Where do they come from? How do they form? How do they know which ones bother me the most? Why don’t they stop coming up? Don’t they know they don’t help us, but they hurt us? Why would they do that? Why don’t they stop?
The plea of a 24-year old college athlete in counseling for depression, “I wish there was a button I could press to make my thoughts stop. They tell me things that are not true. They lie to me about myself and others. They make me cry. They make me feel feelings I wish I didn’t feel. They remind me of all the negative things I’ve been through and the torture my drive for my future. Why? Why? Why? Please help!”
Then he paused for a second and said nothing. The room went silent. You could almost hear him breathing. The stress ball he held in his hand, you could hear him squeeze. Then he cried and went silent again.
Fifteen seconds into that silence, I chose a skillfully timed moment to interject. Matching his tone and reflecting his affect, I said, “Something happened to your thoughts just now.” He replied, “They stopped – for a second.” Then he went on, “Hmm. Interesting. Now they’re coming back because you asked about them. “That’s weird,” he said. In that moment he realized that his thoughts were directly connected to his experience and conversation. They didn’t just flow independently, but could be influenced and controlled by conversation.
Getting in touch with how you interact with your thoughts can change your life and here are a few things you should think about deeply, so that you can start taking control of your thought life.
#1. Your brain is designed to protect you
Without fight or flight, you wouldn’t be able to protect yourself. So, for the brain it’s all about perceiving threats. It focuses on things that are threatening and puts most of its energy in anything it perceives as a threat because that’s the only way for it to prepare the body for a survival response. For example, if you scroll all the comments on your timeline and have five hundred great comments and one negative comment, your brain will grab the negative comment and begin running thoughts in your head concerning the one comment. It’s natural – If it feels threatened, it begins to set up its defense and won’t let it go without you intervening. You have to start testing what your brain is perceiving with reality to let your brain know that you’re fine. Literally, you should tell it that – “I’m fine.” Then you should start comforting it by practicing Deep Nasal Breathing, which releases chemicals in the brain relaxing the diaphragm and calming the central nervous system. Try it!