How I Learned to Stop Ruminating and Love the Pain
I entered therapy to stop ruminating. I could not stop thinking about my ex-boss, my ex-girlfriend, and my father. No matter where I was, no matter what I was doing, I couldn’t go more than a minute or two without remembering how one of them had wronged me.
I told Laura how much my bubbie and zayde loved all of us grandchildren. “One of my cousins works in a sandwich shop and another is this high-profile chemist, but none of that mattered to them. They just wanted us to be happy. That’s the only thing they really cared about, if we were happy.” I then started to cry, something I had never before done in a therapy session. “They accepted us for who we were. And there was nothing — nothing — any of us could have done to lose their love.”
My tears that morning marked a turning point in my therapy. My bubbie and zayde had given me unconditional acceptance and love, the very thing I had wanted so badly but not received from my ex-boss, ex-girlfriend, and father. My tears suggested that other emotions existed beneath my anger.
My ruminations continued for several months, but something had changed, and at times therapy started to take the feel of a detective story. Laura was still doing those therapist things like asking about my feelings, but we were now trying to uncover “the meaning” of my ruminations. Mental phenomena, she believed, were never random; every feeling, every reaction clued us into the workings of my unconscious mind.
Detective stories involve red herrings, and mine was no exception. When Laura and I investigated what had happened with my ex-boss, we realized that something wasn’t adding up. It didn’t make sense that I spent so much time thinking about a man with whom I had not had a deep emotional connection. Nor did it make sense that I spent so much time thinking about him for doing something to me that was wrong but wrong in a very common, banal sort of way.
We were similarly puzzled by my ruminations of my ex-girlfriend. After some digging, we concluded that I didn’t actually miss her and that I most definitely didn’t want to get back together. What had caused me so much distress, it seemed, had not been her absence in my life but the presence of that other man. Again, all this did not seem to be enough to account for my endless ruminations.
We then turned our attention to my father. I shared that, although my parents divorced when I was little, he had always been incredibly involved. He never missed a Little League game or school performance. When I got older, he would call me on the phone every night, just to check in, to see how my day had been, to remind me to brush my teeth. No dad is perfect, but I had never doubted that he loved me and would do anything in the world for me.
And then I grew up, I told Laura, and that’s when everything changed. Perhaps my father suddenly felt threatened by me, perhaps he didn’t know how to be a father to a grown son. Whatever the case, he started trying to control me, and I predictably asserted myself. He then became increasingly critical, first over little things, then over bigger things, and I began to push him away. In my mid-twenties, he got remarried and moved to Oklahoma. The years passed, and our relationship slowly worsened until I finally concluded that he no longer loved me. When we talked on the phone, he presented himself as a devoted husband, doting stepfather, and extra-doting grandfather, an altogether happy man who didn’t seem to think much about me.
Laura and I felt we had finally found the culprit, the cause of my ruminations. Imagine us in an interrogation room, Laura and I sitting on one side of the table, my unconscious sitting across from us. My unconscious takes a long drag on a cigarette. He knows he’s been caught, and so now, just as the criminal always does in detective stories, he begins to explain himself. “I really just wanted to protect you,” he says. “I know it seems like I’m the enemy, but I didn’t think you could handle your dad’s rejection. That kind of rejection hurts, it hurts bad.”
“So you lied to me,” I say.
“In a sense.” My unconscious takes another puff from the cigarette. “Look, pal, your dad hurt you bad. A guy gets hurt like that, and he feels pain. I’m talking real pain. I’m talking the pain of realizing that you’re all alone, realizing that the person who once loved you more than life itself now doesn’t even like you.”
He looks up at me as though wanting to make sure I understand. “And that’s why I ramped up the anger. Again, just trying to protect you. I know anger doesn’t feel great, but at least it makes you feel strong and powerful. Not like that pain. That pain pain can destroy you.”
“So you wanted me to be angry?”
“I wanted you to not hurt. I inflated your anger so it would be harder for you to feel your pain.”
“And what about my ex-boss?”
“Look, I couldn’t have you focus all your anger on your dad. I know you, pal. I know your anger doesn’t last forever. I know you can’t think about him for too long before you start to feel that pain again. So I did a little bait-and-switch. Your boss isn’t your dad, but there’s some similarities. They’re both older men, they both at one time idealized you, thought you were the greatest thing since sliced bread. And then one day you disappointed them, and poof, everything changed. Bye-bye love.”
