A friend of mine is plagued with unwanted thoughts.
He’s been diagnosed with OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) and I can tell how bad he is at any given moment by the number of times he calls me — he says I say the same stuff as his psychologist but I’m a lot cheaper! :-)
I mean… this is a guy who is bordering on reckless in many areas of his life but is brought to his knees with fear from thoughts that are totally irrational…
If I told you what they were you’d think it was silly but these silly thoughts dominate his life completely.
I don’t believe in the OCD label, at least not in his case. What I see is an extreme example of the issues we all face — the inability to drive our own mental car, the inability to choose the focus of our attention, the inability to see thought for what it really is…
Roll up! Roll up!
My friend and I have the same conversation over and over…
“How do I get rid of these thoughts?”
“You have to not pay attention. There is only one method — distraction. Pay attention to something else.”
Sounds simple eh? It is simple! The question is — can you do it?
Say you’re walking through a fun-fair when one of the stall holders is giving you the hard sell. We’ve all been there. He’s in your face basically, but you know instinctively that any attention you give him will only make the problem worse. If you even look at him you know he just won’t leave you alone.
Some thoughts can be like that — they’re in your face, they urge you in the strongest possible way to act out a certain thing.
Thought becomes you… unless you watch
I was watching a video clip of Eckhart Tolle the other day… He said:
“We notice only the content; we don’t see the field in which the content happens.”
I remember too, a lecture by Alan Watts who drew a circle and asked his students what the circle was. Some said a ball, some said it was the sun and so on. They were all wrong… it was a hole! We don’t notice the background.
Thoughts and feelings can have amazing power. They suck your attention right in and you have no power to stop it. They suck you in so much that you no longer notice the field (you), only the content (thought/feeling).
That’s the problem my friend has. I’ve told him the solution to his problem a thousand times but he’s struggling to actually do it. His thoughts, backed by his belief have too much power.
And make no mistake; we’re talking a lot of power here. OCD = compulsive = no choice. We all have OCD to some extent. Little or no choice.
Thankfully, over time and with constant practice, things are getting better but it’s a tough road and progress is sure, but painfully slow.
Trauma — useful or dangerous?
In his case, a childhood trauma was the event that started all this mess. Traumatic events have amazing power to affect our unconscious minds and generate fear. This is a good thing.
If you’re walking though the jungle and get attacked by a lion, it’s this very same process that stops you repeating the same mistake again. You learn when to fear a lion attack and that is a good thing!
But if trauma is attached to insignificant events, then those insignificant events take on the fear that should be reserved for lion attacks. Say your parents always fought at the dinner table and caused you to be always in a state of anxiety at meals times, then food would become something to fear, by association.
This initial cause can then be strengthened over the years by your attention until life-stopping phobias can result. Now we have a deep problem that’s really hard to shift.
Still… not paying attention to unwanted thoughts is the true solution. But can you do it?
Finding freedom
First, you have to see the field in which the content takes place. There has to be space between your thoughts. When there is a gap, suddenly you notice the thought arising. There is more chance of your being able to choose, when there is space.
But the real bottom line, the true solution, the therapy of therapies is meditation. This is the practice where you learn how to get space between thoughts — where you notice a thought and can look at it with curiosity.
This is where you learn how to be free, where you learn to say “yes” or “no”, where you learn where the off switch is.
If you have no freedom over your thoughts, then you’re merely a physical puppet of mind-energy — a proverbial “leaf in the wind”, with no control over yourself or freedom at all. It’s like getting into your car, shutting your eyes tight and pressing your foot down on the accelerator…
No, we want to choose where the car goes and be able to steer, surely?
You’d have to be crazy…
The other component to my friend’s problem is belief. Of course, he believes his silly thoughts are true… it’s his own mind generating the fear, so if he didn’t believe his own mind he’d have to admit he was crazy.
There are two problems with this. Firstly, he is not the content of his mind and so secondly, he’s not crazy. His mind is working perfectly to the program. It’s the content, the program, the conditioning, that doesn’t serve him.
So, he is not the content. He would still be himself if he’d not had that trauma as a child. Identification with content is a big problem. We define ourselves by the content, by our experiences. But that’s not us.
Our beliefs, experiences and thoughts are often random programmings of life… interesting, often beautiful, sometimes ugly but they’re not us. They define our personality but that’s not us either. “Persona” is Greek for “mask” did you know?
While we identify with all these things we aren’t free to choose something else…
The solutions…
The belief part has to be dislodged as much as possible by reason. In my friend’s case, explaining to him at length why his fear is irrational opens the door to him letting it go and being motivated to do the not-work of distraction — not paying attention.
