Anxiety and our thoughts

Why The Anxious Mind Is Afraid Of Itself

We live in a polarized society that likes to slap a label on everything — black or white, rich or poor, religious or atheist, you get the idea.

Likewise, humans tend to slap labels on their thoughts. This is a "good" thought, that is a "bad" thought, I "should" think this, I "shouldn't" think that, etc. When we begin to fight with our "bad" thoughts, when we become afraid of certain kinds of thinking, this only brings about more of the same. This incredible force of nature can make us feel totally powerless.

The best way to deal with this is to acknowledge your thoughts. Once acknowledged, these thoughts disappear. This can be done by:

Keep a thought jar:

writing down thoughts that are unhelpfulful, adding them to the jar and when the jar is full, getting rid of them somehow. This way we are not fighting the thoughts, we are acknowledging them and then getting rid of them.

Visualising:

Visualising your thoughts on leaves flowing down a river or on clouds floating through the sky can help to see them merely as thoughts without any emotional content, drifting through our mind.

Mindfulness:

Shutting up the chattering monkey. Focusing your mind on the banal, numbers, song lyrics, reciting the alphabet etc so that your mind is occupied but not with anything important. This creates space in your brain to fill it with more helpful thoughts, emotions and memories.

Language:

Watching your language and how you talk about thoughts. Labelling them as helpful and unhelpful rather than good and bad can help to classify thoughts. When we describe them in this way, they are neutral and have less emotional impact.

Acknowledge your unwanted thoughts to make them disappear