“Look, the boss, the girlfriend, they hurt you, I get it. But those are just everyday kind of hurts, the kind of hurts that slow you down but don’t stop you. But what happened with your dad, now that’s the real deal. So I did what I had to do. I directed your attention to those two numbskulls and away from him. Look, pal, I’m sorry about all the ruminating, that’s no fun. But trust me, anything’s better than feeling the pain of a parent’s rejection.”
What that unconscious part of my brain did not understand, what therapy taught me, is that events that would have been overwhelmingly painful as a little boy are not overwhelming painful today. Which is not to say that coming to terms with my dad’s rejection did not hurt. Of course, it hurt. It hurt horribly. I don’t know if it will ever completely stop hurting.
But I needed to feel that hurt. I needed to grieve and to cry. And the more I grieved and cried, the better I felt. The lighter I felt. The more like myself I felt. Some days I cried and cried and cried. And I noticed that the more I cried, the more my ruminations started to dissipate.
Yes, I told my therapist, Laura, they had wronged me. I wasn’t saying I was perfect, but their treatment of me had been premeditated, callous, injurious. My ex-girlfriend, for example, had lied to me again and again, assuring me that she loved me and would never again see that other man. And of course, I later found out, she never stopped seeing him.
Laura seemed genuinely interested in my story, so I kept sharing it, one grisly episode after another. She would ask what feelings accompanied my ruminations, and my answer every time was anger. Pure, visceral anger. I felt so much anger that I would often fantasize about enacting revenge, imagine sending my ex-girlfriend a mean text message or embarrassing my ex-boss in front of his friends if I were to fortuitously see him in a restaurant.
I didn’t exactly know how sharing my ruminations in therapy would help them go away. I just knew that this had been happening for almost two years now and that none of my efforts had helped. So I kept talking, kept detailing how each of them had wronged me. The more time passed, the more our therapy sessions began to feel like the rest of my life, just one angry loop, eternal recurrence without reliving any of the happy times.
Laura seemed genuinely interested in my story, so I kept sharing it, one grisly episode after another. She would ask what feelings accompanied my ruminations, and my answer every time was anger. Pure, visceral anger. I felt so much anger that I would often fantasize about enacting revenge, imagine sending my ex-girlfriend a mean text message or embarrassing my ex-boss in front of his friends if I were to fortuitously see him in a restaurant.
I didn’t exactly know how sharing my ruminations in therapy would help them go away. I just knew that this had been happening for almost two years now and that none of my efforts had helped. So I kept talking, kept detailing how each of them had wronged me. The more time passed, the more our therapy sessions began to feel like the rest of my life, just one angry loop, eternal recurrence without reliving any of the happy times.
And then one morning, a string of mental associations led to a new, unexpected memory. I told Laura that I must have been around nine years old. I was in my bubbie’s dining room, sitting across the table from her. “Donny,” my bubbie said, looking at me through her purple-rimmed glasses, “tell me what’s new.” That might not seem like such a big deal, but to me, it felt huge. My bubbie, an adult, was talking to me, this little boy, like an equal. She wasn’t just pretending to take an interest, the way other adults did. She genuinely wanted to know about me.
I told Laura how much my bubbie and zayde loved all of us grandchildren. “One of my cousins works in a sandwich shop and another is this high-profile chemist, but none of that mattered to them. They just wanted us to be happy. That’s the only thing they really cared about, if we were happy.” I then started to cry, something I had never before done in a therapy session. “They accepted us for who we were. And there was nothing — nothing — any of us could have done to lose their love.”
My tears that morning marked a turning point in my therapy. My bubbie and zayde had given me unconditional acceptance and love, the very thing I had wanted so badly but not received from my ex-boss, ex-girlfriend, and father. My tears suggested that other emotions existed beneath my anger.
My ruminations continued for several months, but something had changed, and at times therapy started to take the feel of a detective story. Laura was still doing those therapist things like asking about my feelings, but we were now trying to uncover “the meaning” of my ruminations. Mental phenomena, she believed, were never random; every feeling, every reaction clued us into the workings of my unconscious mind.
