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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Dear Matt,
I’ve tried to ignore the the thoughts/images that come in my mind and try to focus on something else, but my mind is continuously telling me to focus on the things i don’t want. Why won’t my mind listen to me? Why won’t it let me focus on the something that i like instead of something that scares me. I seriously think that my mind is evil and working
me. How can i train my mind to not focus on these things and focus on
something else.
Love Tania
p.s. i hope u don’t mind me writing to you so much. i just really think that
the first time in my life i can trust someone who understands what i’m going through. i think u are an angel. your my last hope
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Hi Tania,
Feedback like yours makes it all worthwhile for me. Not a degree no — 20 years meditation and of course, I’m also human so I have experienced the same things.
A lot of those years I guess I was meditating many hours a day because I was in bed with extreme low energy states and there was nothing else to do :-)
Meditation is such an amazing process. I recommend it highly to everyone. It’s about finding the real you — what you naturally are and dis-identifying with the “made-up” you — ideas you have about yourself “I am this, I am that, I think this, I think that.”
Compassion is the result of meditation because compassionate is what we naturally are.
Another thought I had about your problem is that as much as possible, try to be in a supportive and loving environment. If you experience “real” fear in everyday life — an angry boss or partner for example, then your “general fear volume” is turned up. You’d be on your guard more which is not good for sensitive people.
So that’s just something to be aware of more long-term. Things like environment can’t be changed overnight but by keeping in mind that you want and need a loving environment, you’ll begin to move towards that.
Bottom line: stay away from people who don’t support you.
I’m really happy to help Tania. It’s truly my pleasure. If you try those suggestions and see how you get on, and report back, there may be little ideas that come out of taking this step that are individual to you, so let me know if you need more help getting totally clear on this.
I wish you the best of luck!
Mike
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Hi Mike this is Tania,
I really appreciate the time and effort you spent writing me back. I think you are such a nice person to consider helping people like me. It really gives me hope and encouragement. I was wondering if u have a degrgee in mental health or anything like that since you know so much. I will try to do what u said about not [giving] the thoughts/images any attention and redirect my focus to something else. I think of it as such a blessing from God for letting me get help from a person like you. Thank you so much.
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Hi Tania,
You can’t make them go away, they go away on their own when you stop paying attention and attaching importance and meaning to them.
That’s why meditation is key because you learn “here is me” and “there is the thought/image.”
Without this spaciousness, your attention can easily be sucked into powerful thoughts such as these. Without the distance you won’t be able to let go so easily.
My friend in the article wouldn’t meditate btw. He just wouldn’t do it and he made amazing progress with just the “not paying attention” technique. It took a long time (approx 2 years) though and was a two step forward and one step back type of progress.
In his case, the thoughts were backed by powerful beliefs that the thoughts actually protected him from imagined danger. The danger wasn’t real — except in his mind. It took literally years of reasoning for him to let go of the belief and so then he was able gradually to let go of the thoughts.
He would never have let go of the thoughts while he still believed they served him i.e. warned him of actual danger.
I don’t think there is anything structurally wrong with your brain or anything. I find that sensitive people are prone to OCD and they are intellegent.
These problems often contain individual subtleties that I can’t comment on in your case because I don’t know they are.
But what you describe isn’t so far away from the experience of ordinary people when they watch a horror movie say. I know I can be shaken for a little while afterwards — but it’s a matter of degree. You clearly are more sensitive to disturbing ideas and images than Joe Average.
That being the case, it makes sense to try and limit your exposure to potentially disturbing stuff. For example, I watch very little news because I find it negative and it bothers me so I rarely watch it. It serves no valuable purpose so I don’t do it.
Also worth noting is that a not insignificant part of the population is sensitive to caffeine. Stimulants can make sensitive people hyper-sensitive so that’s something to be aware of.
Generally increasing your relaxation will pay dividends with this problem. Get into a solid routine at bedtime where you slowly wind down and finish with relaxation exercises — perhaps a CD of guided relaxation before sleep.
Little things like cutting sown on caffeine and habitual relaxation make a BIG difference.
Reprogram your reaction to these “fear flashes” by noticing them calmly, recognizing they are made by part of your brain that thinks it serves you, that they in themselves cause no danger to you at all, and calmly let them go by paying attention to something else.
If the image cause a knee-jerk tension in you then consciously relax the tense body parts. Your new habit of bed-time relaxtion will teach you how to do this.
If you have time and the inclination, get into Yoga. The breathing, relaxation, meditation and exercises will gradually transform you into such a calm person you won’t recognize yourself :-)
In answer to your question “how do I let go of these unwanted thoughts when they keep repeating over and over.” The answer is you keep ignoring them over and over by the process I mentioned above. The part of your brain that produces these “fear flashes” cannot tell the difference between a real event and something you saw on TV or a magazine. That’s why sensitive people like you and me need to remember that and limit our exposure.
By consciously noticing and calmly ignoring, you repeatedly tell that part of your brain that there is nothing to fear and you reprogram the “fear flash” into a relaxation response. It takes calm persistance to do what it takes.
You can substitute a positive thought too if it helps and this too will re-channel the energy behind the fear. If you saw a frightened child you would speak calmly, say positive things and reassure there is no danger. These instinctive reactions to someone else’s fear show the natural solutions so you can give yourself the same treatment. Speak calmly, positively and reassuringly to the fearful part.
Keep reassuring the part that there’s nothing fear, it’s all ok, it can forget to tell you about that thing again.
Do that if it helps. It’s optional.
OK quick recap of the process. You get a sudden fear flash. You become tense. Notice it and reassure yourself “oh that’s only the movie, nothing to fear.” Consciously relax. Pay attention to something else.
Repeat this process over and over til the fear goes.
Don’t look out for fear flashes coming. Don’t be on your guard at all. Stay relaxed and focused as much as possible on other things.
I do think there is hope for you. I see this as an extreme example of what everyone experiences when they see disturbing images.
I hope this is clear. It’s quite a tricky subject to put into words. Let me know what you think of all this. As I said, I can only talk in general terms because I don’t know all the details of your case.
Mike
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Dear Matt,
My ocd is more pure “o”, just obsessive thoughts. I guess i could say that the images i see in my mind are intrusive thoughts. Anything from a scary movie or something i saw in a magazine or iwitnessed in life, just tends to replay in my mind over and over. I’ve tired cognitive therapy and different medications, manily paxil and seroquel, but nothing seems to work. I know you said not to pay attention to the thoughts, but how do i do that if they appear so often in my mind. What can i do to make them go away? I just want to live a normal life. Is there any hope for me?
Thank you for ur time,
Tania
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