How to distract yourself from obsessive thoughts. How to distract yourself from bad thoughts? Ways to get distracted

If certain thoughts or memories make you sad or anxious, you're probably looking for a way to distract yourself from them. Finding something to distract you can help you shift your focus away from anxious or negative thoughts. Everyone has something that upsets them and that they don't want to think about. However, sometimes these thoughts can indicate a serious condition, such as anxiety, depression, or post-traumatic stress disorder. Keep in mind that often the only way to truly forget sad thoughts or events (violence, accident, mental illness, etc.) is to talk to a mental health professional. The first step in dealing with the cause of your focus on negative, harmful thoughts is to try to understand the nature of those thoughts.

Steps

Calm your mind

Keep a diary. One of the reasons why it is so difficult for a person to stop thinking about something is that he makes a special effort not to think about it. Unfortunately, in most cases, this only makes you focus on those thoughts even more and causes unconstructive feelings, such as guilt or shame (“Why can’t I stop thinking about this?”). Keep a mental health journal to give yourself the opportunity to explore your feelings and thoughts, even those that make you sad or anxious.

Break the cycle of repetitive thinking. The repetitive thinking cycle is the process of thinking about a certain issue over and over again. As a rule, thoughts in this case are negative or restless. If you feel the need to distract yourself from your thoughts, you may have entered into a cycle of repetitive rumination. This habit needs to be broken because repetitive rumination is closely linked to major depression. Here are some techniques to help you break the cycle of repetitive thinking:

Continue to practice mindfulness in all your actions. A wonderful way to stay focused on the present moment and not get lost in negative thoughts is through a daily mindfulness practice. This technique can be extremely effective in reducing repetitive rumination and clearing the mind of unpleasant experiences and worries.

When you wake up in the morning, take a deep, calming breath. Do some gentle stretching and think about how each exercise makes your muscles and joints feel. Drink a glass of water and pay attention to the temperature, consistency and how you feel as the liquid flows down your throat. Don't do anything automatically, focus on every action you take throughout the day: when you shower, brush your teeth, eat, drive, work, and so on.
Throughout each activity, refrain from judging what you are doing and do not allow your thoughts to wander. When you find yourself distracted, bring your attention back to the activity you are doing and think about how it affects each of your senses.

Get ready. If you enjoy cooking or baking, these activities can be a great way to take your mind off unpleasant thoughts. Cooking dinner, for example, can make you feel like you've done something useful and boost your self-confidence. Moreover, you will convey your positive feelings to others - those with whom you share the meal.

Solve puzzles. They are often used in educational therapy because they require focus, patience, and creativity. Puzzles can be very helpful for those with distracted attention, disorganized thinking, and problems with motivation. They often help to temporarily distract from other thoughts because they require concentration.
- Find puzzles that you enjoy and don't get bored with. Crosswords and Sudoku are fairly common puzzles that can easily be found almost anywhere.
- You can also try putting together a puzzle if you like putting together disparate pieces. In addition, when you see disparate details come together into a picture, it gives a pleasant feeling that you are coping with the task.
- There are many mobile applications and websites with different puzzles, so you can solve them anywhere.

Use entertainment to distract yourself

Watch TV shows, movies or funny videos on the Internet. Humor is a wonderful way to distract yourself from negative thoughts or memories.

Listen to music. Ever since people learned to compose music, they have used it to express their feelings. Research has also shown that it helps reduce stress levels and promotes relaxation.

Go online. Moderate computer use can help you have fun and relax. On the Internet, you can play games, look at clothes and accessories in online stores, chat with old friends on social networks, read interesting articles on your favorite topics, or write an article for wikiHow. However, watch how much time you spend on the computer.

Take a warm shower or bath. Research shows that simply taking a hot shower can reduce your anxiety levels. Feeling physical warmth helps you relax and even be more inclined to socialize. Focus on the sensations you experience in the shower or bath: the water on your skin, the warmth that surrounds you. Take deep breaths. Let this be another mindfulness exercise: focus on the pleasant sensations and enjoy them.

Spend time with others

Call friends or relatives or go visit them. No matter how far or close your family or friends are, when you need to take your mind off negative thoughts, you can call them. You can even tell your friend/relative that you are calling to take your mind off a specific topic so that they don't inadvertently bring it up.
- If your friends, parents, siblings or other loved ones live nearby, choose a day and arrange a meeting. Go for a walk or a picnic together. Watch a movie, go bowling, go swimming, or take up a general hobby.
- Spending time with other people not only makes you happy, but also prolongs your life. Scientists now equate loneliness to tobacco use - it can be harmful to both mental and physical health.

