How to Stop Letting Your Thoughts Eat You

[Teacher]

"Pull your thoughts away from problems ... by your ears, by your heels or by any other means possible."
Mark twain

According to an old Cherokee Indian, a terrible battle is taking place in our minds right now.

Inside us, two wolves are fighting. The first is bad: it is full of anger, envy, resentment, greed, sadness, condemnation, inferiority, criticism and doubt. The second is good: it is full of joy, gratitude, love, kindness, empathy, understanding, confidence, compassion, and clarity. This struggle is going on within you right now, even if you do not notice it.

"Which wolf will win?" - you ask how the grandson of the Indian did it.

“The wolf you feed,” the wise grandfather replied.

Your thoughts are two wolves. When you feed a bad wolf, your mind becomes unclear. You cannot get rid of the bad wolf. He lives within you for a reason. Personal growth is about full acceptance of yourself, not trying to hide your own shortcomings.

Taming a bad wolf (not killing him) is what will help you neutralize your own thoughts so that they do not cause you pain and suffering.

Let the thoughts just be, don't cling to them

“The world that we have was created in the process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our consciousness. "- Albert Einstein

Your thoughts can eat you alive.

It's okay to have emotions and thoughts. The problem is that you let them take over your behavior. If you identify with your feelings and thoughts, you lose perspective.

There is nothing wrong with thinking. It helps us understand issues and make decisions. Problems arise when your judgmental wolf takes over and you are trapped in your thoughts.

Too many thoughts distract you, take you away from the essence. Your inner wolves can cloud your mind. And then they start eating you alive. Piece by piece.

The cause of accidents, which have the character of a "chain reaction", are not at all amateur drivers. Fog affects our perception, and this provokes collisions. Fog lowers contrast significantly, making objects appear more blurry and subtle.

Your thoughts have the same effect as fog.

The Mandelbaum Effect, the tendency of the eyes to focus on nearby objects in poor visibility conditions, cloudes our vision. We stop noticing everything else.

Your inner wolves also cloud your vision. Letting anxiety, fear, and stress take over your thoughts can lead to head clouding.

Driving in fog is risky. This is why it is wise of you to slow down your vehicle. When the fog clears, visibility is normal again. The reality did not change while it was foggy. The fog just affected your vision.

Don't give in to your thoughts. Your inner wolves come and go, just like the fog.

The Science Behind Our Thoughts

"I think, and think, and think, my thoughts have taken me away from joy a million times, but never brought me closer to it." - Jonathan Safran Foer

Our state of mind is like a wild wolf. As Chögyam Trungpa, author of Sanity, explains, our minds “contain memories of the past, dreams of the future, and the fickleness of the present. We consider this to be a problematic situation. "

You need to tame your wild wolf. Learning to distance yourself from thoughts will keep the wolves from eating you alive.

Diffusion is a term coined by Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to describe the ability to separate oneself from one's own thoughts. Conversely, "fusion" means immersion in thoughts and giving them the right to control our behavior.

In his book The Therapy of Acceptance and Responsibility in Simple Words, Russ Harris writes that "diffusion" is:
• look at thoughts, not through them;
• notice thoughts, but do not succumb to them;
• allow thoughts to come and go without clinging to them.

Thoughts do not control our actions, unless we allow them to do so. Remember not to overfeed your bad wolf. Neither your thoughts nor your emotions are capable of determining how you behave. Don't identify with what you are suffering from.

We cannot escape our own thoughts (or emotions), but we are able to decide what to do in spite of them. Tame your inner wolves instead of killing them.

Harris suggests doing the following exercise to test this for yourself. Repeat to yourself, "I cannot raise my hand." Say it over and over. Raise your hand while continuing to repeat, "I cannot raise my hand." So you raised your hand in spite of your own thoughts, right? But you most likely doubted.

You are used to believing what your mind tells you, so it is very easy to mislead you. Realizing the power of your thoughts is the first step to freeing yourself from their influence.

How to "neutralize" your thoughts - exercise

"Life is a comedy for those who think, and a tragedy for those who feel." - Jin Reisin

You cannot control the moments when your wolves attack, but you can avoid the fate of being eaten alive. When you react to what's in your head, you allow your thoughts to take you away from the present moment and turn on “life on autopilot”.

