How to stop thinking about a problem
How to stop thinking about a problem.
If an obsessive thought about the same problem does not leave your head, interferes with your work, or prevents you from falling asleep, this article is for you. It will talk about what the mechanism of the appearance of problematic thoughts is, how to regulate it and benefit from it.
If you start thinking about a problem, it means that it is looming on your horizon. You have come into contact with it, and your thoughts are trying to draw your attention to the fact that you do not know what to do about it. If there is no problem on the horizon, but thoughts about it continue to persistently spin in your head (for example: if your eyes are blue on the outside, what color are they on the inside), then you need to read another article, and it’s better not to put it off.
What is the purpose of thoughts , why do they draw our attention to the same topic again and again? This happens to keep us safe. These thoughts are trying to convey to us that we do not have a valid strategy for behavior in this matter, and the strategy that we have will not bring us the desired result. This phenomenon can be observed most clearly when we have just encountered a problem and were unable to solve it. When we lost, were upset, suffered losses and damages. It is at this moment that a protective mechanism popularly called “hindsight” . Waves of all sorts of “what if it were like this,” “I should have said it like this,” “it would be better if I was silent at all” wash our consciousness.
What does this “hindsight” want from us? He wants us to develop a more effective behavior strategy , so that the next time we encounter a similar problem, we will get a completely different result and different emotions.
Why do some people have these thoughts constantly spinning, attacking them in orderly rows, while others get rid of them in a matter of minutes? The whole point is what question our “hind mind” is looking for the answer to. Some people shift responsibility for what happened onto others, asking themselves questions like: “how could he do this to me,” “why am I being punished like this,” “is it really possible to do this?” The second answer just one question: “what should I have done differently?” Exactly ME. They develop and improve their behavior strategy. This is where their hindsight energy goes. To find a way out by changing your behavior. As soon as a way out is found, the back mind turns off and thoughts go away.
The back mind has its own energy, which is equal to the pain and dissatisfaction received in the situation. Gradually, this energy weakens, and thoughts about this incident are replaced by other, more recent problems and situations. It weakens, but does not go away completely. This charge completely only by a found strategy of behavior, and one that actually solves the problem, allowing you to emerge victorious from the situation. The charge may be buried by new worries, but it continues to live in our consciousness, and later in the subconscious, periodically telling us about itself, giving us ideas. If we come across this topic again, he will wake up and begin to harass us with renewed vigor. He wants to help us, protect us, constantly tormenting us with his “think, think.”
What does it take to stop thinking? First, you need to unload all problems, all questions that attract attention from your head. It is much easier to solve them when they are written out on a piece of paper and are located outside, rather than inside. It’s like when you’re poisoned, the first thing you need to do is flush your stomach.
Secondly, focus on finding a strategy for your behavior. No matter who is to blame for the current situation, you need to think through: “what will I do if this happens.” A simple example, if there is a flood tomorrow, what will be my actions. What will I take with me, where will I run, who will I call. If I get fired from my job tomorrow, what will I do first and what will I do next? No “how dare they”, “this is not fair”, all such questions, just garbage in our heads. Learn to get rid of them as soon as you realize that you are thinking about it. Just stop this thought without wasting time on it.
Thirdly, if you don’t know the answer yourself, ask for advice , read articles on the Internet, look at YouTube. There are several billion people living on our planet; surely someone has already had a similar problem. Other people's experiences and solutions are not always ideal, but they can provide food for thought.
Fourthly, do not try to get distracted and switch your attention. There is no escape here by running away. It is escape from one's problems that underlies many bad habits, with the help of which people try to relieve stress, instead of looking for solutions. The charge will not turn off until you close the traumatic episode with a working behavioral strategy. It can be repressed, go into the subconscious, but even from there it will remind of itself. There is an opinion that it is precisely this repression that underlies many diseases.
If you want to stop thinking about problems, then be prepared to do a lot of work to put things in order in your head. Dismantle all the rubble and find an answer to every question. Find a way out, a behavior strategy, a way to respond. If you do this systematically, you develop a skill that allows you not to accumulate thoughts and worries, but to quickly solve them as they arise. Well, then, you see, you’ll stop thinking altogether . After all, most of our internal dialogue is our unresolved problems that we carry with us throughout our lives.
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When you let go of a situation, it lets you go too.
How we love to get stuck within our limits and limitations! Having once set a “goal” for ourselves or believing that we have found our “dream,” we can hold on to it until we gnashing our teeth. As if, not a step to the left, not a step to the right - otherwise you would be shot.
The same thing happens with relationships. How we cling to a person! As if we are afraid that this is the last person on Earth. And without him, we will remain completely alone and die of fear and hunger...
