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04. Breaking the Rumination Cycle
04.
Breaking the Rumination Cycle
MISS ALICE STARTUP (ASSISTANT HOUSEMISTRESS YORK,
TEACHER OF HISTORY) EXPLORES CURRENT RESEARCH SURROUNDING HOW TO HELP STUDENTS TO BREAK THE RUMINATION CYCLE.
I recently attended a Conference for Early Career Teachers that explored many aspects of the teaching profession and gave both generalised and subject specialist information. One of the lectures I attended was given by Professor Patricia Riddell from the University of Reading, who explored how we can help our students, both pastorally and academically, by giving them the tools to differentiate their negative emotions, as well as breaking the cycle of rumination. I found this lecture fascinating, and after further research, I realised the importance of differentiating negative emotions. A recent study conducted by the University of Rochester (2019) claimed that students who cannot clearly express their feelings or who generalise their negative emotions by saying ‘I am sad’ or ‘I feel bad’ rather than pointing to the exact emotion, are more likely to suffer from generalised depression and lead to them snowballing towards panicking and a vicious cycle of repetitive negative emotions. This obviously has an impact on their academics as they are less likely to concentrate and become focused on these feelings. Not all negative emotions are bad, and experiencing negative emotions helps to build resilience in students however constant experiences of negative emotions can be detrimental to pupil progress and motivation.
During the lecture, Professor Riddell dealt with how we can help our students when they experience these negative feelings and how they can break the rumination cycle that occurs when pupils cannot effectively deal with their negative emotions. Whilst much of the lecture focused on how different parts of brain affect students processing their feelings, what I found most interesting was the differences between Depression, Anxiety, Stress and Overwhelm. The most commonly confused emotions are stress and overwhelm, and the words are often used interchangeably even though they mean completely different things. Professor Riddell explained that stress prevents students relaxing and puts them in a constant state of alert where they are likely to become irritable if there is delay or interruption to their activities, whereas overwhelm leads to apathy and often results in students simply stopping everything, as the body cannot carry on and must rest – often coined as burnout. So, if we can identify how a student is feeling, we need to then help them to recognise it too without it spiralling to rumination. Simple exercises such as asking students to say out loud how they feel and then breaking this down further to pinpoint their exact feelings can help them feel calmer. I have recently tried this in the boarding house, and students who were able to break down their feelings responded much more to support
and were able to begin to recognise whether their issues were blown out of proportion or not.
Another interesting aspect of Professor Riddell’s lecture was how rumination affects our students. When students constantly think about the same negative emotions, there is a risk of this developing further into generalised depression or anxiety. Helping students to stop ruminating is vital if we are to support them. Professor Riddell suggested many practical tips to help students, such as thinking of and completing one small action, or talking or writing down how they are feeling, or asking themselves what advice they would give to a friend in their situation and to follow this. These are all very good strategies, but when working with students, particularly in the boarding house, I have noticed that they are unable to recognise when they are ruminating and therefore continue to work themselves into a state, usually about events in the past or things they have no control over. Once again, by working with students to help them differentiate their negative emotions they will become more confident in recognising when they are ruminating and will eventually, given the tools, be able to break the rumination cycle with minimal support. This is why mindfulness is so important to students, as it gives them practical tools to help them distract their brains in a controlled and calm manner. I have found that explaining to students that they are ruminating and are fixating on past events they have no control over allows them to begin to move into breaking the cycle naturally, and gentle tips such as deep breathing or visualising random objects helps them to begin to calm down. Even tiredness plays a role here, as when we are tired or have just awoken, perhaps in the middle of the night with worries, our logical brain is “turned off” and things will seem much worse than they are. Students should be reminded to revisit these thoughts in the morning when they are well rested – it will not be as bad as they think it is! Breaking the rumination cycle is vital to help students build resilience and will help them to prioritise their emotions.
Overall, the lecture showed me the scientific angle of what we see with our students everyday – whether they are upset, angry, annoyed, bored or overwhelmed. It allowed me to think practically about how we can help our students to build their resilience, whilst also giving them the tools to support themselves as they face new challenges beyond the safe space of Downe House. Differentiating negative emotions is hard, even for adults, but by talking to and listening to our students, we can help them to start to recognise how they are feeling and support them to use the tools they have learnt to make negative emotions feel less daunting.
