Those with OCD who ruminate can benefit from the above, but they generally need more direct help as well. Like they say, “Everything in moderation!” Complaining about how your life isn’t going anywhere day after day to everyone you know is a great way to get uninvited from the neighborhood holiday party. Getting things off your chest from time to time is a wonderful way to unburden yourself and relieve stress. In that way, it can be akin to venting about your struggles. Unhealthy rumination leaves the person stuck and feeling worse. Beneficial rumination leads to progress and is done occasionally. Rumination among friends can also solidify bonds because it acts as self-disclosure and allows relationships to grow.īut it walks a fine line between good and bad. For instance, healthy rumination can lead to solutions for those who are trying to problem-solve. But, on its own, rumination isn’t always a bad thing. Rumination in OCD is a negative when it’s done as a compulsion. Doctors hypothesize that this is one of the reasons depression is significantly more common in females. Women tend to want to think things through when they perceive a problem whereas men tend to distract themselves and/or ignore that a problem even exists. Rumination can happen in anyone but it’s more common in women. In other words, someone with Relationship OCD may worry about infidelity on their husband or wife’s part (or on their own part) even when their marriage is happy and stable. The latter is different from Relationship OCD where sufferers ruminate over their relationship without the existence of a threat. Someone who is having issues in their marriage, may obsessively ruminate about whether or not their spouse is unfaithful. Someone who is highly competitive may obsessively ruminate over the best way to defeat their competition. They may also engage in less visible compulsions, such as silently praying, counting to a good number, trying to reverse their intrusive thought, or thinking positive thoughts that cancel out the bad ones.įor example, someone who is a bit of a perfectionist or has a type-A personality may obsessively ruminate over a failure (or a perceived failure) in hopes of doing better next time. They may take an HIV test weeks later to make sure they don’t test positive. They may go back to the escalator and look for blood stains. They may check their clothes for red marks that indicate the presence of bodily fluids. They may study their hands for cracks or cuts where foreign blood could have entered. They might wash their hands repeatedly or use things like bleach just in case. Of course, they may also engage in other compulsions too, either physical actions or mental ones. They may try to remember whether or not they saw blood on the escalator’s rail, they may think about the people who were in front of them and try to determine whether or not they “looked” like they had HIV (Were they skinny or sickly looking, for instance?), they may consider how long any potential blood would have been in the open air (rendering the virus noninfectious), or they may try to remember whether or not they felt any type of liquid or wetness on their hands.

The intrusive thought is considered the “ obsession” component of the disorder.Īfter the thought appears, the sufferer may attempt to gauge the likelihood of their fear by thinking about the occurrence over and over again.

This fear is an intrusive thought, one that’s given validity because they have a mental illness. For example, someone who suffers from Contamination OCD may fear that they were exposed to HIV because they touched a rail on an escalator at the local mall.

Ruminating thoughts examples