It is natural to feel upset and dwell on the unfortunate things that happen to us. Reflecting on these experiences help give clarity and allows us to find the best solutions for our problems, said psychologist and author Dr. Guy Winch.
However, there are instances when people can't move on from the things that distress them, allowing the experience to replay in their minds. This creates another cycle of negative emotions, which heightens the experience even more.
This act of repeating upsetting scenarios in our minds is called "brooding". In psychological terms, it is known as "ruminating". In an article published in Psychology Today, Dr. Winch wrote that brooding is "the powerful urge to replay an event to get it out of our system". It gives the illusion of something emotionally healthy, which it isn't. In fact, Dr. Winch went on to say that it is emotionally damaging; it embeds the thoughts further in our minds. He added that brooding is emotionally-activated and not solution-focused, and it triggers the release of stress hormones, making us more susceptible to psychological and physical problems.
Brooding has also been found to be linked to depression, or as Dr. Winch puts it, is a fast track to depression. In a study by Ben Grafton and Colin MacLeod of the University of Western Australia, two mechanisms that contribute to fast-tracking brooding to depression were examined. These two dimensions are the onset and the persistence of unhealthy rumination. Ruminative onset is the extent to which one will resort to brooding when upset, and ruminative persistence is the likelihood that one's act of brooding will continue. The study discovered that those who fall into bouts of brooding during moments of distress, and those whose brooding continued and persisted, are at a higher risk for depression.
According to Dr. Winch, brooding can become a habit. Also, the brain adapts to this habit, as discovered by a group of researchers in France led by Maxime Freton. They found that brooding is mirrored in brain activity, showing that habitual brooding changes our biological makeup, making it even harder to stop.
Thankfully, there are techniques to alter the cycle of brooding. According to Dr. Winch, one of the simplest techniques is distraction. In this technique, a person shifts his or her focus to something else whenever he or she is falling into brooding. Dr. Winch shares more of these techniques in his book, "Emotional First Aid: Healing, Rejection, Guilt, Failure, and Other Everyday Hurts" (2014).