If he still truly believed his fear was valid, he would never do what’s required because he would still believe the fear served him. Once the understanding is there — that the fear, or the habit of thought does NOT truly serve your best interests, you’re free to try to get rid of it.
You uproot unwanted thought and fear by practicing meditation. It’s tough to see the process for what it is in everyday life when your mind is bombarded by triggers and sensory input constantly. By making everything quiet you see the process for what it is.
I am the background
Here you are… “I AM”
There is the thought.
The thought happened.
The thought has no power unless I give it more attention.
I have choice.
Unless you’ve ever tried to meditate, you won’t understand how little power you have over thoughts that happen to you.
When I first started meditating over 20 years ago, the very first morning, I had 30 minutes meditation planned — I started off just fine… then 20 minutes later I remembered I was supposed to be meditating!
Twenty minutes!
Lost in thought
Thoughts are somewhat like snooker balls. One crashes into another into another into another without ceasing forever and ever and each thought sucks you in — in a word… hell. There’s no peace to be found here, no now, no joy.
We reap what we sow and thoughts are seeds. If you’re not choosing what you sow, you won’t be reaping what you want.
I can’t meditate… it makes it worse!
My friend won’t do it. He won’t do the not-work. He admits he’s lazy but there’s more to it. When he’s having a few good days there’s no motivation. When hell descends on him he’s highly motivated but often in a state of high anxiety.
By the time the thoughts and feelings have escalated into anxiety it’s virtually impossible to rein it in. You have to nip unwanted thoughts in the bud. Spot them arising and withdraw attention before they trigger big emotions and fears.
By the way, if it’s gone pear-shaped and anxiety takes over, the best thing to do is exercise. You’ve got no chance of calming down when you’re pumped with adrenalin.
Also, when he tries to meditate, he has to face his inner demons close up through what feels like a big big magnifying glass and that feels scary at first. The solution to that is to start with relaxation techniques — get out of “fight or flight” and into “the relaxation response”.
So anyway, I can’t convince him and he’s chosen to attempt to just try and not pay attention. This is the slow route as I said, because it’s difficult to see the process with a thousand thoughts, sensory input and internal triggers going on.
You can’t fight the darkness
Meditation teaches you that attention is where the power is. You cannot try to suppress or fight any thought or feeling. That’s just more attention!
The solution is to notice it, let it be, let it go and choose a different focus.
Put your attention onto something else. As difficult as it is to ignore the fair ground stall holder, that’s what’s required. If you go up to him and scream and shout for him to go away, things are likely to get even nastier :-)
At first it takes every ounce of inner strength to hold your attention onto something else, to ignore the unwanted thought. But as you persist, it gets easier and easier until eventually, the thought has no more power over you.
Ignore thoughts you don’t want and hold onto thoughts you do want. That is power! It’s the power to say yes or no. And the same applies to feelings, which are emotional reflections of thoughts.
“I just wanted to say that since I read this article I have had no issues at all. What you wrote cured me and I am totally amazed by it. I am so impressed with the results, I feel totally different and peaceful.
I have seen so many health professionals over my problems, but none has ever come close to the advice that you give. Thanks Mike you have honestly changed my life.”— John Woods, Australia
“For the last week I’ve been practicing indifference towards unwanted thoughts + quick and intense shifting of attention to anything else.
When I started doing it, I got relief in few minutes as the quality of fear associated with these recurring thoughts was gone. Within hours I found calmness and peace growing within me.
It took an initial 3-4 days to have full grasp over the method and develop some more understanding. And now my thoughts have become very much reduced in frequency, and they have lost their power and don’t trouble me anymore. And it’s all because of one technique only.
I am sharing my experiences with other people having O.C.D. on internet and telling them about your website and trying to help them as I got it when I needed it the most. Sir, you have changed my life. and all that I can say is THANK YOU.”— Shivesh, India
Meditation is freedom…
…and that folks, is how you get rid of unwanted thoughts.
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Michael Kinnaird is the author of Happy Guide, the result of a 20 year exploration into what works for health and happiness.
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Hi Mike,
First of all what a fantastic artical!
Though i’m a big thinker it causes me to disect everything and take everything to seriosuly or i could just be facing reality.
I just thought i’d ask your oppinion on the situation i am currently in! I am almost 3 months pregnant to my partner.
A few months ago i was told that he cheated on me, twise! With the same girl, in the end there was no solution so we had a polygraph test which just proved that he didn’t cheat on me.
