Obsessing over the past

Can't Stop Thinking About Past Mistakes? This May Be Why

Thinking about the past is natural. But what happens if you just can’t stop? Rumination may be upsetting, but there are ways to stop it.

Memories of the past can connect you with parts of yourself that you’ve left behind. But persistently dwelling on your past, or thinking about events that already happened, may cause you distress.

This is particularly the case if you’re fixated on negative events or emotions that once were. For example, if you can’t stop thinking about past mistakes.

Managing these intrusive thoughts is possible, although it may require some time and effort. Understanding why you can’t stop ruminating on the past can be the first step to finding relief.

Rumination is when you’re stuck in a loop of repeated negative thoughts about the past, and you can’t seem to stop even if you want to.

“It’s a cycle of excessive worries in which we repeatedly return to the same negative thoughts,” explains Tanya J. Peterson, a mental health educator in Eugene, Oregon. “When we ruminate, we repetitively think about certain troublesome thoughts over and over again.”

This negative thought cycle can impact your mental health and also intensify symptoms if you already live with depression or anxiety.

There’s a difference between worrying about a problem and ruminating on the past, though. Peterson explains one easy way to differentiate them is to ask yourself if when you think about the past event you’re focused on possible solutions or lessons.

If you’re fixed exclusively on the negative aspects, it’s probably rumination.

“In rumination, we continue to obsess over the negative without working toward a resolution or way forward,” says Peterson.

Rumination is a behavior and not a mental health condition. It’s a common symptom in anxiety and mood disorders, though. But it doesn’t have to be permanent. You can learn to manage it.

If your thoughts about the past are a symptom of a mental health condition, a professional may be able to help. By addressing the underlying cause, you can find relief for all of your symptoms — including rumination.

Addressing rumination directly can also help. These tips may help you stop ruminating on the past:

1. Try quieting your inner critic

“You are not bad, weak, or flawed for ruminating,” says Peterson. Focusing on the past and putting yourself down for ruminating might reinforce negative thinking and increase your distress.

You may not be able to change what happened in your past, but you can create new experiences from this second on.

Going over what you did or didn’t do right won’t change anything. You did what you could with the resources at hand.

Self-compassion and forgiveness will go a long way, and it can start by simply not putting yourself down.

2. Consider the possibilities

Thinking about the things that are important to you may help you step away from painful rumination.

Instead of focusing on the things you don’t want, try to be intentional and identify what you do want in your life. This can be relationships, jobs, hobbies, or places to be.

“When you catch yourself ruminating, gently shift your attention to an image of your valued life,” suggests Peterson.

3. Changing directions may help

When you find yourself hitting reverse, try to switch gears and move forward. You may even set it at neutral.

Peterson explains that grounding yourself in the here and now may allow you to redirect your negative thoughts. So, even if it doesn’t come naturally at first, try to come back to the present whenever you find yourself thinking about the past.

For example, look in front of you and try to find every possible detail of the first object you set eyes on. You can look at shapes, textures, colors, shades, and positions.

No. An obsession is a recurring and irrational thought that causes you intense distress. It’s also a thought you can’t seem to control or shake off, and that isn’t based on facts.

Obsessions often lead you to engage in rituals that you feel alleviate the distress. This ritual is called a compulsion.

Rumination is a type of compulsion.

Even if you’re not aware of it, thinking persistently about the past may be something you do to find relief from things that are out of your control.

You may ruminate on the past once and again trying to uncover new perspectives on what happened, or revising every detail as if you could change it.

Both obsessions and compulsions are formal symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) although not everyone who ruminates lives with the condition.

In some cases, rumination is also associated with:

depression
anxiety
postpartum depression
post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)

Is rumination always linked to mental health conditions?

No. Everyone thinks about the past from time to time, even if not living with a mental health condition.

For example, it’s natural — and sometimes even expected — to insistently think about that last argument you had with your ex-partner before you broke up.

In most cases, though, you’ll think about this incident a little less every day.

If you think about the past with the same intensity after a while, then you might be ruminating. Depending on other symptoms you may or may not have, a mental health professional may give you a specific diagnosis like anxiety or OCD.

Rumination associated with a mental health condition is typically more intense and longer lasting.

