![]() Instead we are creating a representation of what happened from fragments of information that our mind sees as relevant at the time of remembering. When we remember things we are not necessarily remembering an accurate picture of what actually happened. ![]() So, in OCD, if I have an intrusive thought, part of me believes that thinking about the past (ruminating) will help me to work out what has or hasn’t happened so that I can alleviate my distress and move forward. Let’s think about why anyone would ruminate anyway – What is the function of rumination, what does it actually do? Typically, we find that people think about the past because it updates our understanding of why or how something has happened. Rumination in OCD can have the sufferer caught up for long periods of time. We remember a piece of evidence that refutes the intrusion, but then this is quickly followed by something which creates more uncertainty and as such more distress. We try to make sense of the intrusion by thinking through past events to establish certainty around what actually happened. This pattern of cyclical thinking is what characterises rumination in OCD. “There was a streetlight in the corner of the road – I think it was bright enough to see if someone was hurt.” This is then quickly followed by another thought, “but it could have been a small child or someone wearing dark clothes – I could have hit them.” “I didn’t see anyone laying on the floor so no one must be injured,” he thinks, before having a second thought, “but it was dark so I might have missed them.” As he is driving he begins to work through his memory of the event. He doesn’t see anything so he gets back in the car and continues his journey. He hears the jolt and as he pulls further away, he has the intrusive thought, “What if I just ran over someone?” In fact, the thought is so real to him that he stops the car and takes a look down the road to see if anyone is laying injured. ![]() ![]() “Colin” was driving home from work and travels over a bump in the road. Where an intrusive thought is a thought in an of itself, rumination is a process – a cycle of repetitive thoughts, often with an emphasis on trying to work out why we are having a particular intrusion or to establish whether a particular event happened in the way that we think it did. Rumination in OCD is different to a typical intrusive thought. Scrupulosity OCD Rumination – A definition We are going to understand a little more about what Rumination in OCD looks like, why it keeps OCD going and, most importantly, what we can do to stop and reduce it. In this article, we are going to look at another mental process in OCD, that of Rumination. The things that happen in our heads – the mental argument, the worry, the prayers or the mental neutralising that all lie under the surface but are equally as problematic for the OCD sufferer. What people tend to think less about are the things that we can’t see. Often, we will think about these compulsions in terms of the things that we can see people do – whether that be checking, counting, reassurance seeking, avoidance or hoarding. Typically when we think about the key features of OCD, we tend to think about it in terms of the distress that is caused by Intrusive thoughts (Obsessions) and the things that we do to reduce this distress (compulsions).
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