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Constant unwanted thoughts
Nameless asks…
“I’m plagued by unwanted thoughts every day all the time… My brain constantly sees stories and things that never happened but they’re very vivid… like having a movie in the background with the volume way up… I’m constantly in fear of getting hurt and fear of pain. Now I’ll admit this could have to do with some events in my life but long story short I am constantly on a hair trigger to snap because I’m afraid of getting hurt… but this always ends up firing off at the wrong people… Help me.”
Weed your garden
Basic info — you’ve got a weedy garden. Actually it’s well overgrown, more like a jungle :-) The analogy of mind to garden is very accurate. Thoughts are like seeds and you unwittingly plant and nurture weeds, before long you’ve got a jungle. This is the basic problem, good to know… Read more
Can’t stop thinking
Please Help asks…
“The thought is a very silly one, and what’s worse is I know that it isn’t true, but it still pops up! (As I was typing this, for example, ‘How do you know it isn’t true’ popped up, but I just ignored it.) The last two weeks have been very good, and I haven’t had any issues with the thought because I’ve been distracted with school (a sign that the thought is definitely losing some of it’s hold over me, as earlier this term even school couldn’t distract me from it.)
However it’s now the holidays and I have very important exams coming up, and I’m worried about being on my own and stuck in the house for so long because when I’m on my own the thought does tend to pop up and I can’t shake it, and this in turn stops me from being able to revise which makes me even more stressed and so makes the thought and the anxiety worse… Read more
Irrational fear of zombies and other fictitious horrors
Rebecca asks…
“Can you help, I’m 20 and ever since I was 16 and watched Nightmare on Elm Street for my high school exams, I constantly think Freddie Krueger will come for me. There’s no pattern and thoughts just appear — I try to distract myself but I end up in one room of my house on my own with my son too scared to move.
Doctors won’t help; they just keep saying it will go with time, but it’s not going. Please help if you can — I can’t live any more days in fear.”
There are lions
The way your mind reacts to danger is primitive… that’s important to understand. So when you get immersed into a scary movie and imagine yourself as a victim of Freddie, your mind reacts in a way to protect you as if the danger was real — like if you saw a lion in real life. The more immersed into the movie you get, the more you suspend reality, the greater the response. Read more
Weird thought about my girlfriend
Jamie asks…
“I’ve been suffering from a suspicious nature for many years, not trusting people etc. This problem has given me so many problems in life and it’s still giving me problems. A few days back a weird thought came into my mind about my girlfriend, that she was lying to me about something, or more like hiding something and I started thinking about it and this started to grow in my mind.
Then I contacted James, he helped me to remove attention from it with the relationship article and Habit Guide book. Somehow I asked my girlfriend about it and she was angry and told me it was just a silly thought.
I know she was speaking the truth but somehow I wasn’t able to trust her I don’t know why, despite the fact that trust is the most important factor in relationship. She loves me a lot, and I also love her but whenever this thought comes to my mind I get in a bad mood and start to repeat ‘don’t focus on ideas you don’t want’ in my mind and starts to feel good but still focus remains there somehow, on the weird thought. Could you help me to solve this thing Mike?”
Deconstruct belief to let go
Do you fully know that this is just a silly thought? Or are you still questioning its truth? Attention is the volume control for thoughts, so if you consistently remove attention as James said, it would die away and stop coming. But if you believe it’s true or question its truth or meaning, give it importance then that is attention. Attention with meaning ramps ups a thought’s volume very quickly.
Faith in removing attention will work, ignoring will work because ignore has “don’t care” built in and this attitude reprograms your mind that this thought has no meaning.
But if you can truly SEE the thought as silly, remove the belief, the meaning, it will help, because why would you give a second thought to something meaningless? Read more
How do I start meditating?
Ariel asks…
“How do I start meditating?”
Meditation is a very simple thing. It’s about choosing attention and being aware, and the simple practice centers you in your true self so that you don’t get lost in identification with thoughts.
There’s lots of different methods for meditation but the one I recommend is to “listen.” All you do is listen for the next thought, that is all. Try it now for 5 seconds and you’ll see that with enough intensity of focus, thoughts stop.
So that is all you need to do. The more you do it, the better you get and the more rooted in your center. Finding 30 minutes a day to sit and be quiet and listen is optimal. Doing this will rapidly disentangle you from habitual mind-chatter and identification with all that noise… Read more
