An Excellent Technique To Stop Unwanted Thoughts

I can tell you that my irrational thoughts of worst case scenarios always happening to me and my family are very unwanted. Who, wants to think about stuff like that? I don't see a problem with not wanting to have those thoughts. As a matter of fact that are cripplying my life and my thearpy. So, to get rid of those thoughts are going to be what helps me. Now, I can see where we want to explore the roots of those thoughts, but to keep having them seems more harmful than helpful.

I think facts are different... having a bad dagnosis you don't want to hear, but it is a fact. The unwanted thoughts of, you won't' survive, or you can't handle this are the thoughts you don't want. Of course this is all imo.

I think generally avoidance strategies do not work and maybe this is the same for thoughts. If we try to avoid them, where does that leave us?

Mindfulness to me is just letting the thoughts do their thing, in the same way my heart does it thing by beating, my lungs through breathing - my brain by thinking. I do not have to be those thoughts in the same way as I do not have to be that lung rising and falling - I may become aware of it, but then I can choose to let the focus relax.

I think this is different from DBT, although I acknowledge that DBT may use similar techniques - my understanding is that we have old Buddha to thank for mindfulness...oh and Jon KZ.

I don't think my T would approve of this at all!

"Don't judge your feelings, just be with them," is a likely response.

You happened to remind me of a (rather trivial) example. Some years ago I had a job where I worked with wood a lot. My pockets would regularly fill up with chips and sawdust so I'd leave my checkbook in the glove compartment of my car where it would stay cleaner. One evening I was driving to the bank after work. I parked the car, turned off the engine and thought, "Oh, almost forgot my checkbook!"

Normally I would have taken that as just more proof that I was as absent-minded and unreliable as I'd always thought, and looked for ways to "supervise" myself so I wouldn't forget again next time. Tape a note to the dash... tie a string around my finger... go back to carrying the checkbook in my pocket, wood chips or no. This time, though, I suddenly noticed what I was saying to myself. "Forgot, heck! I remembered the checkbook exactly when I needed to. It wouldn't have done me any good to remember it a block earlier while I was still driving and couldn't do anything about it."

In my experience, struggling to make sure I don't think "negative" thoughts works about the same way as struggling to make sure I don't forget my checkbook.

That's from Carl Rogers, one of my favorite psychologists ever. I'm sure he must've said it more than once. I first read it in On Becoming A Person but the same essay also appears in The Carl Rogers Reader. There's a Google Books copy of the latter here.

In another essay, Rogers identifies seven stages that clients appear to move through in the course of therapy. Here's a snippet from his description of the third stage:Two things that that reminds me of, are making New Year's resolutions and -- deciding not to think any more negative thoughts.

Perhaps it's the words that are wrong. I tell my paranoid fantasies: "Don't be silly!"

Actually I did that for only a week, and that was after the hard work had already been done in therapy. But "don't be silly" was the phrase that finally dispelled them.

if that time ever comes, that is