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Have you ever tried telling yourself to stop thinking about what you’re thinking about? Did that work? Or, did that intensify your thoughts with a kind of, “Oh no you don’t” strength? 😉 Telling ourselves to stop worrying, stressing or fantasizing rarely brings relief. When I was teaching 4th graders, I illustrated this point by telling my students, “Don’t think of a purple panda jumping on a trampoline.” They found this hysterical because, of course, they all thought of exactly that. The following day, I learned from a mother I was friendly with that when she asked her son how school was he responded with, “Lauren taught us mind control.” I had a good laugh and I realized I needed to share with the parents the skills I was helping their children develop. Anyways, as I was saying … When we’re caught up in the magnetic pull of those looping thoughts it can feel like we can’t let go of them—and they certainly won’t let go of us. And yet when we engage with the content of those thoughts, we often just get more tangled up, stressed out and… stuck. Here’s an example of how that can sound: “I feel like I shouldn’t have sent that email the way I did. Maybe, I over reacted. I should have waited. But, I’m tired of waiting and feeling dismissed and brushed aside. It felt important for me to say how I felt. But now I feel sick and I keep replaying it over and over again. Perhaps, I should have softened my language. But if I did, my words would have lost their meaning. This happens all the time. I’m so worried about upsetting people that I change my words so that they land softly but that diminishes how I actually feel because I am really hurt by what they did.”
Can you feel how this could go round and round without resolution or relief? Yes, there’s something to be said for reflecting on what happened and maybe writing an email differently in the future. But we can’t think our way into clarity or talk ourselves into relief. And from the outside when we’re caught in those looping thoughts, we can look still (even composed) but on the inside we’re anything but. It can feel all swirly within. Or like the a pot of boiling water with the lid latched on—a particular quality of frenetic stuckness. There’s just so much dysregulation and unsteadiness. So, if telling ourselves to stop stressing out doesn’t help, what does? In this week’s guided exercise, I’ll be inviting you to be with the situation that brought about those looping thoughts, so you can get some relief. By being with your experience in this specific way, you may begin to experience more ease and feel less pulled into your thoughts—or stuck inside them. It can feel like going from being in the woods to standing on a ledge, looking out at them.
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