If you can’t stop thinking about the past but don’t have a mental health condition, it may be easier for you to recognize and cope with the negative thought cycle, says Peterson.

Rumination can affect your mental health, even if you don’t have a mental health condition. “Repeatedly returning to the same negative thoughts and sticking with them has far-reaching effects,” explains Peterson.

In any case, these effects can be managed and there are ways to cope with distress.

Rumination can impact your mental health by:

causing or increasing symptoms of anxiety and depression
leading you to live in a constant state of dread
impairing your ability to focus
sapping your motivation and limiting your ability to feel joy
changing your sleep patterns

Peterson explains that chronic stress can also lead you to develop physiological challenges, such as systemic inflammation.

Constantly thinking about negative aspects of the past can also impact your emotional health. You may frequently feel overwhelmed, angry, or sad.

When thinking about the past starts to negatively impact your life, it may be a good idea to seek out professional help.

Peterson adds that if strategies you’ve tried on your own aren’t successful, it may be a sign that it’s time to see a therapist.

“[Therapists] are skilled at helping people deal with mental health conditions, but they also help people who are experiencing challenges but don’t have a mental health diagnosis,” she says.

Having a mental health diagnosis isn’t a prerequisite for working with a therapist. Rumination can impact your emotional well-being regardless of whether you have a mental health condition. And a therapist can help you no matter what you’re dwelling on.

It’s human nature to think about past mistakes. But, rumination can impact your mental health.

Mindfulness strategies may help you redirect and recontextualize your negative thoughts, though.

However, when rumination starts to interfere with your life and emotional well-being, it may be a good idea to talk to a mental health professional.

Can't Stop Thinking About Past Mistakes? This May Be Why

Thinking about the past is natural. But what happens if you just can’t stop? Rumination may be upsetting, but there are ways to stop it.

Memories of the past can connect you with parts of yourself that you’ve left behind. But persistently dwelling on your past, or thinking about events that already happened, may cause you distress.

This is particularly the case if you’re fixated on negative events or emotions that once were. For example, if you can’t stop thinking about past mistakes.

Managing these intrusive thoughts is possible, although it may require some time and effort. Understanding why you can’t stop ruminating on the past can be the first step to finding relief.

Rumination is when you’re stuck in a loop of repeated negative thoughts about the past, and you can’t seem to stop even if you want to.

This negative thought cycle can impact your mental health and also intensify symptoms if you already live with depression or anxiety.

If you’re fixed exclusively on the negative aspects, it’s probably rumination.

“In rumination, we continue to obsess over the negative without working toward a resolution or way forward,” says Peterson.

Rumination is a behavior and not a mental health condition. It’s a common symptom in anxiety and mood disorders, though. But it doesn’t have to be permanent. You can learn to manage it.

Addressing rumination directly can also help. These tips may help you stop ruminating on the past:

1. Try quieting your inner critic

“You are not bad, weak, or flawed for ruminating,” says Peterson. Focusing on the past and putting yourself down for ruminating might reinforce negative thinking and increase your distress.

You may not be able to change what happened in your past, but you can create new experiences from this second on.

Going over what you did or didn’t do right won’t change anything. You did what you could with the resources at hand.

Self-compassion and forgiveness will go a long way, and it can start by simply not putting yourself down.

2.

Consider the possibilities

Thinking about the things that are important to you may help you step away from painful rumination.

Instead of focusing on the things you don’t want, try to be intentional and identify what you do want in your life. This can be relationships, jobs, hobbies, or places to be.

“When you catch yourself ruminating, gently shift your attention to an image of your valued life,” suggests Peterson.

3. Changing directions may help

When you find yourself hitting reverse, try to switch gears and move forward. You may even set it at neutral.

For example, look in front of you and try to find every possible detail of the first object you set eyes on. You can look at shapes, textures, colors, shades, and positions.

No. An obsession is a recurring and irrational thought that causes you intense distress. It’s also a thought you can’t seem to control or shake off, and that isn’t based on facts.

Obsessions often lead you to engage in rituals that you feel alleviate the distress. This ritual is called a compulsion.

Rumination is a type of compulsion.

Even if you’re not aware of it, thinking persistently about the past may be something you do to find relief from things that are out of your control.