Psychologists advise many ways to do this and at the same time learn to control your consciousness and emotions.

So, advice from a psychologist: how to distract yourself from bad thoughts? In order to escape from bad thoughts, psychologists advise understanding their essence. After all, bad thoughts are those unresolved problems, those things that remain unclear to us, as well as problems that may have already gone into the subconscious. It follows from this that in order to stop the flow of bad thoughts, you need to understand their essence, find out where they come from and at the root of what problem they grow. Analyze the flow of this information well: what do your thoughts have in common, what are their themes, try to guess what subconscious problem they may carry. Having found it, try to solve it, first remembering why it arose, what was the reason for it. Having found a solution to the problem, you will get rid of the constant bad thoughts that it inspired you.

Sometimes it happens that negativity becomes something common for you, and your consciousness is increasingly filled with bad thoughts of various topics. They will become a common occurrence for you, and dealing with them becomes an almost impossible task. Philosophers said that nothing spreads as fast as thought, and nothing is so difficult to stop.

For example, imagine in detail the sea, forest or other beautiful nature, moreover, feel it, get involved in it with your consciousness, expose yourself to this idea. Now imagine a large pendulum against this background, draw every detail of it, imagine well what it looks like. Now run it and imagine its every vibration. You can change the tempo from faster to slower and vice versa.

Imagine the sound and ticking, create this whole picture. After some time, try to stop the pendulum, and you will see that it is very difficult, almost impossible. The pendulum drawn by our imagination ceases to obey it, and it is sometimes very difficult to imagine how it begins to stop. This is an example of how difficult it is to eradicate a thought or idea. But still, we can learn this.

If you notice that you feel sad and are overcome by bad thoughts, you become more anxious, remember what brings you the greatest joy or pleasure. This is a very good and effective technique that helps to regularly cope with negativity. For example, you really like a certain comedian, or you have a favorite childhood book that you reread with pleasure, and it gives you a smile and a good mood.

Another good way to fight this is to do something that requires special attention and concentration. When you are happily involved in an interesting or stressful task, you are very good at distracting yourself from ulterior thoughts, filling your head with those necessary ones that go towards solving the work at hand.

Psychologists also recommend the visualization method. Bad thoughts arise from obsessive fear, and fear arises from a feeling of self-doubt. Repeat to yourself often about your importance, about your virtues, become more convinced of your virtues.

You can eradicate obsessive ideas like this: imagine yourself as a big and bright ball of sunshine, which is filled with positive energy, brings goodness and joy, and emits a lot of light and warmth. Now imagine your bad thoughts as little bugs that swarm around you. The more satirical you imagine it, the funnier these midges are, the better. Soon you will notice how stupid your bad thoughts look, how much they bother you, and you will also learn to laugh about it. A very good way to deal with fear is laughter. Imagine your fear as something small and funny, dress it in a wonderful outfit or simulate a funny situation - it will already appear before you in a different light. By laughing at your fear, you overcome it and eradicate it. Satire is a good tool to combat such problems.

Also, a good weapon in the fight against bad thoughts is...good thoughts. Give them a counterattack and bring a good thought to everything bad that arises in your head. Learn to see the other side of the coin, namely, the better side. Be more optimistic and you will see that in all those bad thoughts and thoughts that you struggle with, there are also good moments and aspects, and that there are even more of them than you imagine.

For example, you constantly think about your shortcomings, you don’t like your personality and body, sometimes it even seems to you that you are the weakest person you know, you are tormented by the fact that you are worse than others. You constantly criticize yourself, look for your mistakes, which then spin around in your head and give you no peace. What to do in this case? Look for your good qualities, look at yourself from a different perspective. If you cannot find enough positive qualities in yourself, or are unsure of yourself, ask your friends to express their opinions about you and support you in this. They will show you why they value you, why you are an individual and a person, why you are worth respecting. You will see that negative thoughts will disappear very soon.

How to escape from problems? Often, when we are at home, with our family, or trying to sleep, a heap of thoughts continues to spin in our heads: “Do this, then that...”, “Call tomorrow...”, “What should we do?” etc. Quite often this prevents us from living fully, communicating with loved ones, and finally deprives us of sleep. Today I will talk about how to get all this husk out of your head.

