This points to a lot of what the difference feels like to me! It jibes with my intuition for the situation that prompted this question.
I was mildly anxious about something (I forget what), and stopped myself as I was about to move on to some work (in which I would have lost the anxiety). I thought it might be useful to be with the anxiety a bit and see what was so anxious about the situation. This felt like it would be useful, but then I wondered if I would get bad ruminative effects. It seemed like I wouldn’t, but I wasn’t sure why.
I’m not sure if I should be given pause by the fact you say that rumination is concerned with action; my reading of the wikipedia page is that being concerned with action is a big missing feature of rumination
I feel like I do two types of things, that feel conceptually similar. (Maybe only one of them is rumination?)
Thinking about the state of the world and being stressed by it
Thinking about a particular social situation that is stressing me out, and rehearsing what I want to say to that person.
The former is more classical rumination, but they feel related. In the second case, my brain is clearly trying to get to a state where it feels like it knows what to do the next time I encounter the social situation, which is action-oriented.
Even in the first case… while I may not be planning any actions, it still feels like it’s oriented around action. Like, I’m feeling trapped and unable to act, but the whole thought process is still oriented around “man, I wish I could act.” Or “man, I’m worried about how other people are acting.”
This points to a lot of what the difference feels like to me! It jibes with my intuition for the situation that prompted this question.
I was mildly anxious about something (I forget what), and stopped myself as I was about to move on to some work (in which I would have lost the anxiety). I thought it might be useful to be with the anxiety a bit and see what was so anxious about the situation. This felt like it would be useful, but then I wondered if I would get bad ruminative effects. It seemed like I wouldn’t, but I wasn’t sure why.
I’m not sure if I should be given pause by the fact you say that rumination is concerned with action; my reading of the wikipedia page is that being concerned with action is a big missing feature of rumination
I feel like I do two types of things, that feel conceptually similar. (Maybe only one of them is rumination?)
Thinking about the state of the world and being stressed by it
Thinking about a particular social situation that is stressing me out, and rehearsing what I want to say to that person.
The former is more classical rumination, but they feel related. In the second case, my brain is clearly trying to get to a state where it feels like it knows what to do the next time I encounter the social situation, which is action-oriented.
Even in the first case… while I may not be planning any actions, it still feels like it’s oriented around action. Like, I’m feeling trapped and unable to act, but the whole thought process is still oriented around “man, I wish I could act.” Or “man, I’m worried about how other people are acting.”