In previous posts, I have talked about the perils of rumination, which is the process of getting stuck asking “why’s” about our mistakes, errors, and shortcomings. I have written about how rumination has been shown to perpetuate negative affect, impair problem solving, and even erode interpersonal relationships. I have also gone over the fact that this perseverative thought process has been linked with the development and maintenance of mental disorders, such as depression, anxiety, eating disorders, and substance abuse problems (e.g., Aldao et al., 2010; Nolen-Hoeksema et al., 2008). However, one thing I haven’t gotten chance to go over just yet is its association with physical health. So let’s get right to it!
A number of studies have shown that rumination is associated with greater cortisol reactivity in response to stressors (see Zoccola & Dickerson, 2012). Such a link is problematic because excessive cortisol has been linked with cardiovascular disease and insulin resistance. In a recent study conducted with my colleague Lori Hilt from Lawrence University, we asked college students to participate in a stress-inducing task (Hilt et al., in press). We told them that they would have to give a three-minute speech about those qualities that make them “special and unique.” We explained to them that a panel of four college students form another school would be watching them on camera and rating their personality (there were, however, no students at the other end of the camera; this was a bogus story to increase our participants’ levels of stress). After participants gave the speech, they received pre-recorded fake feedback, which included neutral (for example, “S/he sounds like the typical student”) and negative (for example, “S/he didn’t grab my attention”) statements. We then asked participants to wait for an hour so that we could collect saliva samples and assess their cortisol levels (we had also collected saliva samples before the stressor). During this hour, we asked participants to rate how negative they felt and how much they were ruminating about the feedback they had received. To make a very long story short, we found that those participants who ruminated more during this hour were also the ones who reported feeling more negative and who exhibited greater cortisol reactivity!!
In another recent study I conducted with my colleagues Kate McLaughlin (University of Washington), Mark Hatzenbueleher (Columbia University), and Margaret Sheridan (Harvard Medical School), we asked adolescents to participate in a similar stress-inducing task (Aldao et al., 2014). This time, we asked them to give a speech about the qualities they had that made them a good friend. We also asked them to count backwards in increments of 7 from three digit numbers (trust me, this is a lot harder than it seems!). Throughout the task, we asked them to rate how negative they felt and we assessed their heart rate reactivity (a physiological marker of arousal). We found that habitual ruminators (that is, those adolescents who frequently got stuck in ruminative cycles) reported grater negative reactivity during the stressor and had impaired cardiovascular recovery following the stressor. This is super interesting because rumination was not necessarily associated with greater reactivity to the stressor. That is, high and low ruminators reacted in the same way. The difference is that it took ruminators longer to calm down!
Although these studies did not allow for testing causal hypotheses (does rumination cause increased physiological reactivity? Does increased physiological reactivity cause rumination? Is there a third factor that causes both?), they nonetheless underscore the link between getting stuck in rumination and having exaggerated physiological responses.
So, next time you catch yourself (or someone else) ruminating, try to take a step back and think of the potentially negative consequences for your health. See if you can take a break. Put that rumination on hold, even for a brief moment. Distract yourself. Disengaging from your rumination even for a few seconds is the first step in breaking the vicious cycle.
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