Obsessive Thoughts

I am bothered with obsessive thoughts and have been trying to find a way to quiet my mind and block these kinds of thoughts out. I am in my late 50's so this will sound kind of funny, but I've tried coloring with crayons in coloring books to relax and zone out. It works pretty well as long as I keep coloring, but I started becoming obsessed with the crayons and started collecting them, and now have hundreds of them, maybe thousands, and keep wanting to buy more when I go shopping. Does anyone know of a way to tune out obsessive thoughts without it leading to another obsession? The anxiety that seems to go along with this is just overwhelming, and the more anxiety I feel the more I have obsessive thoughts. It's enough to drive a person crazy!

I don't think there's any way you can just get rid of them because they're your own subconscious knee-jerk thoughts, but what you can do is ignore them as best you can. What you'd typically find is that, like an annoying child, eventually they will be begin to subside if you pay them no attention.

Thanks, will give this a try. I've never thought about just ignoring the thoughts, I've always tried to stop them by shutting my mind down. Maybe this will work.