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How to get rid of thoughts in your head


10 Tips to Stop Repetitive Thoughts

What is rumination?

Has your head ever been filled with one single thought, or a string of thoughts, that just keep repeating… and repeating… and repeating themselves?

The process of continuously thinking about the same thoughts, which tend to be sad or dark, is called rumination.

A habit of rumination can be dangerous to your mental health, as it can prolong or intensify depression as well as impair your ability to think and process emotions. It may also cause you to feel isolated and can, in reality, push people away.

People ruminate for a variety of reasons. According to the American Psychological Association, some common reasons for rumination include:

  • belief that by ruminating, you’ll gain insight into your life or a problem
  • having a history of emotional or physical trauma
  • facing ongoing stressors that can’t be controlled

Ruminating is also common in people who possess certain personality characteristics, which include perfectionism, neuroticism, and an excessive focus on one’s relationships with others.

You might have a tendency to overvalue your relationships with others so much that you’ll make large personal sacrifices to maintain your relationships, even if they’re not working for you.

Once you get stuck in a ruminating thought cycle, it can be hard to get out of it. If you do enter a cycle of such thoughts, it’s important to stop them as quickly as possible to prevent them from becoming more intense.

As when a ball is rolling downhill, it’s easier to stop the ruminating thoughts when they first start rolling and have less speed than when they’ve gathered speed over time.

So, what can you do to stop these obsessive thoughts from running through your mind?

Here are 10 tips to try when you begin to experience the same thought, or set of thoughts, swirling around your head:

1. Distract yourself

When you realize you’re starting to ruminate, finding a distraction can break your thought cycle. Look around you, quickly choose something else to do, and don’t give it a second thought. Consider:

  • calling a friend or family member
  • doing chores around your house
  • watching a movie
  • drawing a picture
  • reading a book
  • walking around your neighborhood

2. Plan to take action

Instead of repeating the same negative thought over and over again, take that thought and make a plan to take action to address it.

In your head, outline each step you need to take to address the problem, or write it down on a piece of paper. Be as specific as possible and also realistic with your expectations.

Doing this will disrupt your rumination. It will also help you move forward in the attempt to get a negative thought out of your head once and for all.

3. Take action

Once you’ve outlined a plan of action to address your ruminating thoughts, take one small step to address the issue. Refer to the plan you made to solve the problem you’ve been obsessing over.

Move forward with each step slowly and incrementally until your mind is put at ease.

4. Question your thoughts

We often ruminate when we think we’ve made a major mistake or when something traumatic has happened to us that we feel responsible for.

If you start ruminating on a troubling thought, try putting your repetitive thought in perspective.

Thinking more about how your troubling thought might not be accurate may help you stop ruminating because you realize the thought makes little sense.

5. Readjust your life’s goals

Perfectionism and unrealistic goal setting can lead to rumination. If you set goals that are unrealistic, you may start to focus on why and how you haven’t reached a goal, or what you should have done to reach it.

Setting more realistic goals that you’re capable of achieving can reduce the risks of overthinking your own actions.

6. Work on enhancing your self-esteem

Many people who ruminate report difficulties with self-esteem. In fact, lack of self-esteem can be associated with increased rumination. It’s also been linked with increased risk of depression.

Enhancement of self-esteem can be accomplished in many ways. For instance, building on existing strengths can add to a sense of mastery, which can enhance self-esteem.

Some people may choose to work on the enhancement of self-esteem in psychotherapy. As you enhance your self-esteem, self-efficacy may also be enhanced. You may find that you’re better able to control rumination.

7. Try meditation

Meditating can reduce rumination because it involves clearing your mind to arrive at an emotionally calm state.

When you find yourself with a repeating loop of thoughts in your mind, seek out a quiet space. Sit down, breathe deeply, and focus on nothing but breathing.

8. Understand your triggers

Each time you find yourself ruminating, make a mental note of the situation you’re in. This includes where you are, what time of day it is, who’s around you (if anyone), and what you’ve been doing that day.

Developing ways to avoid or manage these triggers can reduce your rumination.

9. Talk to a friend

Ruminating thoughts can make you feel isolated. Talking about your thoughts with a friend who can offer an outside perspective may help break the cycle.

Be sure to speak with a friend who can give you that perspective rather than ruminate with you.

10. Try therapy

If your ruminating thoughts are taking over your life, you may want to consider therapy. A therapist can help you identify why you’re ruminating and how to address the problems at their core.

