Rumination
The Response Styles Theory (RST) was developed by Susan Nolen-Hoeksema in the early 1990s in the hope of explaining the strong relationship between depression and rumination. The theory describes rumination as a way of dealing with hard situations where you keep thinking about how and why you are depressed, and difficult situations in this way are more likely to get depressed in the future. Even though this theory is most focused on how rumination influences depression, research on rumination also explains how it relates to other mental troubles too, like anxiety, binge drinking and eating disorders. Wendy Traynor and her co-workers tried to improve RST to explain the link between rumination and depression better, because some people said that there might be other things that explain the relationship. They created the two-factor model. This says that rumination can be divided into two parts: brooding and reflection. Brooding is when you keep thinking of how your situation right now is not where you want to be, and what stops you from getting there. This style of rumination is related both to being depressed and getting depressed in the future. The second style is reflection, and is thought to be a better way to deal with difficult situations and feelings as it is related to less depression in the future. Reflection is when a person often tries to solve problems by thinking about how they can deal with their difficult situation or depression.