I would expect the opposite - ruminating over past problems will make them worse. It clearly does for some people, but you're saying it's different for other, do you know where the distinction lies? If you ever find out please send me an email. Thanks!
Great question. Their result in this area did surprise me. Conscious reflection on past negative memories slowly turns them into less negative and less painful memories. There is a lot of work here done by Pennebaker about how writing about past negative events transforms our memory of them [1]. And the work done by my lab started off with a system that facilitated these reflections through technology [2]. There is more recent work on this in press.
I think the difference lies in the structure. Rumination is symptomatic of depressive thinking and often characterized by intrusive negative thoughts. Reflection on the other hand is the conscious process of sitting down and reevaluating a past situation (often in writing).
1. Pennebaker, J. W., & Chung, C. K. (2011). Expressive writing: Connections to physical and mental health. In H. S. Friedman (Eds.), Oxford handbook of health psychology (pp. 417-437). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
2. Isaacs, E., Konrad, A., Walendowski, A., Lennig, T., Hollis, V., & Whittaker, S. (2013). Echoes from the past: how technology mediated reflection improves well-being (p. 1071). ACM Press. http://doi.org/10.1145/2470654.2466137
> I think the difference lies in the structure. Rumination is symptomatic of depressive thinking and often characterized by intrusive negative thoughts. Reflection on the other hand is the conscious process of sitting down and reevaluating a past situation (often in writing).
For a constant ruminator like me, learning to properly reflect has improved my life more than almost anything else.
I came to realize that I either suffered from intrusive thoughts that remained vague, oppressive, and kept returning in full-force, or I pushed the thoughts away by constant reading, activity, or various intoxicants.
But if I sat down and wrote unfiltered, or just more actively allowed myself to 'fully' observe the situation including the thoughts and emotions that came along, they would often start to untangle by themselves. Not always, but often enough that it really made me a happier person.
There are things that don't untangle themselves, and for that I'm seeing a therapist. But they're doing basically the same kind of thing (CBT-based therapy).
Meditation/Mindfulness might lead you to some more insight on this subject. It teaches to observe pain when it comes up rather than ignore it. The book Mindfulness In Plain English is pretty good. Or, Tuesdays with Morrie. Observe emotion, then let it go.
To the scientific mind, mindfulness might seem hokey. I certainly thought so for years until I saw it promoted on HN with some scientific research backing its efficacy. Then I tried it and was impressed with the results.
