The last time you saw your grandma before she died.
That work presentation last month.
Yesterday’s argument with your SO.
Your performance eval next quarter.
That damn toast you agreed to give at the wedding next summer.
What do they have in common?
Promovam  performanta  economica!
Editie electronica a publicatiei tiparite Top Business -  fondata 1993, Anul XXVII
nr.2 (889) Februarie 2019
How To Stop Overthinking Everything,
According To Therapists
Reproducerea oricarei imagini sau oricarui text din acest site se poate face doar cu acordul TopBusinessNews.
Potrivit art 206 Cod Penal responsabilitatea juridica apartine autorilor textelor publicate.
Convert, "I can’t believe this happened" to "What can I do to
prevent it from happening again?" or convert "I don’t have good
friends!" to "What steps could I take to deepen the friendships I
have and find new ones?"
We all do it, and most of the time it’s relatively harmless. We churn over what we should have said or  
over-plan what we should do, and then we move on. It’s annoying, but most of the time it’s no more  
stressful than an earworm song you can’t get out of your head or a nagging discussion you wish you  
could redo. But for some people in certain situations, the thinking doesn’t stop and creates even more  
distress. This compulsive tendency to overthink has a name in the world of mental health: rumination.  
And it's not great.
4. Rumination can definitely be harmful. Think about it: You don't typically overthink good things.
Rumination tends to be about the bad stuff. It isn’t when you replay your last-second game-winning shot  
or a well-timed joke; it’s slogging through the negatives. As Winch describes it, “Ruminative thoughts  
are, by definition, intrusive. They pop into our minds unbidden and they tend to linger, especially when  
the thought is about something really upsetting or distressing.”
1. Well, for starters, it's related to cows.
“To ruminate means to ‘chew over’” according to Winch. “The word is derived from how cows digest their
food. Cows chew, swallow, regurgitate, then chew again. This works well for cows but what humans
chew over is our distressing thoughts. Ruminating therefore means to brood over upsetting thoughts by
replaying them in our mind.”
Even though I confront rumination every day in my practice, I teamed up with a couple of experts who  
wrote books on the topic: Dr. Margaret Weherenberg, a psychologist and author of The 10 Best-Ever  
Anxiety Management Techniques  and The 10 Best-Ever Depression Management Techniques, and Dr.  
Guy Winch, a psychologist and author of Emotional First Aid: Healing Rejection, Guilt, Failure, and  
Other Everyday Hurts. Hopefully between the three of us, we can shed some light on this aggravating  
problem and help you deal.
2. Rumination is closely tied to depression and anxiety
In a few ways - it can be a symptom of both, make them worse, or make you more susceptible to them in  
the first place. As a psychologist who has dealt with overthinking on both a personal and professional  
level, I can definitively confirm: it sucks. It steals time and energy, and rarely produces anything  
worthwhile. And by exhausting you in the process, it makes you more susceptible to its close relatives,  
anxiety and depression.
3. It might feel like you're problem-solving, but you're actually not.
While many problems are resolved by giving them careful thought and deliberation, Weherenberg  
explains that “rumination is repetitive thinking - going over and over the same thought or problem  
without any resolution. A problem does not get solved: it intensifies by ruminating on it. It is simply  
repeating (typically negative) thoughts without mentally moving to a new perspective.” Winch adds,  
“Rumination does not lead to new insights or understanding, it just spins us around like we’re trapped in  
an emotionally distressing hamster wheel.”
PLOVDIV -
THE EUROPEAN CAPITAL
OF CULTURE 2019
#Together
...how we should prepare ourselves…

by prof univ dr. Gabriela Tigu

Starting with 1985,

the European Capital

of Culture program

has collected 58 titles

for many European

cities, which have had

the chance to

demonstrate both

cultural value and

efforts to preserve and

develop cultural

values. Thought out to

support the local

culture of the

countries of the

European Union and

also to encourage

intercultural

exchanges within the

EU, the program has

already designated

cities that will hold

this title until 2033.

more
Drink up, because
dark-roast coffee protects your DNA from damage


If you have considered giving up coffee for your health, here’s a counterargument: don’t. A new study, published in the European Journal of Nutrition (it’s probably behind the counter at your local newsstand), shows that drinking dark coffee protects your DNA from breaking. Yes, that means I’m immortal now.

more
While rumination isn’t its own diagnosis, it is unique in that it can be a symptom of both depression and  
anxiety. The depressed person dwells on losses and missteps from the past, while the anxious ruminator  
drowns in a sea of “what if” questions, forever envisioning the negative outcome. Whether it’s what we  
can’t change or can’t predict, sometimes our brains get stuck trying to control the uncontrollable.
5. Not to mention, it impacts our bodies.
“Replaying distressing thoughts is like picking at emotional scabs because it brings up the distress each  
time we have the thought, and floods our body with stress hormones as a result,” says Winch. “We can  
easily spend hours and days stewing in upsetting thoughts and by doing so putting ourselves in a state of  
physical stress and emotional distress. As a result, habitual rumination significantly increases our risk  
of developing clinical depression, impaired problem solving, eating disorders, substance abuse, and even  
cardiovascular disease.”
6. It's not great for our brains, either.
Repeating the rumination cycle results in changed brain circuitry, says Wehrenberg. “Rumination  
actually changes the structure of the brain - not unlike changing a footpath into a roadway into a  
highway with a lot of on-ramps - so it gets easier and easier to fall into rumination.“
7. And the more you do it, the harder it is to stop.
It becomes routine, says Weherenberg. “Rumination becomes a habit of thought. It is a challenge to shift  
to another thought. A person who believes, ‘If I just think about it long enough I will figure it out,’ is  
making a mistake. The more habitual the thought, the harder it is to break it.”
8. Being aware is your first line of defense.
As with many mental health issues, awareness always helps. According to Winch, your first step is to  
identify ruminative thoughts and flag them as harmful. "Once a ruminative thought becomes repetitive  
(or starts out that way) we need to catch it and convert it into a useful problem solving task - by posing it  
as a problem that can be answered as opposed to one that cannot be," he says.  For example, convert, "I  
can’t believe this happened" to "What can I do to prevent it from happening again?" or convert "I don’t  
have good friends!" to "What steps could I take to deepen the friendships I have and find new ones?"
You can overthink the hell out of them.
English Page