Lifestyle changes

If you’re a long-time ruminator who wants to bring an end to your repetitive negative thoughts, here are some simple changes you can make to your life that can help do just that:

  • Be proactive in trying to solve your problems. First identify problems in your life and then start taking actions to solve your problems, one step at a time
  • Set your own expectations. Negative ruminating thoughts can creep in when we question our self-worth. Praise yourself for your successes and forgive yourself for your mistakes. Constantly work on building your self-esteem by taking care of yourself and doing things you enjoy and excel at.
  • Create a support system. Having friends and family members, and maybe even a therapist, any of whom you can call on for help when something goes wrong or when you’re having a bad day, is so important. These special people may distract you from your ruminating thoughts and are also likely to boost your self-esteem.

If you’re a ruminator, it’s important to know some tips that may help you to stop your thought cycle in its tracks before it spirals out of control.

It’s also important to be proactive and take steps to prevent yourself from ruminating in the first place.

With awareness and some lifestyle changes, it’s possible to free yourself from ruminating thoughts. If you find that you’re unable to use these tips to help your rumination, you should consider contacting a mental health professional for assistance.

9 Ways to Cope With Intrusive Thoughts

Becoming aware of your thought patterns is the first step toward breaking the cycle.

Our thoughts are never entirely within our control, and it’s natural for our minds to skew negative from time to time. But for some people, intrusive thoughts can become a daily challenge.

If you experience intrusive thoughts, it’s important to remember that a thought has no power or significance in itself.

Having a violent or disturbing thought doesn’t mean that you’re a “bad” person. In most cases, intrusive thoughts can be managed, and the first step is recognizing them for what they are.

It may not always be possible to stop intrusive thoughts, and that’s not necessarily the goal.

Instead, you might consider focusing on ways to make them less overwhelming and create some distance between you and the thought. The goal is to feel that you’re in control of your thoughts, not the other way around.

Mindfulness meditation

One of the core principles of mindfulness is learning how to calmly observe your thoughts, without judging or becoming emotionally tangled up in them.

This can make it a great way to cope with intrusive thoughts because you’re not denying that the thoughts are present — just changing your relationship with them.

You don’t need any special equipment to start meditating, just a few spare moments, and somewhere quiet to practice, if possible.

There are also lots of meditation apps available, with courses specifically geared toward beginners and people living with intrusive thoughts, that may help you.

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)

CBT is a type of psychotherapy that can be effective for all kinds of thought disorders.

It can be especially helpful for intrusive thoughts that become obsessive because it helps to create distance between a person and their thoughts.

CBT is based on the idea that our thought patterns can be unlearned or changed. A CBT therapist can work with you to identify your intrusive thoughts, process them, and reframe them so that they aren’t as powerful.

Remember, ‘This too shall pass’

This is a simple but powerful mantra that may help you to regain perspective.

When an intrusive thought occupies your brain, it can sometimes feel like it will never go away. But thoughts are always temporary, and there is no such thing as a permanent state of mind.

Identifying a mantra like “This too shall pass,” or “My thoughts are temporary” could be helpful in reducing their power.

Visualization techniques

Visualizing your thoughts can allow you to feel more in control of them.

For example, you could picture your mind as a blue sky, and your thoughts as passing clouds. Some of the clouds are light, and some dark, but none of them are permanent.

This is a mindfulness technique known as thought clouds, but it can be used outside of meditation practice.

Spend time with a pet

Animals can be incredibly calming to an anxious mind. They have no understanding of our complex, troubled thoughts, so they can provide distraction and uncomplicated emotional support.

A large 2019 study involving animals showed that interacting with them can lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol, which plays a role in many mental health conditions.

In addition, animal-assisted therapy for trauma is becoming more common.

A small 2018 study with animals, which consisted of 60 female university students in Germany, found that therapy dog intervention can help to reduce stress and anxiety following a traumatic event.

Externalize the thought

Our brains can be incredibly good at telling us stories that feel like reality. So, an intrusive thought can take on outsized power when it only exists in your mind.

Consider externalizing the thought, by journaling or even just speaking it out loud, and see whether the impact of it changes.

Ground yourself in the present

Intrusive thoughts can often lead you to focus on the negative and create stories that aren’t based on reality.

Without even realizing it, you may be spending a lot of your time living in the past, or obsessing about the future.

Focusing on the present moment can be a powerful way to manage this. Grounding techniques that can help you center your focus may include:

  • deep breathing
  • active meditation
  • body scan meditation

Take a walk in nature

According to the American Psychological Association, there’s a lot of evidence that spending time in nature can boost mental health and sharpen cognitive abilities.

Taking a walk or jog in a green space can help you to break a cycle of rumination, by engaging your body and your senses in a way that gets your mind off your thoughts.