It's quite easy to put other people's problems out of your head, for example, if they are work-related. I left work and forgot until the next day. However, what if the problems are ours? If they concern our business? What if they concern our property? If they concern our personal life? It is not so easy to get distracted here, although we are aware of such a need.

Methods of distraction from problems

Write down the problem

It may seem strange, but often problems are in our heads only because we are afraid to forget them. To remove this fear, we need to record the task on paper or in some other way.
The method works better if next to the recorded problem we mark what we will do when the time comes to solve this problem. The action plan is very reassuring.

Why does this help? The fact is that our minds can only accommodate so many tasks at once. Psychologists have even calculated how much (7±2). This means that if the problem contains more components, it is very difficult for us to “settle” it in our heads. We begin to consider one part of it, then another, forgetting the previous conclusions. Thus, we get into a “cycle”, our thoughts become looped, and we make useless mental efforts.
On paper, everything is clear, you can fit as many elements as you like, and most importantly, the paper doesn’t forget.

Take it out of context

This method helps a lot if bad thoughts keep you from falling asleep. It requires imagination.

The fact is that all our problems and experiences are clearly tied in time. A man lies and thinks: “Here I am, now is such and such a date, and now I have problems “A”, “B”, etc.” But fortunately, our mind can easily travel back in time to a place where there were no problems. It is important not to overuse this method and only use it to fall asleep.

To do this, you need to remember when you felt good. When you fell asleep the same way, but thought, “Actually, everything is fine with me.” But at the same time, this must be a situation some time in the past when you really wanted to sleep.

You can also change the way you think about yourself. For example, you can imagine that you are an eagle, flying above the earth and looking down.
The most important thing in this method is to immerse yourself in the sensations. The sensations should be monotonous. For example, if you imagine that you are an eagle, imagine air pressure on your wings. Or, if you are remembering the past, try to imagine the bodily sensations then, in the past.

“Catch a thought” method.

It also helps with falling asleep. Imagine having the equivalent of windshield wipers in your mind, like a car's windshield. Try to imagine that they can sweep away thoughts and images and sounds.

Now you can play. When you catch yourself thinking about any thought, imagine that it flies away somewhere to the side.

This is quite difficult and requires practice.

Humble yourself

This method is also for falling asleep. When nothing helps and problems still creep into your head, you can try telling yourself the following: “okay, let everything go to hell, but I’ll sleep now.” Trouble may be inevitable, but you have 8 hours (or however much sleep you have left) of peace.Right now everything is fine.Enjoy it.

Method “Counting Sheep”

I think many people have tried this method and found that it doesn't work. In fact, this method is extremely effective, but we are simply using it incorrectly.
Here's the thing. How many people have had to count sheep in the modern world? Many people have only seen sheep in cartoons.

Try counting something more everyday, like loose change or cars.

Constant stress, troubles, failures and other negative events that happen in life lead to bad thoughts.

They can spin around in your head for hours, days at a time and simply poison ordinary life, preventing you from sleeping and making it difficult to concentrate on work and rest. How to distract yourself from bad thoughts and try to rethink the situation? This article will help you find the answer to the question.

Instructions to help you avoid negative thoughts

Initially, you should think about what brought you to such a state, where the negative thoughts come from. Perhaps this is due to mistakes made in the past or fear for the future. Understand everything in detail, try to accept the situation and start moving on.

Favourite buisness. This will help you switch. Walk more often, draw, fish, go hiking, just meditate. Such actions will help relieve emotional stress and take a little break from depressing thoughts.

Play sports. Physical activity in such a situation will come in handy. Thanks to them, it is possible to get a lot of positive emotions, lift your spirits, and keeping your body in great shape never hurts.

The muscles relax and so do the thoughts. An excellent sport is yoga and Pilates. They clear the mind. By the way, it doesn’t hurt to find a good mentor for regular training.

Communication. Make appointments with friends, walk around the city, get a four-legged friend, attend exhibitions and concerts. Try to be around positively charged people, you can learn a smile from them and not think about the bad.

Letting out emotions. Never keep negativity inside yourself. Resentment, indignation, sadness, grief, irritation or anger are not the best advisers and if these feelings visit you, speak out, talk about it, there is no need to remain silent and only aggravate the situation.

