Simple First Aid Exercises against Unwanted Thoughts
Is it me or are our thoughts just a little bit harder to tame these days? We all know this feeling when our thoughts hijack our mind, and even worse, our body. A bad memory comes to mind and our the body just shudders. You lie in bed and gloomy images of the future come to mind. So what to do if you find yourself with a head full of unwelcome thoughts?
Our brain is a great storyteller! It’s a busy bee, churning out thought after thought all day. Some of these thoughts are simply absurd: “Maybe I can fly with my hands!”. We just let them enter and exit our minds, barely acknowledging them. Other thoughts, such as “I am a failure”, trigger a negative emotional response in us: fear, anger or sadness. Negative emotions are neurological alarm bells. From an evolutionary perspective, they flag that we are in danger, so our brain shouts: “This must be a very important thought! Hold on to it! Failure, huh? Let’s analyse that in excruciating detail!”. And there goes the sleep…
Is the thought useful?
At this point, we have to put our thinking into manual gear: Not all thoughts that trigger negative emotions are worth thinking about. Thoughts like “I am a failure” don’t provide any actionable insights. Thoughts like “How can I become better at X” are very valuable, but unwelcome when you are trying to sleep. How to deal with thoughts depends on the answer to the questions: Is the thought helpful? Does it make you grow as a person?
How to deal with the good ones?
Useful thoughts are the ones that give you ideas and ‘AHA’ moments. They don’t lead you around in circles. Once you know a thought is useful, the steps are straight forward:
Step 1: Organise the thought. For example, make a Trello card, take a note or use whatever process you prefer to find it later.
Step 2: Distract yourself. Now that you have set a time and place to continue the thought, it’s time to let go. It may feel difficult to do so because the thought isn’t ‘finished’. We have a psychological inclination to continue an interrupted action until it is complete. This is called the Ovsiankina Effect. To avoid falling victim to the same train of thought again, distract yourself for a short time to gain some distance. For example, listen to a podcast for 5 minutes or call a friend.
How to deal with the Baddies?
What to do if your thoughts are not helpful, but difficult to get out of your head? Here are a couple of ‘first aid’ strategies from clinical psychology.
Thought records
The use of thought records originated in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). In CBT, the objective is to confront your automatic negative thoughts. For this, you need to keep a record of negative thoughts, usually in the form of a thought record worksheet. Each entry involves 1) a description of the context and 2) alternative interpretations of the situation.
For example, let’s assume you have the automatic thought: I am a failure.
The context is: You applied for a job and received a rejection e-mail.
An alternative interpretation of the situation is: I failed at one job application. Maybe the job posting was outdated. One failed job application does not make me a failure.
When done repeatedly, this simple approach helps to eliminate cognitive distortions — thoughts that depict an inaccurate view of the world — usually a more negative one. The alternative, less negative interpretations eventually become automatic. Psychologytools is a good starting point to learn more about CBT methods.
Defusion Techniques
Defusion techniques are one of the core tools of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), a popular CBT alternative. While CBT is about learning to challenge negative thoughts, ACT suggests to observe and accept them instead. Thoughts are just stories the brain churns out, we don’t need to believe them. However, they need to be heard. According to ACT, trying to suppress or escape negative thoughts will only make them appear more often. The process of hearing out your thoughts without “fusing” with them is called defusion. The idea is to create an emotional distance to the thought, i.e. having the thought without believing or identifying with it. Here are a couple of ways to do so:
Method #1 “I have the thought that”: Phrase your thought as if you are an observer: “I have the thought that I suck” or “My brain is telling me that I suck”. This way, you don’t identify with the thought, but admit it’s there.
Method #2 Silly Voices: Humour can be very helpful to distance yourself from unwelcome thoughts. For example, try to picture that thought spoken out by a fictional or non-fictional character you know. I personally love to picture Marvin the Paranoid Android speaking out my most dreaded negative predictions about the future: “What does it matter what I do, the world is doomed anyway”.
Method #3 Naming the Story: Try assigning a title to your negative thoughts, or make it a musical theme. This will become useful when you start seeing repeated patterns and you can say: I know this song! It’s the “end of the world” tune.
You can find a good summary of ACT and its techniques in the book The Happiness Trap by Russ Harris.
Prevention
While the above methods provide first aid help when dealing with unwelcome thoughts, CBT and ACT are all about long-term prevention of unhealthy thought patterns. For example, ACT suggests calling recurrent negative thoughts into your mind on purpose to practice defusion. This helps to prevent these thoughts popping up unexpectedly at inconvenient times, like when you are trying to focus.
In the context of CBT, prevention means recognising the triggers for the negative thoughts and either removing the triggers or learning to wire these triggers to new thoughts and emotions. An example of removing the trigger could be avoiding excessive coffee consumption, which is known to cause anxiety in some people.
We all have unwelcome thoughts from time to time. We usually have a choice to engage or not engage with them. If we engage too much, we will eventually pay for this in an invisible currency: We will pay with the quality of our relationships or with our energy levels. Maybe now is a good time to learn to pay just a little less.
