumination is how we plan, solve problems, and create art. In its positive form it’s called self-reflection. We can assess ourselves, decide how we need to improve, and work through different scenarios to achieve those goals.

Negative rumination may manifest as anxiety or brooding depression. People can become obsessed with interpersonal problems, their own flaws, social injustice, or with anything else painful. The thoughts about the pain and the problem push out any room for solving the issue. It can become an all-consuming crisis.

From the Apocalypse Tapestry, Angers, France

If you’re lucky/cursed enough to experience manic episodes, racing thoughts are probably familiar to you. Most everyone experiences this to some degree. You have lots to do today and maybe you’re upset about something, so you keep losing things. You have too many thoughts and not enough memory space to function well.

Manic racing thoughts are like that but much, much worse. I always think about sitting in front of a bank of several hundred TVs, each of them playing a different show, the volume on all of them is all the way up, and only half of them are in English. Often the images come along with smell, touch, or taste sensations. It can be absolutely paralyzing. For me, the fear that it will never stop is the worst part (rumination about rumination).

I mention the racing thoughts, because experiencing that really showed me how fragile the human operating system is. It shouldn’t have taken something so dramatic, but I was raised in the cult of logic. You are the master of your mind, and you have the duty to bend it to your will. It’s all part of the ubermench/Calvinist/bootstrap BS that still haunts many corners of American culture.

Many things can trick your brain into doing its job poorly. This is crucial to the fear and stigma around mental illness and suicide. No one wants to believe their brain can rebel against them. I certainly didn’t. But, we who have been to Crazytown know how subjective reality is. We see how narrow the boundaries of society are. We’re constant reminders that we didn’t evolve in or for the bizarre modern society we have impressed upon ourselves.

So, how does rumination help humans overcome the incredibly strong self-preservation instinct? Quite simply, to decide to die, you must know that you can and will die.

We think about it incessantly. What’s your legacy? What’s on your bucket list? Funerals can cost as much as weddings. Black balloons are a readily recognizable symbol of adult birthday parties. The murder porn business is doing great. Vampires are sexy and everything, everywhere is haunted.

We talk about the afterlife constantly. Adults tell children about much fun they’re going to have when they’re dead. Kids talk about heaven before they even know what death means. So, one way of overcoming self-preservation is to convince yourself that things will actually be better for you after you die. No other animal can do that!

Another answer is that we can't dwell on psychic pain without rumination.  If I can’t think about how bad I feel, then I can’t beat myself up for being a bad person for feeling so bad. If I can’t and don’t think about the future, then I can’t decide that it will inevitably be terrible.

Notice yourself thinking about thinking. What do you think about? Are you making plans or are you rehashing old pain? What kind of tone do you take with yourself? Are you kind or cruelly judgmental? Do you listen to emotions or ignore them?

If you find yourself in a negative rumination spiral the best thing to do is find a way to distract yourself. This is easier said than done, but here are a few things that have worked for me:

Sad Spiral: 

• Some people enjoy sad things when they’re sad because they say it helps them get through it faster. If that’s you, then go for it. I, on the other hand, am not convinced there is a bottom to my potential sadness, so I choose to watch basically anything else, given that it’s something I’ve never seen before. If I know a show or movie well, my brain will continue to fret because it can fill the plot in on its own. Anything I don’t know, even if it’s terrible, is often enough to distract me enough to at least level out. 
• Ever see Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans? Save that one for a real rainy day.

Angry Spiral:

• First things first, back away from anything or anyone contributing to mounting anger. Anger is often a symptom that you are overwhelmed with fear, confusion, panic, and/or sadness and you’re not processing it well. 
• If you’re in a true rage spiral, you need to get away from people until you calm down for safety. 
• Anger is accompanied by endorphins, so typically you have an elevated energy level. I’ve found strenuous manual labor helpful, like ripping out a bush or moving furniture. So, maybe I was ripping up sod at 3 in the morning, but any judgey neighbors were also up at 3 a.m. to watch me, so who’s the real creep?

Manic Spiral (Racing Thoughts):

• Small, unimportant organizational tasks are best. Socks, pencils, silverware, Christmas stuff-something must need to be reorganized. Don’t try to reorder your files or anything. It should be something you can walk away from if you need to. I’ve found a lot of relief from color coding or matching or otherwise taming chaos and giving my brain something stupid to think about. 
• Maybe set aside a project today so that you don’t have to think about it when you’re in the hole.

Stress Spiral:

• Honestly, I struggle with the stress spiral the most. My brain loves taking one little problem and running with it until it finds the absolute worst-case scenario. 
• In its worst form, this is a panic attack. So, the first thing is to keep breathing. Sit down, put both feet flat on the floor. Breathe deeply enough to push your stomach in and out. Count how many seconds each breath lasts. Try to make them last longer. 
• Once the panic passes, the anxiety will still be there. My main tool for this is the to-do list. I find if it’s written down I don’t have to keep juggling it in my mind. Write down every single thing that’s stressing you out and then make another list of the steps for addressing those things. You might need to make the steps very small; that’s OK. If you can’t do anything about it, cross that problem off with a black marker. I know it sounds overwhelming, but you’re already overwhelmed by the time you reach the stress spiral. I’m just asking you to call the troll by name.

The most important thing to remember is this: when disordered thinking happens (it will) it’s not your fault. All of us have these glitches. I think of it like my computer freezing. It’s inconvenient and frustrating and unfair. In most cases, though, a restart and some patience are all it takes to get past it. Your brain lies to you, every day. Sometimes it goes haywire and tries to terrify you or make you weep for no reason. It doesn’t reflect on you as an individual at all; it’s the burden of our species.