Approach the thought with curiosity

Not all of these tips will be practical in every situation. But one thing you can always try to do is reframe the intrusive thought you’re having.

Consider observing your thoughts without judgment, and approaching them with curiosity by turning your attention to how your body responds to certain thoughts that may arise.

Distressing thoughts could be your brain’s way of processing something.

Intrusive thoughts are unwanted, involuntary thoughts that are usually disturbing or distressing in nature. They usually seem to appear out of nowhere and may reoccur again and again, which makes them feel even more powerful. The thoughts are often out of character and may be against the person’s values or beliefs.

In many cases, intrusive thoughts are violent, disturbing, sexually graphic, or reflect beliefs that the person finds abhorrent.

This can make them even more distressing, because the person experiencing those thoughts may judge themselves harshly.

The subject matter of intrusive thoughts can vary, but here are some common themes:

  • harming a loved one
  • harming themselves
  • sexually graphic fantasies
  • driving a car into oncoming traffic
  • catching an illness
  • their loved ones dying

Intrusive thoughts can be a symptom of mental health conditions, such as:

  • anxiety disorders
  • obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD)
  • post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)

But people without mental health conditions can also experience intrusive thoughts. According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America (ADAA), some 6 million Americans are affected by intrusive thoughts.

People with anxiety or another condition may be more likely to fixate on an intrusive thought, and see it as a negative reflection on themselves.

They may also worry more about the implications of the thought, which in turn only gives it more power.

So, while intrusive thoughts can happen to anyone, they may be more severe for people who live with mental health conditions.

Intrusive thoughts can be alarming and distressing for a number of reasons. These thoughts often seem to come out of nowhere and may be completely at odds with your usual beliefs and behaviors.

It’s important to remember that a thought only has as much power as you give it. It’s just a sentence in your mind, and it doesn’t necessarily reflect anything about you or your true character.

There are self-help techniques available to you that can allow you to regain power over your intrusive thoughts, including:

  • meditation
  • visualization exercise
  • reframing
  • spending time in nature or with animals

You may also want to consider speaking with a mental health professional, who can help to identify what’s behind your thoughts.

How to get rid of obsessive thoughts: 6 life hacks

Health

© Baran Lotfollahi/Unsplash

Author Irina Rudevich

October 23, 2020

Sometimes it’s hard to stop the flow of unpleasant thoughts that seem to burst into your head and haunt you. We tell you how to eliminate the anxiety that has arisen and not dwell on this state

What are obsessive thoughts

Excessive experiences and repetitive dialogues arise spontaneously. You can go about your daily activities or get ready for bed, but suddenly a thought appears that draws all attention to itself. For many, it seems to get stuck in place, causing discomfort, disrupting biorhythms and disrupting plans. Obsessive thinking is a series of images that are repeated in combination with negative perceptions. The severity of their influence can range from mild but annoying to severe and all-encompassing. Particularly debilitating cases that prevent a person from living a full life are considered in psychiatry as obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).

10 brain traps that change reality

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Why do we think about unpleasant things

Psychologists do not have a clear answer to the question of where obsessive thoughts come from. According to one theory, repeated anxious thoughts indicate that a person has an unresolved issue and a life stage that has not been completed. It could be stress at work, relationship problems, or an unpleasant conversation with a stranger that happened a few days ago. But they are not always based on real events.

© Cottonbro/Pexels

Everyone at least once left for work with the thought: “Did I turn off the iron?”, which haunted until the evening. “Thinking can be a problem because it rarely offers new ideas or solutions to fix a situation,” writes psychotherapist Jody Virgo [1]. Instead, they emotionally capture the person and reinforce negative feelings.

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It’s not easy not to think

It would seem that you just need to switch and forbid yourself to play the same record in your head. But our minds are built differently: when a person tries to avoid thinking, being under the influence of obsessive thoughts, the brain continues to remind us of them with greater force. It's the same principle that when you hear "don't think about the pink elephant" the first thing you do is imagine it. At the same time, thoughts without decisions and actions only take time and emotional resources. “They have no practical consequences, and in themselves they are unimportant,” says physician and writer Deepak Chopra [2]. But that doesn't change the fact that people suffer from obsessive thinking. Here are a few principles to help you deal with it:

  • Recognize the thought pattern
  • Transfer your thought to paper
  • Think about a solution
  • Accept separateness of thoughts
  • Practice meditation and mindful thinking
  • Contact a specialist

Recognize the thought pattern

To overcome intrusive thoughts, you need to identify them. The patterns may vary, but most of them are repeated over and over again. If a person often gets stuck in a cognitive cycle, then they turn into a habit that is more difficult to get rid of. It's like biting your nails or checking your email every few minutes, that is, actions (or thoughts) occur unconsciously. Caught yourself in a compulsive cycle - study it carefully. As Bruce M. Hyman and Cherry Pedrick write in The OCD Workbook, it pays to “examine these thoughts to understand how they arise and how you respond to them” [3].

