How to control Unwanted thoughts

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Written by

Cryptocurrency Investor , Filmmaker , Animator and Blogger!.

4 years ago

In community: Share Your Thoughts (SYT)(a50c)

Hii folks, lets start with a very interesting 30 seconds experiment.
Whatever you do, DO NOT, And i repeat Just Do Not Think Of a WHITE BEAR
Yes, so close your eyes, Relax and for the next 30 seconds ....Think of anything but DO NOT think about a White Polar Bear…and your time starts NOW!!
Alright So Open your eyes.... let me guess what happened??
So No matter how much you tried, you still saw Images of a white Polar Bear again and again. Right??
This experiment shows that when we try to Suppress our thoughts and try not to think of something, we actually end up thinking more and more about that specific thing.

This experiment was originally conducted by a psychology Professor at Harvard University known as Daniel Wegner back in the year 1985 on a group of people , who all failed the 5 minute test and kept thinking about the white bear.

It all started when Wegner heard a story about the russian Novelist Leo Tolstoy. According to this story when tolstoy was a kid he was once told by his elder brother to sit in a corner until he could stop thinking about a white bear. after some time his brother came back and found tolstoy still sitting in that corner because tolstoy just couldnt stop thinking about the white bear.

Now wegner couldnt get this story out of his head, and kept asking himself that
" why cant we control our thoughts?"
so he came up with an idea to mimic tolstoy's mental control test and not just that , he conducted the test with certain variations and came up with a
"Study on Thought Suppression".

Yes, So in round 2, Instead of suppressing the thought, Wegner asked the same participants to actually try to think of a white bear as much as they can.

And they all ended up thinking about a white bear even more often than a completely different group of participants, who had been told from the beginning to think of white bears without suppressing any thoughts.

So The results suggested that suppressing the thought caused it to "rebound" even more.

This inability to stop thinking about white bears might not strike you as the worst willpower failure in the world, but if you think about it, you'll realize that this problem with prohibition extends to all the the thoughts that we try to ban.

Even All the latest studies on anxiety, depression, dieting and addiction have confirmed that the power of "I WONT" fails miserably when its applied to our thoughts and feelings.

what we actually need is a new definition of self control , something that allows us to let go of this control.

BUT ISN'T IT IRONIC?

That the mere act of trying not to think about something triggers a paradoxical effect,
that the people thought about it more than when they weren't trying to control their thoughts,
and even much more than when they were intentionally trying to think about it.

Now this effect becomes way more stronger when people are already stressed out , tired or distracted.
wegner dubbed this effect ironic rebound.
you push a thought away and BAM! it boomerangs back.

Wegner even said that suppressing thoughts about your crush while you are awake increases the likelihood of you dreaming about them.

Its called the romeo and Juliet effect which is a well known psychological tendency to fall deeper in desire whenever a romance is forbidden.

Now Let me share some interesting examples of this Ironic rebound -

For example think about,
- an insomniac who finds herself more wide awake the harder she tries to fall asleep,
- the worrier who tries to block out her anxiety but gets drawn again and again into disaster fantasies.
- A person who wants to really keep a secret finds herself compelled to spill the beans.
- or Dieters who try to avoid thinking about fatty foods, a person in drug rehab trying not to think of drugs,
- or a student trying to concentrate on an exam by suppressing thoughts of distracting objects.

so you have gone through this whole article and i know you are thinking
"OK, Now what do I do with all this? Is there any way to avoid unwanted thoughts?

Don't worry pal, Here are some easy Guidelines for suppressing Unwanted Thoughts -

1. First of all from now on, i want you to try this instead, start expressing your desires positively, for example instead of saying "I wont eat sugar" say "I will eat more plant based foods".

2. Pick an absorbing distractor and focus on that instead and you'll find that it'll be much easier to avoid thinking about those unwanted white bears.

3. Try to postpone the thought - Yess, the next time an unwanted thought comes up, just tell yourself, "I'm not going to think about that until next Sunday", and that thought will stop bothering you, Instantly.

4. Cut back on multitasking once in a while, relax and Unwind, Because relaxing puts less mental load which means less Unwanted thoughts.

5. And last but not the least, Practice Meditation and mindfulness because these are the tried and tested methods of strengthening mental control.

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Written by

Cryptocurrency Investor , Filmmaker , Animator and Blogger!.

4 years ago

In community: Share Your Thoughts (SYT)(a50c)

The steps are promising, I hope it works

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Bestie

4 years ago

yes, It works , You can give it a try :)

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blogmachine

4 years ago