Controlling Our Thoughts - How?

I’ve found acknowledging the thoughts is helpful, forming a habit of STOP, standing back and looking as an observer at that thought, questioning it, posing alternatives.

You’re pretty good at replying helpfully to people here, I guess you could look at it as a similar process - if that makes sense.

I know it’s not always easy though and when our resilience is low and we’ve got stressed going on it’s challenging to stand back from unwanted thoughts.

Like anything it takes patience and practice. They ( yeah who?) say that you need 10,000 hours of practice to acquire a new skill. Meanwhile if you are actively practicing you can take comfort in knowing that there’s and end to such thoughts.

Nothing is impossible for the person who doesn't have to do it.

Mmm, maybe spiritual? I don’t know. I like using the Buddha concept of empty mind. I call it a null state. To me it’s not spiritual it’s just a coping method, one that works well for me.

There's also the practise of 'mindfulness' which is widely suggested by the mental health field and is actually a component called 'Right mindfulness ' of the ancient Buddhist path to enlightenment - inner peace and tranquility. So, it's spiritual in origin. I always use it for self grounding.

Plenty of info and videos on the internet.

I think it’s part of our design that forced early man to cave paint and eventually create language to sharing knowledge and recording life experiences for those in other generations.

Avoiding certain things where practicable, certain triggering things, can be a way to control unpleasant thoughts invading the mind too.

Oh great stuff @*Beth*. Sounds like you've been on your journey of the mind for quite some time. Awesome.👍

Thank you m.o.s. Actually, I went to my first "rap group" in 1977. I was in high school and there were a bunch of hippies sitting in a huge circle on the floor of an old house. I was by far the youngest and felt very self conscientious Everyone was talking about *whatever*. I don't think I said a word. But that group opened a world for me. Next was a TM group, I was 17, and that led to meditation. My friends teased me and called me "hippie!"

So, yeah. I've been at this for a very long time. One would think I'd "get it" by now.

I've not heard of that book at all tbh, but I have wondered, from time to time, how mindfulness made it's way into the mental health field. Now I know. Would be an interesting read.👍

Please do give it a read. I believe it would bring meaning and "aha's!" to your own practice. (btw, Amazon's description of it (should you read that) is horrible. The book is quite spectacular. Jon K-Z is absolutely no BS.)

I discovered mindfulness and started practicing it when I became interested in Buddhism and meditation etc, around the year 2000 - twenty-two years ago, wow.🤔 Then around 2005 I found out, to my joy, that it was known about in mental health. Because I felt Buddhism in general could be a valuable mental health tool, and when you look at it, the mental health field is really all about helping people to overcome their mental and emotional pain - and so is Buddhism. The two are united across the expanses of time (in many ways).🙏

It is GREAT that you're involved with Buddhist philosophy and meditation. I truly believe they are so healthy for the mind, body, and soul.

It took a long, long time for the western world to accept eastern philosophy. A lot of that had to do with the Vietnam war, just plain bigotry against anything Asian. Even in "liberal California" eastern spirituality didn't become mainstream until the 1990's - when Kabat-Zinn, who wasn't in any way threatening and had the right credentials, came onto the scene and brought mindfulness meditation along with solid statistics with him.

Prior to that, wow. Not something to be talked about outside of certain groups of people, seriously. I could list examples of the fear so many people had. It was ridiculous, but so real.

Gosh, it seems like I’ve always known about mindfulness since my uncle introduced me to it in the 70’s but it took years to acquire a semblance of discipline . I just looked up one of the first books I was exposed too, zen and the art of motorcycle repair, 1974! There was another but I can’t find it. Something about Buddha and a path. That was my uncle who lived in California of course!

@Nammu

Oh wow. I read that book (Zen...motorcycle *maintenance*) in the 90's in my twenties. Found it really interesting but hard to get my head around too. Wasn't till I'd grown a bit that I understood what Pirsig was saying. Then I read his follow up book 'Lila', which was a real joy to read. You might like that one too Nammu.👍

I think it’s using a muscle which, with practice, strengthens. The bad habit of negative thinking can lesson with each time the muscle flexes to replace the bad thought with a good though. For negative self talk, telling myself I am bad essentially, I try to stop and remind myself I am good. I have a DBT workbook, and will open it to any random page and start reading when in spiraling negative thinking now sometimes. I really have to fight my inclination to go down the negative self talk spiral and, of course, feel better when I can put myself on distracted better footing.

I was much too young when I read those books. Lila sounds good.

I'm going to advocate for DBT too. I'm doing it solo with my T right now but am hoping to join a group soon. I'm still doing self-destructive things as a newb, but at least now I'm pausing and realizing I'm making choice to be self-destructive, and those things aren't as bad now for the most part.

The Mindfulness of Breathing meditations I learned when I attended a Buddhist temple helped me immensely with negative thoughts. It's exactly what it says on the tin: One is supposed to focus on the breath and clear all else from your mind. I never could do it and it bugged me, until I realized it wasn't about clearing your mind at all, but returning to center. When I did that meditation and my thoughts strayed, I "looked" at my stray thoughts, accepted that they were there and turned my mental self back to center and the breath.

Took a lot of practice to get to that point!