How to Stop Unwanted Thoughts

“Unwanted thoughts are often strange, disturbing thoughts that pop into your mind and bring on feelings of worry or shame”.

Last week I was teaching at an outside institution and half way through my talks a few students started talking to each other. They were loud enough to be noticed, I used the classical technique of going silent for a while so they know they were noticed but this did not work with them, I then moved to step two, I raised my voice a little higher but again they did not seem to back off. I then said “if any one has a question please ask me now, it’s difficult for me to focus when you talk among each other at the same time.”

I knew this may be harsh but it worked. After the lecture I reflected on the situation but found myself bothered about it, was it a wise thing to do? Did I embarrass them? Was my talk boring to them and so on. I found myself distressed by these unwanted thoughts despite them being temporary.

When conducting a workshop about stress management I often ask the participants to avoid thinking about a pink elephant and then ask them to tap on the table if a pink elephant comes to their minds.

On most occasions, they tapped on the table more than once per minute on average. And later, when I asked them to think of a pink elephant the animal came to their minds more often than when they were asked to avoid thinking about it. Unwanted thoughts are often strange, disturbing thoughts that pop into your mind and bring on feelings of worry or shame.

Psychology tells us that trying to block out unwanted thoughts causes them to be more prominent. That's why it’s not helpful to tell a depressed person to avoid thinking of his miserable thoughts because they would end up thinking about them more.

The same principle applies to suppressed emotions and feelings. We often hear about men divorcing their wives for very silly reasons when in fact the anger has been building for many years and the incident before the divorce was the feather that broke the camel's back.

Unwanted thoughts come to all of us, and they are not considered mental health disorders unless they are repetitive and disturbing to the degree that they distract us from doing our work or communicating with others. In that case the person may be suffering from obsessive disorders.

The unwanted thoughts that come to most of us can be triggered by stress or anxiety, or they can be due to biological factors, such as hormone changes that are seen in women after the birth of a child.

So how to deal with intrusive thoughts? As we saw from the example at the beginning of this article, fighting intrusive thoughts does not work so it’s better to learn to live with them and manage them better. When you are troubled by such thoughts try out the following steps:

First, recognize the thought as intrusive. Tell yourself this is just an intrusive thought, it’s not what I believe, and it’s not what I want to do.

Do not fight with the thought, just accept it. Don’t try to make it go away. Don’t judge yourself for having strange or disturbing thoughts. It doesn’t mean that something is wrong with you. If the thoughts are persistent and start affecting your concentration at work or stop you from sleeping or you become very distressed by them then you should consult a psychiatrist. Help is available so don’t suffer in silence.