I Keep Thinking the Same Thing Over and Over Again
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In that location are just two things you tin can truly control—your thoughts and your behavior. No one else can cull either 1 of those for you. But sometimes intrusive thoughts nearly unwanted events can flood your mind and it can feel like your thoughts are controlling you.
Whether it is something that happened in the past or a futurity result you are worried about, negative rumination robs you of your present well-beingness and, over time, can lead to serious issues like depression or anxiety.
Why do we ruminate on negative things?
- Sometimes nosotros are trying to figure out a solution to a problem.
- Sometimes nosotros are expecting something to go wrong and trying to avert an unfavorable outcome.
- Sometimes a part of our encephalon isn't functioning properly and a set of neurons gets stuck firing over and again.
- Sometimes information technology is just a bad habit.
The problem with ruminating
The problem with ruminating is that most frequently you are focused on things going wrong instead of how to generate the solutions to resolve the situation and make things become right. If your dominate got aroused with you, y'all may be ruminating about what you did and worrying that if you do it again there might exist serious consequences like losing your job. You might replay the scene with your boss over and over in your head, or worry excessively about what would happen if the worst-case scenario did come up to laissez passer. This kind of thinking activates your fight-or-flight response which actually shuts down your creative trouble-solving idea process. In order to find the resolution that volition allow you to let go of the problem, you lot need to disengage from the ruminative idea pattern.
Stopping thoughts, yet, isn't something nosotros are very practiced at.
Psychologists refer to this as "the white comport trouble," because deliberate attempts to suppress thoughts can oftentimes brand them more probable to resurface.1 If I say to call back of a white bear, and then tell y'all to stop thinking about it, chances are the white acquit image will stay in your heed. The reason it does is that there is no "Off" button in the brain. To cease any single thought, you need to turn on or activate a unlike stream of thinking.
How to terminate your thoughts
Following are four ways you can begin to regain control over your thoughts.
1. Appoint in an activity on a different emotional frequency.
Feeling follows thought, then negative rumination generates negative emotions. Worrying makes y'all feel anxious. All the same, psychologists know behavior tin can modify emotions, also. If you do something that you know generally makes you feel better—going for a run, calling a friend, watching your favorite movie, or meditating—you can enhance your emotional frequency. When you are in a better mood, you tin think more than conspicuously and may gain a different perspective on the state of affairs. Doing something that generates positive emotion too acts as a distraction chore past simply giving you lot something else to focus your attention on.
2. Write downwards all the reasons why what you fear will not happen.
The majority of the things we worry about never happen. That's because well-nigh of the time in that location are lots of valid reasons why what we worry about is unlikely. However, because our brain works on an activation/inhibition model,2 active thoughts about what could go wrong inhibit it from thinking of the reasons these thoughts may non be rational. It requires a full-bodied conscious try to shift this train of thought and recollect of the reasons why your fright isn't probable to come to pass.
3. Write down all the reasons why even if the worst-case scenario did happen, yous would still be okay.
Many times we experience that if something unwanted were to happen, it would be completely devastating: Nosotros wouldn't be able to survive, or we'd be forever unhappy. The truth is that hard, unwanted things happen all the time and people survive and sometimes fifty-fifty come out the meliorate because of them. Our brains are extremely adaptive to our relative circumstances: Many paraplegics, a year after their injury, report simply as much happiness as lottery winners.3 How well you handle whatsoever situation depends largely on your perception of your ability to cope with it. Instead of focusing on why yous won't be okay, think of your strengths. Call back of the difficult things you accept already overcome in life and why you lot are resourceful enough to get through other challenges.
4. Create an action-oriented, solution-focused reframe.
When you have a resolution to the state of affairs, y'all volition have both reduced the need for your brain to ruminate and given yourself something constructive to focus on instead, which replaces the ruminative thoughts. Asking yourself a few uncomplicated questions can assist you movement towards generating a solution:
a. What practise I believe this state of affairs means for me?
Because nosotros tin only move forrad in time, nosotros tend to think of events that happen to united states of america in terms of what they mean for us in the future. If you take an statement with your boss, you lot worry most what information technology will hateful for your futurity: Our human relationship might be damaged; I might non become a promotion. (If something bad happened but it had absolutely no begetting on your life going forrad, it wouldn't carp you much.)
b. What do I want to happen?
I would like to repair my relationship with my boss. Clarity about what you want is a prerequisite to developing a solution to any problem.
c. What tin can I practice that is likely to bring that about?
I can ask to meet with my dominate to talk over the situation. I can brand certain to go along my temper in check in the hereafter. I can proceed to interact in a positive way. I can brand an effort to show my value. A program to deal with a problem causes you to see the situation differently and reduces your anxiety and the demand to ruminate.
If all else fails, retrieve that thoughts are just thoughts, and but because you remember something doesn't make it true. You don't have to act on your thoughts; you can merely notice them and allow the unhelpful ones get by.
LinkedIn image: polkadot_photo/Shutterstock
References
i. Wegner, D., & Schneider, D. 2003. The White Bear Story. Psychological Enquiry, 14 (3/four), 326–329.
2. Pribram, K., & McGuinness, D. 1975. Arousal, Activation, and Endeavour in the Command of Attention. Psychological Review 82 (2),116-49.
3. Brickman, P., Coates, D., & Janoff-Bulman, R. 1978. Lottery winners and accident victims: is happiness relative? Pers Soc Psychol, 36(8), 917-27.
Source: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/living-forward/201512/what-you-can-do-when-you-cant-stop-thinking-about-something
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