Can we better control our brains?

All of us have crazy thoughts. Weird stupid sexual violent thoughts that no one should ever hear. The brain is a sneaky organ. And if you can gain psychological distance you’re going to be much more mentally strong. Psychological distance is needed.

Getting unstuck from your thoughts often means getting comfortable with the natural flow of your thoughts, allowing them to come and go. It’s a scary leap to take and the reward is feeling more free and at peace to think the way you do with subsequently less sticky thoughts.

Too often people believe what they think. You can’t believe everything you think. You don’t have to believe them. Just because you think something doesn’t mean it’s true. If you’re struggling emotionally you’re likely invested in your thoughts. It’s not the thoughts you have that make you suffer. It’s the thoughts you attach to.

We have different ways we distort things to make them out to be worse than they are. You can learn to question your thoughts.

The vicious cycle is when we then act as though the thoughts are true.

Get started by observing your thoughts with a neutral distance. Thoughts are just thoughts. They come and go. Allow them to come and go. Allow your attention to shift to them (this is the scary part, because we often want to push them away). Then allow your attention to shift to a more neutral response rather than an automatically negative one.

This process feels pretty forced, scary, uncomfortable and laborious at first but gets easier and more natural with practice.