Worriers of the world, is your repetitive negative thinking caused by lack of sleep?
Repetitive negative thinking occurs when a person compulsively lingers on thoughts and stimuli that are distressing and unhelpful, which often leads to a decreased quality of life and the emergence of mental health problems, tied to depression and anxiety, in particular.
Prof. Meredith E. Coles and Jacob A. Nota, both of whom are from the State University of New York at Binghamton, conducted a study that focused on the link between repetitive thoughts of moderate and high intensity — also referred to as "worry" and "rumination," respectively — and an individual's nightly sleep duration and habits.
Their findings have been reported in the Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry.
Poor sleep and 'elevated negative thinking'
The researchers recruited 52 participants aged between 18 and 65, all of whom had scored highly on the Perseverative Thinking Questionnaire, which is a test that aims to measure an individual's level of repetitive negative thinking.
For the purpose of this study, the participants were shown various pairs of images — both neutral and emotionally evocative — and their degree of attention was tested by following their eye movements.
Prof. Coles and Nota observed that the participants who reported frequent sleep disturbances also found it more difficult to stop focusing on any negative stimuli they were exposed to, suggesting a link between poor sleep and the preponderance of intrusive thoughts.The team also collected information about the participants' sleep cycles, recording data about how long they tended to sleep every night and around what time they normally fell asleep.
"We found," explains Prof. Coles, "that people in this study have some tendencies to have thoughts get stuck in their heads, and their elevated negative thinking makes it difficult for them to disengage with the negative stimuli that we exposed them to."
"While other people may be able to receive negative information and move on, the participants had trouble ignoring it," she adds.
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