Detective stories involve red herrings, and mine was no exception. When Laura and I investigated what had happened with my ex-boss, we realized that something wasn’t adding up. It didn’t make sense that I spent so much time thinking about a man with whom I had not had a deep emotional connection. Nor did it make sense that I spent so much time thinking about him for doing something to me that was wrong but wrong in a very common, banal sort of way.
We were similarly puzzled by my ruminations of my ex-girlfriend. After some digging, we concluded that I didn’t actually miss her and that I most definitely didn’t want to get back together. What had caused me so much distress, it seemed, had not been her absence in my life but the presence of that other man. Again, all this did not seem to be enough to account for my endless ruminations.
We then turned our attention to my father. I shared that, although my parents divorced when I was little, he had always been incredibly involved. He never missed a Little League game or school performance. When I got older, he would call me on the phone every night, just to check in, to see how my day had been, to remind me to brush my teeth. No dad is perfect, but I had never doubted that he loved me and would do anything in the world for me.
And then I grew up, I told Laura, and that’s when everything changed. Perhaps my father suddenly felt threatened by me, perhaps he didn’t know how to be a father to a grown son. Whatever the case, he started trying to control me, and I predictably asserted myself. He then became increasingly critical, first over little things, then over bigger things, and I began to push him away. In my mid-twenties, he got remarried and moved to Oklahoma. The years passed, and our relationship slowly worsened until I finally concluded that he no longer loved me. When we talked on the phone, he presented himself as a devoted husband, doting stepfather, and extra-doting grandfather, an altogether happy man who didn’t seem to think much about me.
Laura and I felt we had finally found the culprit, the cause of my ruminations. Imagine us in an interrogation room, Laura and I sitting on one side of the table, my unconscious sitting across from us. My unconscious takes a long drag on a cigarette. He knows he’s been caught, and so now, just as the criminal always does in detective stories, he begins to explain himself. “I really just wanted to protect you,” he says. “I know it seems like I’m the enemy, but I didn’t think you could handle your dad’s rejection. That kind of rejection hurts, it hurts bad.”
“So you lied to me,” I say.
“In a sense.” My unconscious takes another puff from the cigarette. “Look, pal, your dad hurt you bad. A guy gets hurt like that, and he feels pain. I’m talking real pain. I’m talking the pain of realizing that you’re all alone, realizing that the person who once loved you more than life itself now doesn’t even like you.”
He looks up at me as though wanting to make sure I understand. “And that’s why I ramped up the anger. Again, just trying to protect you. I know anger doesn’t feel great, but at least it makes you feel strong and powerful. Not like that pain. That pain pain can destroy you.”
“So you wanted me to be angry?”
“I wanted you to not hurt. I inflated your anger so it would be harder for you to feel your pain.”
“And what about my ex-boss?”
“And my ex-girlfriend?”
“She’s even more like your dad. She adored you, she pinned all her hopes and happiness on you. And then you disappointed her too. And just like that, you went from being the apple of her eye to being dog poop stuck to the bottom of her shoe. Sound like a familiar story? She dropped you for what’s-his-name just like your dad dropped you for that new family of his in Oklahoma.
“Look, the boss, the girlfriend, they hurt you, I get it. But those are just everyday kind of hurts, the kind of hurts that slow you down but don’t stop you. But what happened with your dad, now that’s the real deal. So I did what I had to do. I directed your attention to those two numbskulls and away from him. Look, pal, I’m sorry about all the ruminating, that’s no fun. But trust me, anything’s better than feeling the pain of a parent’s rejection.”
What that unconscious part of my brain did not understand, what therapy taught me, is that events that would have been overwhelmingly painful as a little boy are not overwhelming painful today. Which is not to say that coming to terms with my dad’s rejection did not hurt. Of course, it hurt. It hurt horribly. I don’t know if it will ever completely stop hurting.
But I needed to feel that hurt. I needed to grieve and to cry. And the more I grieved and cried, the better I felt. The lighter I felt. The more like myself I felt. Some days I cried and cried and cried. And I noticed that the more I cried, the more my ruminations started to dissipate.
On those days when I again find myself starting to feel stuck in the past and again feeling pissed off, I try to give myself the space to hurt. I know that’s the only way forward.
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