How to stop ruminating about intrusive thoughts

so we've been talking a lot lately about intrusive thoughts and understanding the difference between thoughts and thinking and the importance of digging under the superficial toppika of a thought to see that the underlying core fear that were probably reacting to in multiple ways sort our lives and the importance of cutting out those reactions those compulsions a lot of people have been asking though so ok I understand you know the difference between a thought and the obsessing but I keep obsessing like the intrusive thought pops up and I just start ruminating how do I stop doing that and so that's what this video is all about now this might surprise you but if you really want to tackle obsessing and ruminating the first thing I'd suggest looking at is how you think about thoughts that you like and to explain this I brought along my trusty bananas obsessing and false memory is an intrusive thoughts and ruminating all this stuff is just wrapped up in judgment compulsion these are loaded labels we stick on the stuff in our heads but there is just stuff in your heads it's all just bananas thoughts are thoughts thinking is thinking let's see you believe that if you do something in the wrong order you don't do things correctly or you have the wrong thoughts during the day there's something bad will happen to your steps and your partner like and you're going about your day and you do something not in the right order you don't have the right thought while you're doing something important and you know you get this image in your head of your partner this person you love so much in the world getting run over just trampled by a whole pod squad herd of alpacas angry alpacas and you see your partner and and their hurt and it makes you feel terrible that's an intrusive thought right you don't you don't want to see your partner getting killed because you did something wrong and that's bad and you start thinking about how you can correct that thing that you did wrong just a second I have to pull my entire life on hold well I put all of my time and energy into fixing this banana or else bad things will happen how can you make that image go away how can you check to make sure that your partner is okay that you're going to be able to prevent them being killed by that angry pack of alpacas what do you call a group of L Packers assume it's a herd probably it should be a pack right a pack of all Packers anyhow you don't like that eating that intrusive thought banana you would call ruminating because it's a really unpleasant experience to have to think about that image the same person different day said they're going about their day and they start to notice their lucky number is popping up all over the place and on their way into work they didn't get stuck in a traffic jam like they usually do and then when they got to work somebody had brought doughnuts to work that day and they you know they're really starting to thing like today is a good day I'm everything is going so well today and then their boss the boss who never compliments anybody comes up to them while they're eating doughnuts just love them that doughnut and says you know what you know that thing you do here at this office where we do that stuff you're doing a great job so impressive and now that person is starting to think hey you know what things are going really well and I have been seeing my lucky number pop up today you know what I should go and play the lottery and they just keep thinking about that the rest of the day cuz like oh I am so lucky I really feel it I'm just seeing you know the universe the universe wants me to play the lottery everything is coming together for me things are gonna go really well for me I know it I can feel it they like that thought that's like that's a good oh that's a good thought they like that but you know what I totally deserve to win the lottery that's why the universe is doing this for me and eating that good thought banana well that's not ruminating that's delicious they'd love to eat that banana all day nothing but happy faces here but it's all just bananas it's all the same but they did the exact same thing both times whether they labeled it bad or they thought it was good it was all about seeing patterns and then they judged those patterns in one case that person judged the patterns is bad and then that caused lots of feelings they didn't like and then the other case they judged the patterns is good and that caused all sorts of feelings they did like but what they did at a fundamental level is exactly the same the brain threw up a banana they stuck a label on it they reacted to the feeling nothing is gonna change if you don't go after the judgments you're slapping on the bananas in your head and related to this is why the brain keeps bringing up the intrusive thoughts and that again is about how we think about everything not about good thoughts bad thoughts right bananas wrong bananas it's about thinking and if you want to get over this you're gonna make some big changes in how you think you've got to dismantle the rap wheel here's how it works so let's say you've got a job interview coming up and you want to get that job so four days before the interview you're thinking about what you're gonna say you have an imaginary conversations in your head with the people who are you know we're gonna do the interview you check your resume multiple times so you remember everything that's on it you don't want to forget something and look stupid you check the time of the interview you know check back on the emails from the employer to make sure you got the address right you remind yourself you've handled interviews before you can do this that's good right there's nothing irrational about trying to prepare for an interview but that's how you build the rat wheel you've got this uncertainty at the center you want to control what other people are gonna think about you you want to get the job and then you start running