RUMINATION AS AVOIDANCE[MENTAL HEALTH]

There is a growing view that rumination may become more fequent and habitual because it sometimes acts as a form of avoidance. When we avoid situations that are difficult for us we get an immidiate relief from anxiety and distress, but in the long run this makes the depression much worse.

The same argument is now made about rumination . Rumination allows us to avoid things because we are thinking about them.

We might tell ourselves that we can’t anything until we have thought about it properly . This means that we can put off taking any action or really tackling a difficult or frightening situation until we have sorted it out in our heads.

The problem is that this means we never do tackle the real problems, which remain unsolved , and our confidence in ourselves diminishes even further.

Avoidance works in the short term , but in the long term it almost always makes things worse, and needs to be tackled straight away.