Our red system is responsible for the stress response that occurs when we perceive danger. This response is known as the fight or flight, but the original name also indicates a third option: fight or flight or freeze. The 'fight' response to ourselves is self-criticism, the 'flight' response is isolation and the 'freeze' response is rumination. These three reactions are the exact opposite of the three components of self-compassion. For self-criticism, kindness to oneself, for isolation, awareness of our common human nature, and for freezing, mindfulness can be the cure.

Ruminating is a property of our brain that repeats negative thoughts endlessly. It is a recurring, uncontrollable mindset that leads to depression if it is about past experiences, and anxiety if it is about possible future negative experiences. Since the same mechanism, rumination, is at work in both depression and anxiety, these unpleasant mood states often go hand in hand.

If you are suffering from anxiety or depression and recognise that you are frequently ruminating, the first step you can take towards recovery is to stop judging yourself for ruminating. The root cause of rumination on negative thoughts is the desire for security. 

Even if these brain patterns lead to undesirable results, we can still respect them for trying to save our ancestors from the dangers they faced in nature. It's also important to remind ourselves of the fact that although some people ruminate more than others, to some extent this bias towards negative information is present in all people's brains. It is the way our brains are wired, it is part of our default mode of functioning.

Awareness of all this does not absolve us of our responsibility to do something to ruminate less. Here we can also practice allowing paradox, accepting the coexistence of things that at first sight seem mutually exclusive, accepting the complexity of the world: on the one hand, we can empathise with ourselves, who by human nature, by the structure of our brain, are prone to dwell on the negative, and on the other hand, we can look for ways to change this.

Self-compassion can be a way to break free from patterns of rumination and its harmful effects.

When we look at negative thoughts and emotions without judgement, we are able to pay attention to them without getting stuck in them.

Mindfulness helps us to experience that our negative emotions and thoughts are just emotions and thoughts, not necessarily reflect reality. We can observe them and not necessarily believe them. Thus, the emotions and thoughts that arise in negative distortion can appear and disappear freely without any resistance. This helps us to deal with whatever life brings with greater calm.

A useful mindfulness technique is to become aware of unpleasant emotions when they arise, and to pay attention to the body sensations they are associated with. When we pay attention to how we experience them in our body, our attention is no longer focused on the thoughts that triggered the emotion. It's easier to stay in the present. When we stay anchored in our bodies, we are able to calm ourselves while continuing to feel the pain without getting lost in negativity.

However, there are situations when mindfulness alone is not enough to prevent us from getting stuck in our depressive and anxious moods. In such cases, we need to actively calm ourselves.

When we hear the term active self-soothing, it is easy to think of some kind of relaxation technique, or of telling ourselves to "calm down". 

There are people and situations for whom and in which such techniques work, but many people complain that practising them makes them more tensioned. Our nervous system has no command to actively relax our muscles, so it's no wonder we can't command ourselves to relax.

Yet there is a sense in which we can actively calm ourselves through self-compassion exercises, but this is different from relaxation techniques. The difference is often subtle, barely noticeable at first glance. Practice is needed to recognise it.

In self-compassion, our activity is to turn our attention consciously towards our suffering, to remind ourselves that suffering is a shared human experience that connects us to all humanity, and to turn towards ourselves with tenderness and kindness. What happens most often is that we begin to feel cared for, accepted and safe. Feelings of safety and warmth are linked to our green system, which is activated by self-compassion practices, and turns off or at least down-regulates our red system, our body's defence system: our amygdala calms down and oxytocin is released in our body.

When we notice that we are ruminating on the past or the future, we can try to see what happens if we don't tell ourselves not to ruminate, if we don't start to condemn ourselves for ruminating again, but we become aware that ruminating is part of the activity of every human being's red system. Its purpose is to protect us from danger - even if it does not help us most of the time - and we address ourselves in a gentle, kind tone, looking for words to express our love and compassion for ourselves.