you start spinning the wheel and in many cases that uncertainty gets resolved we take that uncertainty out of the center of the wheel but the wheel is still there and your brain knows you like running around the wheel that's what you've been doing for so many days right you really wanted to solve that uncertainty and so what your brain does is it gives you another uncertain and you do what you're good at you start spinning the wheel that uncertainty though this time it might be something a you really really do not like and you don't want to think about because it's just something your brain pulled up and B your brain is gonna progressively level up the uncertainties increasing in complexity and severity it's going to come up with uncertainties that you cannot solve with it are extremely difficult to solve things like do I even exist does my partner actually love me is my partner going to leave me are they the right one for me do I have a diseased and incurable disease I don't even know about am I gonna get fired from my job am I gonna go broke am I gonna get caught up in a disaster am I going to get mugged by somebody and murdered are my family members going to get murdered how can I prevent that but your brain there's no difference between what am I going to eat for dinner there's an uncertainty and am I going to get killed before dinner they're both just uncertainties and if you know when it comes to the dinner one you happily spin that wheel you think about all the different things Oh am i eating the right thing well I better not eat that because that could make me sick or that's not good for my health and I you know I don't want to die I want to prevent that your brain just latches on to that just as look you you love to think about these uncertainties I will give you more uncertainties to think about and it'll just keep doing it so if you want to stop giving all of your time and energy to those big uncertainties you have to start by changing how you think about the little uncertainties that you run into each day because your brains not being irrational it's being very rational and very logical saying look if you want to spend time and energy on this then you must spend even more time and energy on these uncertainties when we're struggling with our mental health were often just spinning that rat wheel over and over and over again that was the only way that I knew how to think it never even occurred to me that there were other ways to think that there are other things I could do with my brain I was just always having conversations in my head and if there wasn't anything going on I would just repeat things over and over and over and over again I only knew how to spin that wheel I think one of the first things that I say that I find useful is simply to be aware that whatever you're doing in your head right now if you don't like it know that there's other other things you can do in your head there's other ways of thinking there's other ways of being so the things we talk about all the time in this channel are are about tackling this challenge so things like mindfulness things like valued actions they're specifically for this challenge mindfulness is really about having that skill to stop to the spinning wheel it's about being able to okay I'm not gonna spin the wheel right now I don't have to engage in all these compulsions I'm actually gonna put my awareness into other senses I'm gonna be aware of the world not only aware of my thoughts and then value in actions so really articulating values and following through on those actions are the things that help us handle uncertainty in many ways you can you can look at mental health as being about your ability to be yourself while handling uncertainty and so it's about going into something say like a job interviews coming up or something like that or it's relationship and instead of just starting that wheel spinning to try to solve the uncertainty understanding what your values are and how they apply in this situation recognized I'm hit I can't solve that uncertainty but based on what I care about in life here is what I'm gonna do here's how I'm going to express myself in this job interview here's what I'm gonna give to this relationship because I'm not going to throw myself into trying to control the other person with any of this when it comes to mindfulness when it comes to doing things we value we need to start small one of the biggest challenges people run into is trying to apply these skills you know with the big uncertainties the thing that the things that make them feel so uncomfortable but these are skills for everything the most mundane activities in your life can be about being mindfully aware being present and doing things you care about and that's really the place to start working on this so explore that notice how uncertainties pop up notice how you start spinning that wheel around on certainties that don't even bother you and explore how you can stop spinning that wheel you really can think differently for me learning that this was possible was literally mind-blowing you really can't accept all of the bananas in your head as bananas you don't have to start spinning that rat wheel and when we notice we're spinning that rat wheel that's something we can do mindfully and we can stop it say oh I don't want to spend my time and energy on this right now there are other things I care about in the world that I'd rather put my time and energy into

Channel: Mark Freeman

Views: 134,684

Rating: 4.9301605 out of 5

Keywords: intrusive thoughts, mental health, anxiety, POCD, HOCD, OCD, EOCD, SchizOCD, ACT, CBT, psychology, therapy, ruminating, thinking, delusions, psychosis, worry, work stress, job interview, banana, thoughts, judgments, buddhism, discrimination, Mark Freeman, Everybody has a Brain, recovery, mental illness, mental health awareness, obsessing, acceptance, mindfulness

Id: JrMY-VF_ZEo

Length: 10min 17sec (617 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 11 2017