Mindfulness is the opposite of living on autopilot.

As John Kabat-Zinn, author of Relieving Stress Through Mindfulness, writes: “Mindfulness means paying attention to something in a particular way; on purpose, at the present moment and without condemnation. "It is the practice of assessing the extent to which we identify with our ideas and beliefs, creating space for:
• awareness, not thinking;
• openness and curiosity, not condemnation;
• flexibility of attention.

Mindfulness is not a distraction method; it is not meant for you to avoid your thoughts. If negative feelings arise, notice them and move on.

Try the following simple techniques to help you reduce the influence of your thoughts. Check the ones that work best for you, customize them and use them. The goal is not to drown out your thoughts - or wolves, but to keep them from blurring your vision.

1. Identify your thoughts:

The practice of meditation is not about eliminating thoughts, but about opening up to them. When you stop fighting the bad wolf, you gain control. When a thought comes up that wants to distract you, just label it. Say to yourself "thought" or "wolf."

You can use this exercise not only when you are meditating.

2. Objectify your own thoughts:

By turning your thoughts into an object - in this case, wolves - you can neutralize their influence. Close your eyes and take a deep breath. Imagine that your thoughts are wolves. What color are they? How big are they? What sounds do they make? How close are they to you? Play with your thoughts by changing the size, color, sound and shape of the wolves.

This visualization helps me when I feel that I am carried away by several thoughts at the same time.

3. Treat your mind like a wolf:

Imagine that your mind is a talking wolf. "You spoke again, my mind." "Wolf, you've said that before." "My inner wolf is always responsive and worried."

The purpose of this exercise is to listen to the voice of the mind as if it were coming from an animal and not from you. When someone else speaks, it seems less personal.

4. Question what your mind is saying:

React with skepticism, don't believe everything your mind says. "I won't buy it." "Really, how is that?" "Who said that?"

When you question your own thoughts, you stop taking them at face value.

5. Turn your emotions into a noun:

Think back to the last time you regretted what happened to you. Share these moments with your loved one using the adjectives: "I lost the last two tennis matches, I am a loser."

Every time you share something, the other person has to rethink it by turning adjectives into nouns. The goal is to make the story positive: "No, you are not a loser, you just lost two matches in a row."

6. Classify your own thoughts:

Not all wolf attacks are created equal. Challenging exactly what you are experiencing at the moment provides clarity. In addition, identifying your type of thinking will help you gain deep understanding and awareness. Whenever you feel threatened by your wolves, express your thoughts out loud using one of the following formats:
I think ...
I feel ...
I believe ...
I remember…
I release ...
I have a physical symptom ...

7. Have fun:

Humor solves all problems, especially those caused by our way of thinking. When you stop taking your inner wolves - and yourself - seriously, you can relax and stop responding.

Here are some ways to help you clear up your hazy thoughts using a humorous approach:
• Play with your own voice: experiment with different tones. Imagine yourself as a cartoon character, child, comedian, wolf, and so on.
• Treat your thoughts like a wolf: "My bad wolf is trying to divert my attention ..." or "Sorry, my bad wolf, but I ran out of food for you."
• Become a helicopter: imagine yourself lifting off the ground and climbing higher and higher, moving away from your own thoughts.
• Change lenses: Imagine wearing glasses with cloudy lenses. What happens when you put on your new clear lens glasses?
• Create a song: turn your thoughts into words, sing them out loud.

How do you deal with your inner wolves? How do you tame your own thoughts?

 

[Tomcat]

Properties of thoughts: submodalities​

In the 1970s, John Grinder and I came up with the idea that people form mental representations. Our idea was not new. Gregory Bateson and Marshall McLuhan talked about this for a long time, but we formalized the idea.

We have defined thinking as thinking in images, thinking in words, and thinking in feelings, tastes and smells. Since then, I have taken a step forward. I have broken each such system into separate components. The properties of images, sounds and feelings are called submodalities.

A person has five senses through which he receives information about the outside world. He then envisions the world using the five inner senses. One of the ways of human thinking is thinking in images, static or dynamic. When they explain the way to you or when you explain the way yourself
to someone, it all depends on your ability to concentrate and mentally imagine how to get to the right place. When creating something, people must first create this object mentally, imagining exactly how it should look.