If necessary, cry, shout, hit the table or break dishes, hit the wall with your hands, but give vent to the negativity. This will help you get rid of bad thoughts and unwind.

Where do negative thoughts come from?

In fact, there are many options, and in order to start getting rid of something, you will have to identify the source of negative energy, and therefore try to eliminate it.

The most common sources that can influence a person and give rise to many bad, difficult and sad thoughts in his head.

TV;
Opinion of others;
Internet;
Press;
We ourselves.

Let's look at some positions in more detail.

Television, Internet, press

All these information providers quite often like to harp on and chew on information about disasters, criminal events that occurred: who killed whom, robbed whom, who was attacked, and so on.

And such an everyday bucket of dirt falls on the head of a normal person and the more sensitive ones begin to be afraid to go out after dark, eat in public catering places, or simply make new acquaintances.

Therefore, watch, read, listen only to what you really need, and not to everything and everyone.

Environment and ourselves

Opinions of others. This includes the opinions of friends, colleagues, parents and even neighboring grandmothers sitting on benches at the entrance.

How often can you hear frequent tactless questions, recommendations or complaints. It’s a shame why you’re not married, you’ll remain an old maid and other negative things.

If you don’t abstract yourself and stop reacting to such statements, negative thoughts will become frequent guests.

We ourselves. Surely you have noticed that you are engaged in banal self-criticism, and often thinking about how to distract yourself from bad thoughts, you addressed such a question only to yourself.

And this is correct, it is human nature to overthink oneself, reopen old wounds and succumb to the memories of long-gone days.

What will help you get rid of negative thoughts?

First of all, it will be useful to learn how to write lists. Just take a piece of paper, divide it into two parts and write down what really worries you and what has no serious basis.

Quite often, the first part is much shorter than the second, that is, most negative thoughts are simply far-fetched and have no basis.

Meditation does a good job of getting rid of negative thoughts. What does that require:

Sit comfortably in a chair or on a sofa;
Relax and take a deep breath;
Try to visually imagine the problem that worries you;
To think that she is a clot, black and unpleasant, which is slowly coming out of you;
Imagine that a black clot is enveloped in golden threads, and it turns into a luminous shell;
Watch how everything in this shell burns and flies far away.

Watch the video:

You can also imagine yourself in nature, by the river, how you swim and, along with the babbling river, all your troubles go away. Even taking a shower would be a good idea. Draw positive pictures in your mind.

This technique can help cope with the raging flow of negative thoughts. What can you imagine:

How you make a brilliant career, how your boss praises and shakes your hand;
How you play sports, and the opposite sex looks at you with delight and admiration;
How you bask in the shade of palm trees, and the gentle sun tickles your face.

Strange premonitions that torment you every minute, black thoughts foreshadowing trouble and trouble - do you know such sensations? Surely you will answer in the affirmative. This condition can haunt a person for quite a long time and sometimes it is very difficult to get rid of them. But it is absolutely necessary to do this, because these are the first harbingers of depression and even paranoid states! And we absolutely do not need such “fellow travelers”. How to get rid of bad thoughts and learn to enjoy even the smallest victories? Let's figure it out and become happier and stronger!

Nature of the problem

Unfortunately, obsessive and sad thoughts arise for everyone for their own reason: perhaps you are tormented by an unresolved problem or you are too worried about your future, or maybe your relatives, in your opinion, are in danger. But whatever the reason, you need to get rid of it very urgently, otherwise you will turn your life into a real nightmare, where you will be haunted by bad premonitions. How is an obsessive thought formed? According to psychologists, such a phenomenon is nothing more than psycho-emotional overload. Analyze the situation when you had such problems: severe stress, troubles or a bad streak in life. Negative events form a clear psychological basis on the basis of which a person begins to live. There is a fear of a repetition of the problem, that is, we ourselves begin to project such a state onto the world around us. And as a conclusion, we are constantly waiting for a similar situation and are already preparing ourselves for experiences and defeats. What to do in such a situation?