Just recantly i talked to the girl and let her know that her lies were pathetic, yet she still not tell the truth? And insisted it still happend and he has to live with the guilt for the rest of his life.
I know you cannot trick a polygrap test, but i still have negative thoughts about it which causes me huge anxiety.
Will this be somthing i can get over? Or will i dwell on the past and anything and everything that reminds me of her and what could of happend on both nights he was accused of cheating?
I dont want to ruin my relationship because i feel like im going insaine, it annoys him and i know its not fair but i just cant help myself, please help me.
thankyou
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Thank You so much for this article. You are very correct in everything you say. You are also right in saying that ignoring the thought can be difficult and gets easier in time. I am 36 now and my problem began with my one and only panic attack 2 years ago. During the attack, I hallucinated mentally that I killed my wife. The thought day by day started to take over my life. Meditation has been the best thing to calm me. I wish I knew a structured meditation to target the elimination of the thoughts. The majority of the problem seems to fueled by stress hormones. I want to thank you for what you are doing because I have had two years to realise that the thought can destroy your self image and your general perspective on life and who you are. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for caring enough about humanity to help these people and myself.
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Hi Geoff,
Sorry to hear you’ve been suffering with this. You’re right, one “seed thought” can go on to create total hell. You don’t need anything to target this thought as long as you see it as dysfunctional. Then you are free to let go. The end-state we want is FORGETTING. So in your normal life, ANY thought related to this give it no importance, indifference and remove attention quickly. This way you tell your unconscious mind “this is not important to me.” It takes time but it will gradually die away and stop coming — then you will have forgotten about it.
Meditation is amazing… it’s ATTENTION practice. Step one is to get fully into mastery of the mind-field, to be able to say to the storm “be still” and your mind obeys. Then thoughts lose their power to affect you or suck you in, or trigger other thoughts, or create a web of thoughts connected to a seed thought. In short, you gain freedom from unwanted thoughts.
Re hormones — YES! Everything affects everything else… anxiety creates anxious thoughts, depression creates depressed thoughts. We always need a whole lifestyle approach to guarantee the best results:
Geoff.. let me know if you need more clarity on anything and how things pan out for you.
All the best,
Mike
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Hi Sir
for last one week i am practicing indifference towards unwanted thoughts + quick and intense shifting of attention to anything else (usually my breath). when i started doing it i got relieved in few minutes as the quality of fear associated with these recurring thoughts was gone. within hours i found calmness and peace growing within me. it took initial 3-4 days to have full grasp over the method and develop some more understanding. and now my thoughts have become very much reduced in frequency and they have lost their power and don’t trouble me anymore. and it’s all because of one technique only and now i can just imagine the power lying in your book and when i have it probably i will be the happiest person on earth. i am sharing my experiences with other people having O.C.D. on internet and telling them about your website and trying to help them as i got it when i needed it the most.
sir, you have changed my life. and all that i can say is THANK YOU.
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Hi Sir
yesterday i just came across your website and read your informative article and wrote a comment. i hadn’t read the other comments then. later on i started reading and reflecting on them and got some wonderful insights.
and now i must say you are doing a really great work helping people understand their own mind and SELF.
i worked on the idea of shifting my attention from unwanted thoughts to the neutral ones or desired ones. i realized that my mind is like my hand which is holding objects and i have to just leave that unwanted object and just hold another object.
and to leave an object of attention/focus/concentration the first thing that i need is to DEFINE WHAT THAT OBJECT IS IN IT’S ENTIRETY.
for example, an unwanted idea either comes from any outer suggestion or by own thought associations or just pops up [as i am an obsessive personality and perhaps it’s a ‘normal’ functioning of mind too] and i tag fear to it because i don’t want it to happen or just start running from it to avoid fear of acknowledging some truth in it because of some negative and wrong belief in my existing belief system which was introduced earlier in life and was reinforced again and again because of my innocence or some other form of support in my memory.
i start fighting this idea and try to substitute the negative belief within and lay down positive beliefs and try to provide some evidences in support of the new positive beliefs which i want to have but negativity always makes it’s way through reasoning and analysis.
and the fight always goes on because i am fighting myself. and this negative idea/thought gradually becomes all pervasive and starts dominating my mind and it’s very distressful and it’s like living in hell. this idea gets associated with certain acts and objects too and when i face them i suddenly get reminded of that idea. there is a kind of self destructive program too in my mind which ramifies this idea into other unwanted ideas and they are totally ridiculous but i get frightened by this new thought too thinking that if i keep on repeating it it’s going to be incorporated in my mind and so either i start fighting this new idea or do thought substitution or just run away from it also and if this new idea gets pacified for some time because of thought substitution then again the first idea surfaces up and either i start fighting it or just let it be thinking that it will gradually subside but if i offer it non resistance then it recurs again and again and it only strengthens the negative belief and so i again start fighting it which too strengthens it.