You may ruminate on the past once and again trying to uncover new perspectives on what happened, or revising every detail as if you could change it.

Both obsessions and compulsions are formal symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) although not everyone who ruminates lives with the condition.

In some cases, rumination is also associated with:

depression
anxiety
postpartum depression
post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)

Is rumination always linked to mental health conditions?

No. Everyone thinks about the past from time to time, even if not living with a mental health condition.

For example, it’s natural — and sometimes even expected — to insistently think about that last argument you had with your ex-partner before you broke up.

In most cases, though, you’ll think about this incident a little less every day.

Rumination associated with a mental health condition is typically more intense and longer lasting.

If you can’t stop thinking about the past but don’t have a mental health condition, it may be easier for you to recognize and cope with the negative thought cycle, says Peterson.

In any case, these effects can be managed and there are ways to cope with distress.

Rumination can impact your mental health by:

causing or increasing symptoms of anxiety and depression
leading you to live in a constant state of dread
impairing your ability to focus
sapping your motivation and limiting your ability to feel joy
changing your sleep patterns

Peterson explains that chronic stress can also lead you to develop physiological challenges, such as systemic inflammation.

Constantly thinking about negative aspects of the past can also impact your emotional health. You may frequently feel overwhelmed, angry, or sad.

When thinking about the past starts to negatively impact your life, it may be a good idea to seek out professional help.

Peterson adds that if strategies you’ve tried on your own aren’t successful, it may be a sign that it’s time to see a therapist.

“[Therapists] are skilled at helping people deal with mental health conditions, but they also help people who are experiencing challenges but don’t have a mental health diagnosis,” she says.

It’s human nature to think about past mistakes. But, rumination can impact your mental health.

Mindfulness strategies may help you redirect and recontextualize your negative thoughts, though.

However, when rumination starts to interfere with your life and emotional well-being, it may be a good idea to talk to a mental health professional.

Obsession with memory: how memories help us let go of the past

Knowing yourselfMan among peopleMan and woman

Photo: Andrea Riondino / Unsplash

Our memories are made up of many different fragments. We store them in photos, playlists, dreams and thoughts. But sometimes the regular repetition of the past becomes a form of addiction: immersion in melancholy can have different consequences.

Memory obsession is a phenomenon identified in 1980s, and a decade later it took shape in the term Trauma and Memory Studies. Trauma memories, like all human memories, are prone to distortion. People tend to remember more trauma than they experienced.

This happens for two reasons.

The first one can be called "memory amplification" : after the traumatic experience, his intentional recollection and obsessive thoughts about it can add new details that over time the person will perceive as part of the event. For example, if a child is bitten by a neighbor's dog and he talks about this incident again and again, over the years a small bite will be recorded in his memory in the form of a huge wound. Unfortunately, memory amplification has real consequences: the greater this amplification, the more obsessive thoughts and images haunt a person. Over time, these unexperienced thoughts and images can become as familiar as the experienced ones.
The second reason for this distortion is that people are often not participants in traumatic events, but witnesses of . There is such a thing as witness trauma. This is a trauma of the psyche that can occur in a person who sees a dangerous and terrible situation - while it does not threaten him.

Olga Makarova, an analytically oriented psychologist, talks about how relevant this concept is in the modern context:

“While earlier, to receive such an injury, one had to be in a certain place at a certain time, to literally become a witness to an incident, today it is enough just to open the news feed.

Something terrible always happens in the world. On any day of the year, you can see something that shocks and traumatizes you.

The witness's trauma can manifest itself very intensely and, in terms of the strength of negative feelings, even compete with real participation in traumatic events (or physical proximity to them).

For example, to the question “How stressed are you on a scale of 1 to 10 about the aftermath of the earthquake in Japan?” the Japanese, who was directly in the event area, will answer "4". And a Spaniard who lives thousands of kilometers from the threat, but who has examined in detail, under a magnifying glass, the details of destruction and human tragedies in the media and social networks, will quite frankly say that his stress level on this matter is 10.

This can cause bewilderment and even aggression, and then the desire to accuse the conventional Spaniard of excessive dramatization - they say, how is it, because nothing threatens him! But no, these feelings are absolutely real. And the trauma of a witness can greatly affect the mental state and life in general. Also, the more empathic a person is, the more they become emotionally involved in whatever they see.”

In addition to shock, fear, horror, anger and despair at the time of encountering traumatic content, the person may later face consequences. These are panic attacks, lingering sadness, a shattered nervous system, tears for no reason, sleep problems.

The psychologist recommends the following steps both as a preventive measure and as a “treatment”

Limit incoming information (it is desirable to give preference to text only, without photos and videos).
Take care of your body (walk, eat, sleep, exercise).
Containerize, that is, process, emotions (drawing, singing, cooking are suitable - a favorite activity that helps in such situations best of all).
Notice boundaries and distinguish your own emotions from those of others. Ask yourself questions: is this what I feel now? Or am I joining someone else's fear?

In his famous book Sorrow and Melancholy, Freud stated that we "never voluntarily give up our emotional attachments: just because we have been abandoned does not mean that we have ended our relationship with the one who has abandoned us. "

That is why we play the same scenario in relationships, project images of mom and dad onto partners, and emotionally depend on others. Memories of past relationships or people who left can be addictive and affect new relationships.

Vamik Volkan, professor of psychiatry at the University of Virginia, in his article "The Work of Grief: Evaluating Relationships and Release" calls these psychological twins. In his opinion, our memory stores the mental twins of all people and things that inhabit or once inhabited our world. They are far from the originals and rather consist of sensations, fantasies, but evoke real feelings and experiences.

Freud's term "grief work" describes the mechanism of internal and external adjustment that must be made after a loss or separation.

It is only possible to stop returning to past relationships or yearning for departed people when we understand why these relationships and people were so important. You need to decompose them into small puzzles, immerse yourself in memories and accept them as they are.

Often we miss not a person, but the sensations that we experienced next to him

And you need to learn how to experience similar feelings without this particular person.

In times of global change, many adapt to changes that no one expected. The future looks different and much more unpredictable. We all deal with loss: someone loses their job, the opportunity to do their usual things and communicate with loved ones, someone loses their loved ones.

Returning to the past in this situation is therapeutic: instead of keeping the anxiety of the loss inside, it is more correct to mourn the loss. Then there is a chance to understand its meaning. Taking the time to identify and understand the feelings we experience from loss and grief, and verbalizing them, is the best way to learn from the past.

Text: Yana Verzun

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The Kremlin's obsession with glorifying fake history

The difference between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion 9003 Albert Einstein

0 about the different yet interconnected tragic events of the 20th century has recently become the subject of intense political confrontation and intense disinformation campaigns. The Kremlin is widely known for its cynically nefarious, often brazen and thus highly influential ability to make unfounded accusations and shamelessly label many countries and peoples based on highly dubious, mostly falsified or even simply fabricated historical narratives.

As we approach the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II, it is not surprising that many of the notoriously repetitive attempts of Russia's deceitful regime are projecting and reinforcing their own versions and dubious interpretations of the catastrophic causes and consequences of that terrible war.

The Kremlin has recently taken some notable steps to strengthen the role of historical memory in its foreign policy, because any “correct autocracy” knows exactly how powerful collective memories can be used equally effectively to shape national identity, create conflicting prejudices, fuel captivating illusions among the population of their own country or inflating vague chaos at the international level . As the Kremlin's propaganda machine continues to industrialize various historical falsifications in many countries, it is important to make an analytical forecast of what else can be expected in its arsenal in 2020 and beyond.

Ideological front lines

Kremlin ideologists have come to a common understanding of several important points for planning and influencing the historical memory of World War II. These are not some tactical adjustments, but rather strategic moves that must be supported and promoted - as is usually the case in semi-closed systems with vertical power - by everyone, including political elites, academia, opinion leaders, journalists and, hence also the general public.

First, the main historical narrative of the Kremlin will be based on conjectural memories that will be carefully crafted to replace collective, that is, real memories. The latter are emotionally very powerful and attractive because they naturally connect with people who have shared experiences, which inevitably leads to shared memories that are passed down through time between generations and across space between different regions. Hence, it is nearly impossible to falsify collective memories, but they can be replaced by some ideologically tested construct that seems more attractive to later generations. Simply put, there are not so many people left in the world (and especially in Russia) who can tell and prove what exactly, and why, happened 80 years ago. Add to this the fact that old memories fade and disappear, and the human brain reproduces memories very selectively. Thus, it is possible to construct historical memory on the basis of assumptions. In general, all this leaves fertile ground for unscrupulous historians and other pseudo-experts who speculate on unpublished (or even non-existent?) historical documents and impose officially approved versions of historical events. Anyway, this creates a vast gray area for plausible deniability – exactly what the Kremlin needs to successfully continue the hybrid war.

Secondly, the rigid rewriting of historical facts is no longer so effective. Widespread exposure of some fictitious victory myth about the Red Army can often be even more dangerous and damaging to Russia's image than the potential benefit of some fabricated story. The Kremlin will try to shift the focus away from unpleasant and compromising facts. For this he will be more often than use the so-called telescope technique to see the bigger picture and avoid microscopic procedures so as not to go into small details . The broader time frame of World War II would be one of the cornerstones of such a narrative. The Kremlin will insist on a new version, according to which the world war began already in 1937 with the military intervention of Japan in China, and not in Poland in 1939, as "Eurocentric" historians claim. This would provide a good opportunity to blame “imperialist Japan” for the start of the war, thereby the Kremlin hopes to broaden the overall picture of the review and leave out the many war crimes of the USSR against Poland and the Baltic states.

Thirdly, the Kremlin is actively looking for new ideological allies who could support it both in shifting the focus and spreading an alternative version of World War II. As already mentioned, China is considered one of the most powerful allies in this ideological battle. In order to isolate Europe, the Kremlin will try to appeal to China with attractive proposals for synchronizing historical narratives based on the new time frame of the war (1937-1945). This will mean that it both began and ended precisely in Asia. Referring to the role of the Red Army in the liberation of China, the Kremlin can please Beijing with an agreement to more glorify China's role in the fight against global fascism. Among other target countries, the Kremlin will make efforts to work with Spain and Greece, which can be influenced due to bitter and difficult memories of civil wars and the rather strong position of left-wing political movements in these countries. Finally, the Kremlin is stepping up propaganda dialogues with academic and political circles in Germany, France, and the United States to discuss jointly the advisability of building a new historical narrative about World War II. It would be too naive to underestimate the number of Kremlin sympathizers in these countries. Finally, Israel was most recently masterfully charmed, taken under development and presented in the list of the Kremlin's ideological allies.

Fourthly, the Kremlin will try to keep the topic of the Holocaust on the global information agenda as long as possible and use it as often as possible. The main idea is directed simultaneously at two points: strengthening Russia's "undeniable" contribution to the defeat of the Nazi regime (and, therefore, saving many Jewish lives in Eastern Europe), as well as highlighting, exaggeration and building artificial relationships between various individual cases of collaborationism among the population of Nazi-occupied territories (and, accordingly, accusations of some nations and even entire countries of complicity in the Holocaust). Moreover, by misusing the tragedy of the Holocaust, the Kremlin is trying to equate not only the victims of the past, but also equate anti-Semitism with the "Russophobia" of the present day. The new ideological formula, inspired by the Kremlin, will be as linear as possible - while completely denying the incomprehensible brutality and countless crimes of the Red Army, and then the communist regimes in Poland, the Baltic countries and Ukraine, these countries are automatically, almost unconditionally and categorically enrolled entirely in the list of shame “supporters of the Nazis, accomplices of the Holocaust and anti-Russian provocateurs. ” The Kremlin creates and maintains the vision that Nazism was an absolute evil, against which the communist regime of the Soviet Union was much softer, more humane and at the same time always oriented towards peace. Thus, the Kremlin denies the right of many Eastern European countries to seek justice and have their own historical voice about the tragic events of World War II . In parallel, the Kremlin will continue to disseminate among Western countries information reminiscent of and especially highlighting the actions of autocratic regimes in interwar Poland, Romania and the Baltic states.