In fact, the law of “Devil’s snares” operates in the psychological, mental field.
I spied this plot in the film about Harry Potter. And since then I often tell it as an indicative metaphor about what is actually happening with your situation.
So, the Devil's Snare is a kind of tree-plant. If a person gets into it, it begins to compress him. And the more a person wants to get out of it, the more it squeezes him. And, in the end, it can kill.
But at the same time, if the person caught allows himself to completely RELAX, to let himself go, then the snares instantly loosen their grip.
The same metaphor is present in Vadim Zeland in “Transurfing Reality”. But there it is designated as “Potentials of excess importance.” In other words, if a person is too obsessed with something, and it is a super-value for him (including unconscious), then he will NOT succeed in it . At least kill yourself.
However, I warn you to confuse being too concerned about a situation with REASONABLE ACTIONS.
Because, sometimes, the most reasonable action is to LET GO OF THE SITUATION. Or, as Vadim Zeland says, simply “slowly move your feet in the direction of what you want.”
To distinguish where you just need to “move your feet” and where you need to let go completely, just look at WHAT INFLUENCE the current situation has on you.
If your emotional state goes off scale at the mere thought of her, then that’s for sure, Devil’s Snare . If your blood pressure is going up and you're having trouble sleeping. Either you’ve lost your appetite, or, conversely, you’re overeating. That's right, the Devil's snare.
That is, you need to completely relax. And, most importantly, UNDERSTAND FOR YOURSELF that the more I twist, the stronger it compresses.
Letting go of the situation means accepting defeat.
Yes, imagine! Accept in peace that “yes, I won’t succeed here. I lost." Allow yourself to lose and not get what you want.
If you can let go of the situation, then the situation will let you go too.
Tendency to think about bad things
Man's worst enemies would not wish him those troubles,
which may bring him his own thoughts.
Eastern wisdom
The tendency to think about bad things as a personality trait is a lack of control of the mind, a tendency to constantly think about bad things, to give birth to gloomy thoughts in your mind, to use your imagination to create the most depressing and gloomy pictures.
The tendency to think about bad things is the voluntary surrender of one’s consciousness to dark thoughts. A person has up to sixty thousand thoughts running through his mind every day. If the mind does not know how to control the flow of thoughts, most of the thoughts can become negative with all the ensuing negative consequences for the one who has allowed his mind to be turned into a “bazaar of thoughts.”
When thoughts hover in the mind like a free bird, a person becomes a hostage to the makeup of his personality: the vicious qualities of the personality, taking advantage of the lack of self-control and self-discipline, will prevail over the virtues. Without self-control, it will be difficult for the virtuous to cope with even one negative thought. One bad, black thought can become dominant, without self-control it can overturn the orderly rows of positive thoughts and plunge a person into a state of stress.
What does it mean to not think about bad things? This means reviving in yourself the ability to control the restless component of the mind, that is, putting the thought flow under strict control and selective screening: good thoughts (customs gives the go-ahead), bad thoughts - to the side, do not block the passage.
All thoughts arise on the sly. If a barrier is not placed in front of them in time, they begin to develop into some kind of idea and capture the imagination. When these are bad thoughts, and a person cannot order himself: - That's it! Don't think about it! - he is colonized by negativity.
A reasonable person must control his thoughts. He has no right to waste energy and time on what his chaotic, chaotic mind throws at him. You need to realize that a thought is an action, that it is material, that for thoughts about bad things you have to pay with your health, and sometimes with your life.
For example, a person is used to going out for a walk and thinking about how he would take revenge on other countries for the injustice committed against his country. His imagination ran wild, and so he became the inventor of a giant laser, which appears at his command anywhere on the planet and begins to saw through enemy ships and submarines, enterprises producing military equipment, ballistic nuclear missiles, in a word, in a day or two, destroys all the weapons of the enemy force except, of course, for your own country. After every walk, instead of feeling a surge of vigor and freshness, he feels like a beaten dog, as if the tanks had ironed him. And all because he thought about bad things. The body perceives everything as if it really happened.
To think about bad things means to defile your mind, to pollute your consciousness. To get rid of bad thoughts, simple physical activity is necessary. A bad thought comes into your head, pinch yourself, you’ll see that you gradually develop an aversion to negative thinking.
