Stop Avoiding Your Thoughts
Generally, we try to avoid discomfort and gravitate towards what feels good. So when uncomfortable feelings or thoughts arise sometimes our first inclination is to bury or avoid them. It is not a surprise that most people I see in therapy have developed ways to avoid these thoughts or feelings or even struggle to describe their feelings.
Unfortunately, avoiding your thoughts and feelings does not actually make them go away. I am sure you have heard of the phrase “Do not think about a purple elephant.” Our brain is wired to create thoughts and feelings and may in fact even be more likely to create the very thing we want to avoid when we’re actively trying to do so. Your brain wants to tell you something and, in some ways, may think it is trying to motivate you despite the message it is passing along ultimately being unhelpful or detrimental to our mental health.
When we try to avoid these thoughts and/or feelings, we may start to engage in behaviors that are not effective. We may throw ourselves into work until we are exhausted just not to think about a thought. Or we may start to insult ourselves “for being so unhealthy and thinking these thoughts or feelings these emotions.” We can even start avoiding our avoidance coping skills!
Start to notice what your behaviors you participate in or are your “go-to’s” in order to avoid thinking about or feeling something. Afterwards take a second step to notice what starts to be impacted when you engage in these avoidant behaviors, regardless of it the impact is positive or negative. If the behavior that is triggered is isolation, you may start to notice that your friendships are struggling the more you engage in this behavior, or, if you don’t fully avoid people or place, you may find yourself being less genuine and authentic in the moment because you are not fully being present. After all you’re not enjoying yourself because you’re going to war with your thoughts!
So, instead of banishing these thoughts out into the proverbial cornfield…notice them. Rather than attempting to sprint away from these thoughts and feelings, allow your brain to recognize them without judgement as if you were an outsider dispassionately observing and looking in. When you see an unhelpful thought bubbling up, create a babbling brook in your mind and allow that thought to fall on a leaf on that river in your brain and float away downstream. Similarly, when an emotion rises to the surface of that river notice it, give yourself permission to feel it, validate yourself and your mind that it is okay to feel this way. If it is an emotion that you would like to process later let your brain know that you recognize this emotion, accept it and that it will be something you will process later when you are able to give it the attention it deserves.
I want people to befriend their brain and not make it their enemy. We all struggle with hard thoughts and feelings and by validating them and not making them (or us) “wrong”, we in effect are able to process them and release them back out into the ether more easily.