Fifthly, impressive campaigns will again be carried out to whitewash the image of the Soviet Union and Russia throughout the world through the information usurpation of the 75th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations and the propaganda of the contribution of the Soviet Union to the development and adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 year. Among the main meanings of , the peacefulness and willingness of the Kremlin to contribute to building a more just world order will be especially emphasized, in contrast, for example, to the Treaty of Versailles, which the Kremlin considers unfair and one of the main causes of World War II, that is, in fact, part of the "collective guilt of the West" in the catastrophe. The Kremlin's UN campaign will also be accompanied by coverage of the 45th anniversary of the Declaration of Helsinki, a document that should (according to the Kremlin's logic) once again confirm its fairness, readiness for peaceful cooperation and openness to diplomatic dialogue. Meanwhile, denying their communist past, The Kremlin wants to present Russia as the origin of a broad movement for social equality and egalitarianism, a kind of source country of modern social democracy , and this should resonate more widely in different countries around the world.

Preparing for wars of memory

Why is there little doubt about the Kremlin's motivation to achieve its goals and its full ability to succeed in all efforts to create a new historical memory of World War II? First of all, , the Soviet regime had already managed to shift the focus from the narrative of war to the narrative of victory in . This happened in the sixties and seventies of the last century, when public attention was propagandistically redirected from human tragedies, suffering and sacrifices to honoring the farce of a great victory and holding a cult of state celebrations. Currently, more than 80% of Russians associate World War II exclusively with Victory Day on May 9, and not with global catastrophic events that occurred 75-80 years ago. In the Kremlin's version of national memory there is no place for human sorrow, collective mourning or silent grief. All this has been replaced by surrogately deafening parades, fake costumes and artificial pride. National memory in Russia has been made a silent sacrifice to imperial patriotism.

The Kremlin sees this victory as a complete justification for dictating to others how to now interpret the causes, events and results of World War II. He will zealously guard this monopoly of victory because it is a powerful symbol of superiority. The Kremlin regime knows that more than 70% of Russians share the position that victory in World War II belongs exclusively to Russia, and not to other countries. Since human memory is very selective and manageable, The Kremlin stimulates the total worship of the false grandeur of victory, which is glorified on an industrial scale by various ritual actions. All this is supported by the continuous militarization of education, everyday culture and symbols, children's events, as well as the ubiquitous aggressive communication, where sad memories, for example, of the massive defeats of the Red Army in 1941-1942, are completely ignored. Due to a complex of national forgetfulness in Russian society, there are no serious public discussions about the real cost of this victory , not to mention the contribution of allies and other assistance. In contrast to the Western leitmotif “Never again”, the Kremlin is promoting “We can do it again!”.

The Kremlin can succeed also because it knows that the absence of real punishment breeds permissiveness . Since there is no place for repentance and concessions in the Kremlin’s narrative about the Russian national idea, the entire nation will remain a hostage, pathologically obsessed with glorifying a falsified history.

Break the monopoly

What can be done to challenge the Kremlin in historical memory? First of all, Western politicians and opinion leaders must recognize that there will be an escalation of the wars of memory. Willingness to do so will be helpful. Moreover, one must understand that the Kremlin is not just a player on the board of memory wars, but it is trying to shape the conditions and determine the rules of this game . Who else is noticeably active on this scale?

In addition, there should be no illusions about the strategic goals of the Kremlin, since it has does not have the slightest intention of overcoming conflicting themes and issues in recent history, but rather a desire to arm their narratives, use them as a tool in contemporary politics and international relations, and therefore provoke more and more ideological clashes . The Kremlin knows that when historical memory becomes politics, blood is shed.

Since the monopoly on history is so important to the Kremlin, it is terrified of full coverage of the collective essence of victory, especially the role of Ukrainians and Belarusians - nations whose victims are still in the shadow of Soviet myths about World War II.

Another helpful piece of advice would be to realize that the time has passed when the Kremlin desperately wanted Western attention or respect for its history. One should not overestimate the attendance of the celebrations on May 9 in Moscow , although this, of course, will be a very symbolic event. However, only one notable action among many strategically planned, publicly or covertly executed activities and influence activities.

The illusion that a sense of collective guilt can allegedly be cultivated in Russia or even introduced into it from outside is very dangerous and misleads many, since the destruction of alleged (that is, ideologically built) memories requires a huge effort to create a complete information superiority over the cognitive space in the country .

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