Well, Chaos, at this point, I am able to recognize it as a big imbalance. I mean, I always knew that it was, but at this point, my W's not even around to get upset, so I know that this is something I want to do for me, whether or not she comes back. I know what you mean about thinking being a good thing sometimes, but for me, ruminating indicates elements of fear and anxiety, so that's the part of my life that I want to get under control.
I've always been a pretty anxious person, yes. However, my W told her therapist about my symptoms, and the therapist remarked that it was "textbook" OCD. Hard to say exactly what it is I have. I prefer to view it on a shifting spectrum: ruminating about disturbing thoughts or images is OCD, whereas ruminating about negativity in general is just ruminating. Either way, both are bad for the brain.
Ruminating "appears" to make the anxiety less because I imagine that I'm getting great insights from it, but in the long run, I just generally feel more anxious and my thinking gets more muddled. It feels to me like a drug addict taking some of the drug in order to "take the edge off" -- the feelings of withdrawal later on only get more pronounced. I've been cutting back on ruminating for a couple of days now and already I feel clearer, as well as less anxious in general.
I just read that article by Lickerman. Very, very true stuff. He made a point of noticing that meta-thinking blocks one from experience. It seemed to me that I wasted a lot of time in my R with my W worrying about nonsense when I could have been spending that time just being with her and working on other parts of my life.