These images have certain properties. For example, think about what you did yesterday. By imagining yesterday, you will mentally see how you did or saw something. You can see a static picture of your own actions, or
remember them as a dynamic movie. Be that as it may, this is one of the ways to obtain and analyze information about the world around us.

We can also hear internal sounds. Remembering something said to you by another person, a song heard or something else, we hear the voice of the interlocutor, the singer or even our own ... These are all examples of internal sounds. These sounds are different
properties. It is worth paying attention to them, and we will understand that they have different loudness, timbre and resonance.

Internal feelings are no different from sounds and images. When we experience a feeling, we can feel it in a specific place in our own body. The feeling starts somewhere, and when we pay attention to it, it can move to another point. People often
use similar descriptions when talking about fears.

They say something like: “My stomach ached, then my mouth went dry and
head is spinning ". People constantly talk about what is happening in their inner reality. When we think about something, we present this image in a specific place. The image is in a specific size. It is located at a certain distance. Considering the internal
- mental - images, we understand that they are not identical to the images of the outside world. However, we believe that they represent something that is in front of us and has a certain size. We can see ourselves in the image, which means that we look at it from the side, that is, we are dissociated from the image. And you can not see yourself in the image, that is
perceive it with your own eyes. This means that we are associated.

When you hear an inner voice, it can be your own or someone else's. It can come from the right or left. It can be directed inward or outward. Sometimes the inner voice sounds very loud, and sometimes it is very quiet. Sometimes there is complete silence. It doesn't matter where it comes from and what qualities it has. It is important to notice the differences in the inner voices that sound in different states.

Within the framework of psychology, people have been studying feelings for a long time. Early in my career, I met a variety of counselors, psychotherapists and psychiatrists who worked with patients. It always amazed me how often people were asked, "How do you feel about this?" And patients often responded, "I feel depressed."

They answered without thinking about what the word meant. The patients could not stop and see that the word describing the condition was being transformed into a word describing the action.

When people say they “feel overwhelmed,” they use a verb.
Saying, for example: “I have doubts,” they turn the verb into a noun, that is, into an event or thing. When a person says, "I am frustrated," this does not mean that he has a whole basket filled with something. He is in the process of frustration.

When you turn a state into a process, you will learn much more about it. When psychotherapists and psychiatrists tell their patients, "How do you feel when you are frustrated?" or "How do you feel when you are disappointed?" - they are missing the most important information. We know there is another way to handle
information about the world. Understanding how the brain works tells us that the connections between all organs are as complex as the connections within the brain. Only this allows us to think with feelings.

I want to say that our body is not cut off from the brain. The organs of the body are "extensions" of the brain. When people say they are feeling frustrated, it is very important to ask them leading questions: “Where are you experiencing this feeling? Where does it start? At what point in the body does it appear? Where does it go? "Feelings cannot be static.
They always move in some direction.

I know that sometimes, in fear, people feel that all their insides are twisted into a tight knot. But in fact, the twisting process goes either clockwise or counterclockwise. Every time they tell me something like this, I ask where
there is such a process. I am told that the feeling appears in the stomach or chest.
However, it does not matter at all where it happens. What matters is what a person does with this feeling.

Sometimes I ask, "In which direction is the sensation going?" And they answer me: "It is motionless." Only by taking the patient by the hand and forcing him to rotate it clockwise or counterclockwise, right or left, can we determine in which direction
the sensations of his body move. These are the only truly available measurements.

When a person begins to think about his feelings, he realizes that only one of these directions is correct. From this, people usually conclude that the sensation
moves, even if it is minimal. The fact that the feeling is moving means that you can make it move faster, slower, forward or backward. Our senses are not out of our control. Most people need to establish control over their feelings, because once control is established, feelings can be changed.

The properties of your thoughts, that is, submodality, determine how these thoughts affect you. By making large-scale movements with the feelings with which you are associated, you will feel that the feelings become more intense. By making the movements smaller and moving away from the feeling, you realize that they become weaker. We can learn use control over submodalities to evoke the necessary feelings at the right times. I call this process controlling your own brain.

Source: "Guide to Personality Correction" by Richard Bandler