Philosopher Vyacheslav Ruzov claims that thoughts creep in, and they don’t just creep in, but some kind of capture of the fortress occurs. You need to constantly fight them. This is a kind of war, this confrontation, positive and negative, is quite serious, that is, we have two concepts in us: we want to be good and we have negative tendencies, we have habits, these habits do not want to go away. They feel good with us, we have already fed them, this is no longer just some kind of habit, we have already fed it for several lives, we liked it. Well, try feeding some dog. Give her something every morning and she will stay in this place. She will come every morning. Also, if we follow our habit, that is, some pleasant thought has come to our mind. We thought of her. We’ve fed everyone, she’ll definitely come tomorrow, and if we tell her: “Go away,” she’ll say, “I don’t understand.” Yesterday we fed you, but today what? Do your duty. If we have tamed someone, please feed us, so what begins? The fight begins, we begin to fight with those whom we ourselves have fed.
We ourselves must fight those habits that, in general, we instilled in ourselves. Nobody forced us, so we need to honestly, so to speak, without taking offense at anyone, neither ourselves nor others, honestly and seriously get used to not following the trends that arise in us. Don't follow the lead. They come, tell them no. You must never let bad thoughts enter your head.
Most of all our consciousness is afraid of publicity. If some thought comes to mind, just tell her: “I’ll tell everyone about you now.” Do you know how she will immediately run away? A bad thought comes, you immediately tell her: “Now I’ll tell everyone, I’ll get up and specifically tell everyone.” She will sit and be silent until she is alone with you. The mind is cunningly designed; it does not like publicity.
Bad thoughts have a real unpleasant sensory aftertaste. My mouth feels disgusting, as if I ate something bad, I want to rinse my mouth out. It’s not good, because real desecration is happening. Although the thought seems virtual to us, it is not virtual, it is real. Therefore, the defilement from bad thoughts is also real.
Petr Kovalev 2014 Other articles by the author: https://www.podskazki.info/karta-statej/
Top 5 Tips to Stop Obsessing with Negative Thoughts
Constant tension, multitasking, stress - all this, repeated day after day, ultimately leads to the fact that we cannot switch. Sometimes, even in moments of relaxation, when nothing predicts it, some thought from “work life” will definitely pop up. This situation is very emotionally exhausting and leads to the fact that you can, at a minimum, flare up over some trifle, or, at maximum, acquire a bunch of diseases. tells how to stop “chewing” problems and get out of the stream of negative thoughts.
Visit a specialist
The most important thing is not to miss the real mental problems. WHO says that depression will soon become the most dangerous disease after heart problems. Therefore, you should not think that a bad mood is just some kind of whim (especially if it is so bad that you can barely force yourself to do anything). As soon as the psychologist tells you that nothing life-threatening is happening, you can move on to independent therapy.
Let's brush aside emotions
As a rule, most people in stressful situations begin to stress themselves out even more. As a result, a small problem grows into something gigantic. For example, you need to make an important call. And you begin to imagine the development of events: “Suddenly the person will be uncomfortable speaking, and suddenly he will be rude, and suddenly he will not give complete information, then there will be a reprimand from the authorities, and suddenly he will drop the call altogether, how then to contact him.”
In such a situation, try to focus on the facts. Remember that this is part of the job, concentrate on the questions that need to be asked, this is just a call, the interlocutor will be far away from you, you may never even see him in person, nothing threatens your life.
Try to look at the situation that is beginning to envelop you in panic, as if from the outside, and evaluate it rationally. Absolutely, without any admixture of emotions, any problem will turn into a task.
Imagine it's all over
Test each issue to see if it is “durable.” Imagine that everything is behind you. Mentally move away from what is happening 10 minutes, 10 hours, 10 days, 10 months.
If we return to the same phone call as an example: recreate in your head the moment the conversation ended. Even if something goes wrong, you will be tense, worried, even for 10 minutes, but after 10 hours, most likely you will be occupied with other tasks.
Such a test will allow you to understand which problems are really worth the emotional cost, and which are far-fetched and exaggerated.
Take a deep breath
Breathing practices are everything to us. They allow you to calm down, relax, get rid of negativity and worries.
Therefore, if you feel that bad thoughts are starting to consume you, begin to monitor your breathing, gradually calming it down.
Don't hold back
We are only people, not superheroes, so we cannot control our thoughts and monitor our reactions to them 24/7. If you feel that it’s really hard and no rational methods simply work, give free rein to your emotions. Cry, break something, scream, you can tear paper, hit a pillow, go to training. It is better to throw out everything that has accumulated where it can be done, where there are no unnecessary witnesses.
To less often find yourself driven into a corner by your own thoughts, do not forget to take care of yourself: sleep well, eat well, take a walk. The fact is that severe overwork is most often the cause of a bad mood and, as a result, negative thoughts. Remember that it is better to spend energy on pleasant thoughts.