Fear and anxiety - coping with them

First of all, you need to clearly understand what is happening to you. Don’t think that this situation is hopeless; understand that this is just an emotional state that you can change. Unfortunately, for some people, a negative attitude towards themselves and the world around them is formed in childhood and haunts them throughout their lives. How to act in such situations:

We fight fears - to overcome this feeling you need to realize that nothing and no one is intentionally threatening you. What you feel is based on personal experience and may be partly instilled by those around you. “You won’t succeed, you’re a failure, you’re poor and mediocre” - such suggestions can play a cruel joke on a person. Over time, he will believe that this is how things are and will begin to torment himself with thoughts that nothing can be improved. The most useful thing in such a situation is to prepare a certain retrospective of your life. The most successful moment of your life is taken as a basis and all achievements are recorded, even the smallest ones: you are a great cook, or you raised a wonderful dog, or maybe you were the best reader at school. Write everything that once made you happy. Analyze and you will see that the situation was not always like this;
Anxiety – this obsession is perhaps the most common! After all, you can worry about anything. But when this thought just settles in your head, it’s no longer normal. You are exhausting yourself, but there may be no visible reasons. How to proceed? It is important to understand this thing - the more you “wind up” yourself, the more your condition will worsen. We learn to constantly control ourselves: do not feed the obsession with conversation, do not allow yourself to think about bad things. As soon as such a thought comes to mind, try to be distracted by some important matter, or start singing, or repeat the multiplication table in your mind. You can do whatever you want, distract yourself.

It is important not only to think about the future, but to do it correctly. Only a positive attitude and self-confidence will help you overcome any black thought!

Control is the main assistant

How to distract yourself from bad thoughts? It is very important to learn to control yourself - only you can help yourself. You need to understand the groundlessness of your fears and black thoughts. This exercise is perfect: write down your greatest fear, and then predict how your life will change if it comes true. It is important to describe this process in detail. For example, I'm afraid that I won't be able to pay off my loan. What will happen: they will call me to intimidate me, so what? Next, I’ll turn to a specialist who will help restructure the debt, what if they go to court? And it’s even for the best, fines and penalties will be written off there, the loan will be broken into parts. I’ll just pay it off later - how do you feel now? After all, there are no hopeless situations in life! I hope you understand the principle - we think only in a positive way; you can select similar information for each problem. As soon as you see that in principle there is nothing to fear, bad thoughts will begin to let go of you. Control yourself every time the blues begin to set in - try to switch to other important things.

Lowering the importance

Every person believes that his problems are the most global! And it is very difficult to perceive the world as a whole - that is, there are many different events happening in the world, including unpleasant ones. Prioritize:

Your life is the main value - everything else is just dust that will scatter and evaporate;
Everything passes and this will pass. Think about what your life will look like when this problem is resolved;
Envy is a source of dark and obsessive thoughts. Never compare yourself to others! You can gain the experience of more successful people, but you should not try on their life. You are an individual and you have your own mission in life;
We control emotions - too strong expression of emotions harms our psyche. I would like to think about the problem - please, but don’t paint scary pictures, imagine only a positive outcome of the situation;
We form the correct worldview - you should not constantly return to the past, forbid yourself to remember failures. You must love and forgive yourself. You can’t change anything anyway, so is it worth torturing yourself?

Learn both negative and positive. Be prepared to accept the situation in a neutral manner, and then any thought will be perceived only as food for thought!

How to get rid of bad thoughts? Start with yourself. First of all, you need to forgive not only yourself, but also the person because of whom dark thoughts came into your life. Perhaps you are angry about the situation? How to do this:

If you have received instructions from childhood, forgive your parents and convince yourself that this is only their personal opinion;
If you can’t get rid of a bad thought, keep yourself busy with some project: draw, write a book, develop a business plan for your own business, anything to realize your creative potential;
Don't be afraid of the future - you must understand that only you shape it and the longer you fear it, the more bleak it will be for you. Write a plan for the future - it helps a lot! At least for the next month: write point by point what you will do and strive to strictly implement it;
Punish yourself for negativity. There is an excellent method developed by psychologists: put a rubber band on your wrist and every time an obsessive thought comes into your head, pull it back and hit your hand! Does this seem strange? But our brain will very quickly understand that such thoughts are fraught with physical punishment and will stop producing such fears. You can, of course, not so radically: a gloomy thought came to your mind - do 10 push-ups from the floor, or whatever, as long as you feel uncomfortable doing it.

Dear readers, please note that your thoughts are just a psycho-emotional reaction to external stimuli. As soon as you become calmer and begin to understand that this condition is interfering with your life, your subconscious mind will tell you new methods of getting rid of bad thoughts.

Image: blameless-eyes (flickr.com)