If you completed the survey that Steffen Eriksen and I administered within the Pokémon TCG community last month, you might wonder why the focus on rumination? And what is rumination? Kudos to The Trashalanche Podcast for asking some very good questions in their latest episode and for pointing to the benefits of the written word on a topic such as this. Their discussion, along with the dearth of sites publishing freemium articles, was the push I needed to reopen the doors to Celadon City Gym (CCG).
Rumination, quite simply, is overthinking. It is an extreme form of reflection. Rumination is a maladaptive pattern of responding to distress or an emotionally relevant stimulus by repetitively and passively focusing on the meanings, causes and consequences rather than actively working toward a solution to resolve the circumstances surrounding that distress or stimulus.
Rumination is a trans-diagnostic risk factor for a whole host of mental maladies such as depression and anxiety. You can absolutely find ruminators who are not depressed and depressed people who are not ruminators, but there is strong evidence that having a ruminative response style increases your risk for developing depression.
And the connection to the Pokémon TCG community? I worked on a paper at the beginning of last year while I was finishing up my Masters degree in Public Health (MPH) that was based on the theory that our community is at elevated risk of depression. This theory was rooted in observations I've made over the past 20 years, but it is supported by some literature on nerd and gaming communities. Nobody in the Pokémon TCG community is ever shocked or surprised when I talk about this elevated risk, though. Nothing groundbreaking there.
Depression has an array of risk factors (many of which are modifiable) - rumination is just one of them. So why focus on it? Lack of social connection is another risk factor and so is a lack of help-seeking behaviors. My observations of our community do not point to these factors, however. There is generally a strong sense of community here - many of us are drawn to the game or stick with the game because of the friendships we have made. We also generally seem to enjoy talking about our distress - just picture all the between round discussions after fellow players experience losses at a tournament. Everyone seems to want to talk about their losses - even if the loss isn’t devastating or interesting in the slightest.
In addition to the friendships, I suspect that people are drawn to the game because they enjoy the rigorous thinking required to win. Related to this, I have a new theory that people with ruminative thought styles (i.e. overthinkers) are drawn to games like the Pokémon TCG. Additionally, by rewarding rigorous thinking, the Pokémon TCG might have the unintended consequence of promoting ruminative thought styles within our community.
This is the theory that the survey might shed some light on, or give me direction for future research. Steffen and I still have much analysis to do, but I intend to report many of the findings here at CCG.
In closing, I actually reserved the domain to celadoncitygym.org way back in February 2020. Why did it take me 20 months to actually launch the site and publish my first article? It certainly wasn’t because I wasn’t thinking about it. In fact, I thought a lot about resurrecting CCG over the past 20 months. I spent too much time thinking, planning and attempting to problem solve to perfection. That time was mostly unhelpful and frustrating, but it is a good example of how a ruminative response can play out. In any case, it is good to be back!
~Colin
Additional resources on rumination:
A retrospective on an academic pioneer of rumination: Thinking About Rumination: The Scholarly Contributions and Intellectual Legacy of Susan Nolen-Hoeksema.
A practical guide on how to employ strategies from metacognitive therapy - a novel form of therapy that aims to modify ruminative thought styles: How to Stop Overthinking.