What is the brood?
Have you ever found yourself thinking continuously about a problem or a concern without being able to free it? Most likely yes. It is, in fact, an experience that almost all of us have experienced at least once in our lives.
But what are we talking about? Of the brood or of that process of thought in which the person focuses in a repetitive way on a negative event that could occur in the future, on a concern, a threat, a possible danger.
The intent that guides those who mull is to solve a problemto reach a conclusion or to find an answer. In reality, not only by brooding the person does not come to a solution but, in most cases, is faced with the intensification of the problem. It makes catastrophic predictions that lead to the persistence of unpleasant emotions.
The brooding is often associated with anxiety problems and means that the person persists in a constant state of alert. Thinking continuously of feared future scenarios, continually focusing on negative aspects and possible unwanted consequences, active and amplifies unpleasant emotions by feeding the vicious circle of anxiety.
There brooding person Thus he finds himself without a definitive response, stuck and blocked in a spiral of thoughts that follow one another cyclically and that do not bring it anywhere. If not to continue thinking in a redundant way, thus strengthening his psychological malaise. Let’s see how this process acts with examples.
Brood: clinical examples
The brood plays a central role in multiple psychological problems.
Generalized anxiety
It, in a patient with a generalized anxiety disorder, could occur, for example, in the following way. Starting from an initial thought which “I sent a report to the boss, and if there was any mistakes?”, The person could enter the following spiral of thoughts and worries:
- What if my boss don’t find the full report?
- What if I thought I’m not able?
- What if he lost trust in me?
- What if this influenced my career?
- What if I lost the job?
- What if I can’t find another?
- What if I found myself in great economic difficulties?
- What if I couldn’t keep my family?
- What if my wife decides to leave me for this? “
As you can see, concerns concern numerous events and situations and pass from one theme to another.
Anxiety for diseases
The brood of a patient with a disease anxiety disorder has, however, as content mainly fears and fears related to the disease, on the one hand, and, on the other, to diagnostic uncertainty.
Starting from a headache, the person could formulate the following chain of negative thoughts: “I have had a headache already several times in the last week ….”
- What if I had something serious?
- What if it was the sign of brain cancer?
- What if I had a brain tumor and didn’t notice it in time?
- What if he worse?
- And if I make a visit and the doctor tells me that I have nothing?
- What if you are wrong?
- What if it was too late?
The patient anxiety of illness, following automatic intrusive thoughts Which formulates relating to situations activating for him, is hired in a transcription process that uses coping strategy to “prevent disease” or to “notice in time to have it in order to run for cover”.
Obsessive-compulsive disorder
A patient with obsessive-compulsive disorder from relationship (DOC DA REPORT), could be hired in the following thought process:
- What if I really loved my partner?
- What if the relationship with my partner was not the right one?
- I really feel what I should hear?
- What if what I feel was not of the same intensity as when we put together?
- What if you weren’t really in love?
- If I’m not 100%sure, then maybe it’s not the right person?
- What if I made an irremediable mistake? “
The brood, in this case, has for the patient the purpose of seeking an answer to his anguished doubts.
In all three clinical examples presented, the brood tends to increase stress and malaise instead of solving difficulties and contributes to the intensification of symptoms.
Repetitive thought increases anxiety without solving the problemthus maintaining psychological problems.
How to manage the brood
To work on the brooding process, it is useful that the person has well in mind how to broke does not lead to the solution of the problem.
Be aware And recognizing when the mind begins to mull out is a first step to dismiss from the use of this mental process.
It is also essential that the person operates a renovation of some beliefs underlying the brood, for example that of uncontrollability.
Beliefs about the uncontrollability of the brood
It is possible that people believe they do not have control over their thoughts and live concerns as “impossible to control”. But concern is far from impossible to control.
For example, it can be interrupted when unexpected external factors occur or when alternative cognitive elaborations come. Try to ask you, for example:
- “How do I say that the brooding is uncontrollable?”;
- “If I’m mugging, they play me on the bell and I go to open, what happens to my concern?”;
- “If it were really uncontrollable, how would I stop when I go to answer the phone or when I go to open the door?”;
- “What happens to my concern when I go to sleep?”;
- “How would I sleep if the concern was uncontrollable?”;
- “What happens to my concern when I do something important?”.
It is essential to note how we cannot have the control over intrusive thoughts Initial but, on the contrary, we can choose not to commit ourselves to the consequent brooding process.
Beliefs about the utility of the brood
In addition to perceiving concerns as intrusive and uncontrollable, it is possible that those who mullet, feel concern as useful to face disturbing events.
Believe that removing serves to analyze a problem at best and to solve it, to reduce the probability that the feared event will happen and prepare for the various possible scenarios thus feeling safer.
If you also think that brooding is useful to test the following questions:
- “Do I have any tests that brooding is actually advantageous?”;
- “Have I ever done something without worrying? In those cases, what was the result? “.
Also try to ask you what happens to your concentration and anxiety when you mulch and how often the situations are then concretized precisely in the way you painted them when you broke us.
Probably, by answering these questions you had the opportunity to realize how much worry off reality.
You can try, in addition, to engage in concern modulation experiments by going to increase and decrease the brood on the scenarios you feared. You can then evaluate, subsequently, the consequences thus coming to perceive how much brood is not actually useful.
Because brooding is useless and harmful
This repetitive and self -employed thought pattern is therefore an important work target for reduce anxiety and increase wellness general.
To relate to your thoughts in a healthy way you could practice mindfulness that, through the possibility of being in the here and now, the suspension of the judgment and the acceptance of the present moment as it is, can guide you in the suspension of the brood.
If the brood was particularly impactful in your life and if it were to limit your daily well-being, contact a cognitive-behavioral psychotherapist could prove particularly useful.
Conclusions
What has been said, overall, wants to underline the importance of acquiring, gradually, awareness with respect to the activation of the brood. This in order to direct towards the suspension and abandonment of this cognitive strategy, which only contributes to feeding the vicious circle of anxiety, in the name of alternative adaptive strategies.
It is therefore necessary to mitigate the brooding process which follows the intrusions and experiment with alternative strategies to intense brooding activity. This always keeping in mind that it is not so much the content of thought (the “thing” we think) to determine high levels of anxiety, stress and emotional suffering as the “how” we think.
Bibliographic references
- American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.). Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press.
- Bailey, R., & Wells, A. (2016). Is Metacognition a causal moderator of the relationship Bethaeen Catastrophic Misinterpretation and Health Anxietyy? A prospective study. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 7843-50.
- Sassaroli, S., & Ruggiero, GM (2003). The cognitive psychopathology of the brood. Cognitive and behavioral psychotherapy, 9, 31-45.
- Wells, A. (2018). Metacognitive therapy of anxiety disorders and depression. Trento: Erickson.
