Three Ways to Deal with Unconstructive Repetitive Thoughts
Several researchers have shown that negative mood, anxiety, and distress can be associated with cognitive decline. Wilson and his colleague Patricia Boyle (both at Rush in Chicago) have shown with data from the Religious Orders Study that persons who are chronically distressed have a greater chance of cognitive decline.
At the Cognitive Aging Summit (sponsored by the National Institute on Aging and featuring NIA-supported research), Martin Sliwinski reported data that show that the specific aspect of emotional distress that may be linked to problems in thinking and memory is something called unconstructive repetitive thought (URT).
Although the term reeks of jargon, it is helpful because it helps us understand the difference between various types of worry, ruminating, or obsessing. URT means that someone thinks a lot about something that is upsetting, but it doesn’t go anywhere.
It’s a little like pushing at a sore tooth in your mouth – you know that you shouldn’t, and that if you don’t leave it alone, you may make it worse. But still, it’s hard to stop.
It’s easy to guess that repeatedly thinking about upsetting things (your boss or spouse yelling at you, an especially bad ride home on the freeway that involved someone cutting in front of you) might cause repeated releases of stress-related neurohormones and immune factors.
Since we know that many of these substances have the capacity to be neurotoxic, it’s a simple (though unproven) link from URT to cognitive impairment.
How do you deal with URT?
- First, pay attention to thoughts that bother you and are upsetting. You may be engaging in URT without realizing it. Ask yourself, Is thinking about this making my heart race or making me feel jumpy and angry? Notice what you’re thinking about.
- Second, decide whether thinking is going to resolve anything. Sometimes, thinking about something over and over can help you figure out a solution to a problem. But worrying over and over about something in the past or future that you can’t control just makes you miserable. No matter how much you think about something, you can’t change the past or control the future.
- Third, make a commitment to deal with thoughts if you can’t deal with the problem. If you’re want to spend time going over something in your mind over and over, schedule a time (maybe 15 minutes) and do so. Don’t do the thinking any other time. Usually, people who learn to relax through meditation or breathing can learn to stop their URT. Regular mediation practice can also help you stop.
Fantastic suggestions on dealing with unwanted, repetitive thought. The mind untrained can be quite chaotic, and for many of us there is a part of our brain that broadcasts a continuous stream of mechanical, babbling chatter and it can drive us to distraction. In your third suggestion, folks should consider using some characteristics of thought that can be recruited to serve as tools to either break up the noise, or quiet it significantly. One characteristic of thought itself is that we can only think one thought at a time. That being the case, each prior thought is entirely DISPLACED by the next on the mental stage. So, if inner dialogue and unwanted, repetitive thoughts are a problem in any given moment, we have the ability to forge a thought in imagination and pour our entire attention into the thought and refuse to let go of it. This act causes the brain to detach its resources from the previous thought and redirect onto the created one. The new thought begins to crowd out the previous. As long as a person can hold onto the new thought and prevent attention from wandering, no other thought will come in to displace it. Another characteristic of thought is that it can be dispersed. And when I say thought, I mean imagery and dialogue. Any pattern of ongoing thought can be broken up by doing something or suddenly thinking something utterly unrelated, especially if the action or new idea is ridiculous, humorous, or just plain weird. For instance, if a person is experiencing a sad thought, they can decide to stand up really straight, throw their hands up, jump up and down and break out in a silly, happy song. Do that for about a minute and ignore the looks people are giving you, and you’ll likely have forgotten all about the previous sad thought. It seems goofy, but the principle is the important thing. Anyway, thanks for a great post.
[...] – some researchers now call them unconstructive repetitive thoughts, or URT (for that post, click here). I wrote about the process of thinking about things that cause negative [...]
[...] – some researchers now call them unconstructive repetitive thoughts, or URT (for that post, click here). I wrote about the process of thinking about things that cause negative [...]