i try to get indulged into some other activities but the ideas interfere and again i start fighting them and re affirm the positive idea that i want again and again and as soon as i get some peace i try to regain my focus on that activity and i start doing it again the negative idea one or the other ones pop up.
i can see them coming but i have three choices, think negative idea, think it’s opposite positive idea or think ideas of the work i am doing. and since i don’t know what to do i try to keep work related ideas and continue but negative idea keeps on popping up and i get distressed by their negativity or by the fear generated from the thought that if i don’t remove that negative idea it will move into subconscious and will get stronger and become a component of my belief system and my nature and i will start taking it as absolute truth.
and so i again start doing thought substitution or fighting it. my activity is interfered because of all this and i start looking for other ways of engagements like watching television or going out for a walk or talking to somebody over phone. but things don’t change and as soon as i come back to my room it starts again. this whole stuff goes for many days and there are new negative ideas keep on surfacing up thanks to that self destructive program and i start fearing the moment a new negative idea comes up and just want to avoid it because i don’t want it to develop like as other ideas already have and that’s how this idea ultimately become too.
i also anticipate and project these ideas and their effects into my future life and i get afraid of myself incorporating a weakness in my own psyche.
now this is the whole phenomenon and THIS IS ALL ONE OBJECT which i have to leave and focus myself on a new desired or neutral object which i can always choose HERE AND NOW.
i JUST LEFT all temptations of thinking about this object because any thought, temptation, fear , doubts of my this approach being correct or not and when i got a bit successful with this approach then ‘oh what a relief, i am out of it or i have forgotten it’ this idea too are nothing but the object in disguise and so is THE OBJECT ITSELF and so with this understanding whenever any of this or any other form of this unwanted object comes into my field of awareness here and now or even this thought that any object related thought is going to come right now [this thought is also the object itself] i nip it in bud and fix my attention to any other object which i have chosen as an image of human body [as i am a medical student] which i start dissecting or manipulating or become curious about it’s any disorder and exploring it on the body image,in my mind so that the thought energy gets channelized instead of getting blocked as it happens during thought suppression.
i find dissection or any form of manipulation of mental image more absorbing compared to a static image. when i have to deal with those things or acts which are associated with this unwanted object and when i see that the unwanted thought is coming i shift the attention fully on that thing which i am dealing with or on the act i am doing here and now. i think it will break the association between unwanted thought and those things or activities…… and i have been doing it since last night,i am finding it very very effective and i can see and feel the progress that i have made. sir,is their any point missing in my approach and what else can i do? i am and shall ever be extremely grateful to you sir.
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Hi Shivesh,
WOW, that’s quite a comment!
Your new approach is right and correct and as you say… very very effective.
Your story is an example of my passion: The ending of suffering for lack of simple truths about “how to be happy and healthy.”
The truth is simple, but stray… and all hell breaks loose, as you know.
Your new insight is great. Thoughts are indeed objects in your field of awareness and you can pick them up or throw them out just like physical objects.
Thoughts can be a little trickier because of the habit factor and because your unconscious mind will process thoughts depending on what “quality” you attach to a thought. e.g. fear = create “fight or flight” and “remind often.”
The inability to deal with our own thoughts can quickly create a web of thought habits that are literally hell… our worst nightmare.
But it’s very simple HERE and NOW as you put it…
“Is this thought (object) wanted.”
If the answer is “no” then give the QUALITY of INDIFFERENCE and then remove attention.
HOW SIMPLE!
And yet what a nightmare can result for lack of this simple information.
You ask “is there anything missing and what else can I do?” — well, everything affects everything else so you need to be aware of how your whole lifestyle is feeding into your mood or “state.” This is one factor and also, as I mentioned, habit. Be aware of “what you repeatedly do” because these thing automatically repeat.
I’m excited for you Shivesh and your new insight.
I wish you peace of mind and happiness always,
Mike
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Hi Shivesh,
Simply observe the opinions, simply observe your reaction — both with curiosity. This way, non-attachment will grow in you.
Meditation is the key — this is detachment practice when all is quiet.
In your life, stay centered by having an anchor for your attention — what you are doing — mindfulness.
All these things will increase your awareness, detachment and freedom — from the opinions of others and from being a slave to identification with your own thoughts and reactions.
Mike
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