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Rumination makes bad events feel closer

Time warp Ruminating about something bad that happened to you can make it feel like the event happened 'just yesterday', say researchers.

Their new study gives insight into a concept known as 'psychological distance', and could help in the treatment of conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder.

"If you're constantly having intrusive unwanted thoughts about an emotional event it really makes it feel like it's just happened yesterday, or last week," says research team member, Dr Tom Denson of the University of New South Wales' School of Psychology.

Previous research has found that when we remember events or places that are associated with particular feelings we experience them as having a certain psychological distance.

"Depending on our emotional state we tend to see things as either closer or further away," says Denson.

For example a country which is home to enemies we fear may seem closer than it actually is.

But how do emotions affect our psychological sense of time ?

Yesterday, not so far away

When people think about a negative emotional event from their life they often say it feels like it happened "just yesterday", while at other times they may feel as if it happened "in a previous life."

Denson and colleagues wanted to explore the role of rumination -- persistent and intrusive thinking -- in determining how close a negative event felt in time.

In three studies, involving 800 people, the researchers asked participants to recall an interaction with someone, that occurred on a known date, and made them feel angry, sad, guilty or neutral.

The participants were then asked to say how much they thought about the event and how close in time it felt to them.

The results, published today in PLOS ONE, show rumination is inversely related to the perceived distance of an event.

"Independently of when the event actually occurred, the people that ruminated about these events more felt like it had happened more recently -- literally it could have happened just yesterday," says Denson

Denson says rumination appears to have this effect because it makes events seem more vivid.

"You really re-live, for example, the anger-provoking event. You can see the person yelling in front of you," says Denson.

"The things that happen to be vivid to people are things that tend to happen to them more recently."

This idea was supported by findings with people who recalled an angry event. The more people wanted to confront the person who made them angry, the more they ruminated, and the closer the event seemed.

"It was like they had unfinished business with that person and they were carrying it around with them," says Denson.

Applications

The new findings on how people experience psychological time can help explain why people with post-traumatic stress disorder are often very confused about when negative events happened.

Denson says if the findings are correct, then trying to "snuff out" rumination could help put some psychological and emotional distance between a person and a traumatising negative event.

He says using tools such as "mindfulness", which involves letting go negative thoughts, could be useful here.

Re-living negative experiences is undesirable because it has a lot of negative impacts on mental and physical health, says Denson.

"For example, if you ruminate about a time when you were angry you maintain high levels of cortisol stress hormone and maintain a very high level of cardiovascular arousal," he says.

"All of that can have a lot of wear and tear on your body, which can actually result in things like cardiovascular disease.