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Transfer your thought to paper

As soon as you write down an obsession in a notebook or phone notes, it will no longer be cyclically spinning in your head. But the work is not over yet. It is important to determine the root cause of the negative experience.

© Lisa Fotios/Pexels

For example, you are worried about not getting a response from a friend, or you are worried that you weren't good enough during your presentation. Formulate a problem: “I’m upset because I think I offended a loved one in some way” or “I’m afraid that they didn’t take me seriously because I was very nervous during the speech. ”

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Think about a solution

Sometimes obsessive thoughts are justified and require certain actions. If you seriously think that you have not turned off the iron, ask a family member or neighbor to come in and check if everything is in order. When you're worried about relationship problems, it's easier to ask your partner directly if everything is okay, rather than oppressing yourself with destructive thoughts. Sometimes thoughts cling to the past or rush into the future, and you worry about the future. Try to learn from the experience and evaluate what can be done to minimize stress in the coming changes.

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Accept Separateness of Thoughts

A difficult but important step in dealing with a problem is to recognize that thoughts are not always in your control. This is a series of neurons that fire in the brain as a result of not always obvious reactions, associations and experiences. Attempts to avoid obsessive thinking, to forcibly get rid of it, can only aggravate the situation. Acceptance can be the key to liberation, but not in the sense that you should give up and leave your mind to be torn apart by disturbing ideas. It is necessary to allow these thoughts to exist, to evaluate them, but not to try to control them.

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Practice meditation and mindful thinking

Obsessive thoughts cause discomfort because they are accompanied by negative emotions. Meditation and mindfulness exercises will help you get rid of oppressive experiences while you study the “enemy”. Psychologist Seth Meyers, in an article for Psychology Today, defines conscious thinking as “clearing and focusing on what your mind and body are feeling in the present moment” [4].

© Cottonbro/Pexels

If you have obsessive thoughts, try a few simple breaths, counting slowly to five as you inhale and exhale. You can supplement the practice with physical exercises for "grounding": fix yourself in space, standing on the floor and focusing on the sensation in your legs. Look around, identify five things in turn that you feel with your senses in order to linger in the state of “here and now”.

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Consult a specialist

If obsessive thoughts are firmly planted in your mind, you cannot find their root cause and eliminate them, you should consult a psychologist. This must be done when you can’t cope on your own, and suffering and worries cause problems: you don’t get enough sleep, you can’t concentrate on work, or you are constantly in a bad mood. Obsessive thinking is a normal part of the human psyche. But it can also be a sign of medical conditions, including anxiety disorders, that require more careful consideration. The therapist will select appropriate practices to free the mind for pleasant and necessary thoughts.

How to choose a psychotherapist and prepare yourself for your first appointment .

Changing lives in one day.

#63 Stopping thoughts

Society • SI "Omsk Here" May 26, 2021, 10:04 • seal

Author: Anastasia Semenova

Today we are not the same as yesterday. We believe that every day we can become better. Change is cool: let's go to the best version of ourselves together. In the section "Omsk Here" - simple tips to easily change your life.

A new portion of advice and ideas on how to make life better, more useful and more efficient.

It is natural for a person to think a lot, but not only necessary thoughts arise in our head, but also unnecessary, or distracting, or preventing us from sleeping and living peacefully. You need to get rid of such thoughts, because negative thoughts are dangerous in themselves. They are fraught with the fact that little by little, drop by drop, poison our lives. You can spend days in negative internal dialogue. But this cycle can be stopped.

The easiest way to stop thoughts is described by Michael Powell, bestselling author in the field of science pop, in the book "How to make friends with the head. 50 exercises for pumping the brain." His method is so simple that at first it may seem that everyone does it. When you feel that you are drowning in obsessive thoughts, shout: "Stop!". If you are in a public place, close your eyes and say it to yourself. This simple word brings us back to the present, allowing us to see irrational and destructive thoughts. Stopping thoughts helps to defeat a craving or prevent an impulsive purchase that you can do without. If you're trying to lose weight, say "Stop!" the next time you want to eat something unhealthy. Wait a couple of minutes and the cravings will pass.

There are other techniques that allow you to stop the flow of thoughts in your head: