It doesn’t seem to go away, does it? That one thought that keeps coming back to you. Haunting you. You’ve done all you can to get rid of it, but like a ghost in a horror film, it stalks you everywhere you go.
You might have tried positivity as a way to abolish it. You might have tried meditation to silence it. Or perhaps you tried using a distractor to hide it—using television, social media, video games, alcohol, drugs, anything, EVERYTHING—using whatever will keep that thought away from you.
Or keep you away from that thought.
Well, it’s a good thing you’re reading this blog post. I happen to be an expert at removing unwanted thoughts.
My training started at an early age. In junior high, I remember sitting in my bedroom racked by thoughts that had come to me. I didn’t know why, but I was picturing people in ways that I didn’t want to picture them. It may have been the recommendation to picture them naked and then you won’t be nervous anymore that left me stuck with thoughts that would pop up here and there, attacking when I didn’t expect them to.
Some might say this is normal for humans, especially young ones in a developmental phase of life. As a young religious girl, I saw it as one of the worst sins. It frightened me that I couldn’t control it.
Then, it came to me. A vision. A revelation. An aha moment. Whatever you may call it, I suddenly had a new tactic with which to approach my thoughts. Since they were “sinful” and “dirty,” I decided what better way to get rid of dirty thoughts than by cleaning my brain.
This next part might seem quirky, but keep in mind that if you want to get rid of that irritating image in your head, you need to use whatever resources you’ve got.
To clean my brain, I imagined a little worker inside my skull. He’d bag up the bad thought, walk to my ear, and throw out the trash. When the garbage hit the ground, it would explode into a ball of fire and become incinerated. Nothing more than ash in the wind.
It worked! Less and less I was unwillingly thinking those disturbing things. I had internal peace.
Then, after a few days, something odd happened. The thoughts became incessant again. They were burned to ash and yet they didn’t disappear as they had before. They returned with immediacy, as if they were more invincible than the vampires from Twilight.
My poor worker man couldn’t manage the workload. Because I was young, it makes sense that my first approach at this needed improvement. You don’t become an expert on your first attempt.
To improve upon my strategy, I created more workers. These would not replace my garbage man—there was only one of those. Instead, these workers would attack the source directly: they’d scrub clean the infested parts of my brain.
If it’s not clear, this was all imagined and I do not encourage trying to do anything to your brain. You will end up worse if you do.
However, I felt confident that these imagined workers could fix things. And they did. For longer than days. This practice helped me for years.
It enabled me to grow in my ability to banish unwanted thoughts, to the point that I could forgo the imagined routine and just jump to another thought at will. It worked as well and quickly as flipping a switch. Here and there I’d need to incorporate supporting practices that were mentioned at the beginning of this article, especially the positivity one. But when my life became hellish, and I had no control as a child, this saved me.
Hurting by what someone said or did? Remember you’re awesome and don’t think about it. Still thinking about it? Go talk to someone about something silly.
Have an insecurity? Jump to a thought about your upcoming class!
Just. Keep. Avoiding. It.
I mean it when I say this worked well. Really well. Eventually, I could get through the majority of my high school days feeling good and happy and upbeat. And I was in high school.
There would be unique instances where I could not achieve this. I would get bullied and couldn’t help but feel sad. But for the most part, I was the positive girl. I was okay.
Until I wasn’t.
There were those moments at home when my breathing became shallow. My cheeks became the cliffs for the waterfall of tears gushing out. My wails became so loud I wondered if the neighbors could hear. Every horrible thought I had never wanted occupied my mind, chanting, yelling, not leaving me a second of silence or reprieve.
For someone so strong and well-trained, I could not move a muscle. I just sat alone, in the dark, crying in my room.
One might say that weeks of pleasantry is worth having a moment of deep anguish. This was not. This moment risked me ever feeling anything pleasant again because as my mind darkened, I eventually felt that the world was better off without me in it.
I didn’t harm myself or attempt to harm myself, but as a creative, I imagined it. Did I like picturing it? No. But as you know, I couldn’t control it.
By the time I finished high school, I had hopes of escaping the scary for reals this time. No more ghosts following me around. I was free.
My life did improve. I mean, some pretty horrendous things happened to me my freshman year of college, one of which required me to get surgery. But I can definitively say that I was living a better life.
The crying fits happened far less and not as much haunted me.
As my adulthood continued on, it felt like all the fog, all the doom and gloom dissipated. Don’t get me wrong. I had those wailing, what’s the point of living instances. There were just so few of them compared to the past.
As my headspace cleared up, I felt more and more like myself.
Then I got married. At age 21.
It turns out that intimate relationships can be quite triggering for someone with trauma—especially if it’s a relationship with two young people who can’t seem to resolve their problems. Those excruciating times where I laid curled up in a ball increased exponentially.
To help myself heal and develop better approaches to my marriage, I went to therapy. In each session I solved my own problems (because, you know, I’m quite the expert), and my therapist would sit there nodding his head, also convinced that I had it all sorted out. After about four sessions, we decided I didn’t need therapy anymore and everything was going to be okay.
I tackled my problems with hope and positivity and didn’t let any bad thoughts consume me, and when my problems continued and worsened, I absolutely lost it emotionally. Why couldn’t I fix things?
It was years until I knew the answers to that question.
For one, I alone could not fix a relationship. For two, I was no expert—and though I did not think I was, despite me posing this satirical joke to you, I did act as if I had enough expertise to correct every issue in my life and never let it happen again. And for three…
I could not fix my thoughts because we can’t get rid of our thoughts.
Don’t believe me? Then let’s experiment.
Because I’m not an expert, I’m going to use Dr. Russ Harris’ experiment, since he is an internationally recognized trainer in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and he wrote a bomb book that I’m a big fan of.
If you’d like to reference this experiment directly, you can go to page 28 of his book, The Happiness Trap.
“As you keep reading this paragraph, try to not think about ice cream. Don’t think about the color or texture. Don’t think about how it tastes on a hot summer’s day. Don’t think about how good it feels as it melts inside your mouth.
“Stare at the floor and try not to think about ice cream for one minute.”
So, did you do it? Did you manage to go a whole sixty seconds without thinking about ice cream?
Most people can’t. And if you can… I’m sorry to say that’s also not a good thing.
Apparently, a tiny number of peeps can briefly suppress their thoughts! Any guesses as to how they do it?
They think of something else instead.
Suppression can easily link you to depression.
According to Russ Harris, “A huge amount of research on thought suppression shows that, in the long term, such methods not only fail but have a rebound effect, leading to an increase in frequency and intensity of the very thoughts you’re trying to avoid” (Harris 28).
My moments of consuming agony that would not release me from the ever shrinking cell I was caged in were not coincidental. All the evading only pulled the rubber band further away until it finally snapped back, whacking me harder and harder the longer I suppressed.
When I couldn’t get rid of my thoughts, when it felt like I was failing at creating peace within myself, I was actually going through a normal experience for anyone in the midst of hardships. You see, “the more stressed you are, the more difficult the situation you’re in, the less ability you have to control your thoughts and feelings” (Harris 27).
We can’t get rid of our thoughts, or they come back worse. It’s time we learn how to face them. Better yet, we need to practice facing them, because not practicing is like having unused knowledge.
Unused knowledge is as good as unknown knowledge.
I highly recommend reading The Happiness Trap for this best in-depth assistance. However, for now, let me share what has worked best for me.
Facing my thoughts meant learning how to improve my coping skills, emphasis on the plural aspect of it. One approach would not change my life. I needed to learn multiple ways to regulate my emotions because different situations would need different applications of said skills.
Finding a therapist that could assist me in learning these skills helped tremendously. Spending my own time learning from psychology books and practicing these skills also helped.
When an unwanted thought would come to me, I’d do the opposite of what I had in the past. I would acknowledge it. I would let it exist and accept that I could not force it away. That said, I would also acknowledge that why I might have that thought or feeling, it wasn’t necessarily true.
For example, in the past I have thought, I am a failure.
Instead of avoiding it, I began to recognize that feeling. Meanwhile, I let my awareness that I have accomplished many things coexist with the thought of failure. I knew I was not defined by the world’s version of success, but I did not let a battle between the two thoughts commence.
The thought that I was a failure continued to exist, but I didn’t enter a worse headspace by trying to force it out. That left me with more ability to distance myself from the thought and think instead, I feel like a failure or right now I’m thinking I’m a failure.
The notion didn’t consume me. I could carry on with my task until the thought naturally passed away.
As a wave rolls into the beach and eventually draws back into the ocean, so do thoughts come and go. Tides will change. Waves will come with different frequencies and different ferocities. But they will not stay.
If a thought really does seem to not go away and it feels out of hand, again, there is help. I couldn’t have done this on my own. That’s the thing. None of us are experts. Even the professionals need help for their personal life.
So stop battling yourself and start accepting where you’re at. Seek out help to develop coping skills and habits that will improve your life in a concrete way, not in a temporary way like with suppression—because that will only make things worse in the long run.
This practice is lifelong. But, even with all the difficulties that continue to occur in my life, I am much better off than before. I’m no longer that young girl, stuck on that one thought she couldn’t get rid of.
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