Hi Blue,

I know exactly the feelings and thoughts you’re describing. I’ve been there before. But you can train your mind not to get hooked by thoughts that pop into you head and keep yourself in the here and now.

If you haven’t already tried it, I would suggest going to meditation centre and getting an intro on how to meditate. It will take time to free yourself (for me, it was about 6 months), but a daily practice anywhere from 5-20 minutes will strengthen your mind and allow your thoughts to pass through you.

And that’s the key, don’t push thoughts away, don’t distract yourself, recognize unhealthy thoughts for what they are and allow them to dissolve. Reacting to them only feeds their hold on you. Like someone taunting you on the street, turning towards them and engaging with them only gives them what they want, attention. Instead, you just walk on by.

You won’t be able to stop the thoughts, don’t try. But as they come on, one after the other, pass over them and continue your daily activities as best as you can – eat, drink, sleep, exercise, work, play, the thought comes in, you recognize that it’s there, and you move on. You don’t push it away. You don’t get angry at it. You smile at the silly tricks your mind is playing on you and don’t allow yourself to succumb to it’s taunts.

Meditation is the best training you can do to help you develop this skill of not getting hooked. Start as soon as you can practice daily. It’s a lifelong change that will give you a whole new outlook on yourself and your life.

Wishing you all the best.

Hi there!

I too have been in your position of obsessive thinking. What helped me was to go to the very deepest root of the problem and to read about it. So after spending several years obsessively thinking about my future, any fears that I had, any relationship problems I experienced, anything I experienced that was out of my control (i.e. a customer yelled at me at work and I spent the rest of the day thinking about it angrily), I realized that FIRST of all, I had formed the habit out of anxiety and SECOND of all, I continued to fall back into this habit due to the very fact that it was a thinking HABIT. So the obsessive thinking began in childhood as a sort of ‘comfort’ that went hand in hand with my anxiety. I was constantly anticipating punishment or humiliation that was out of my control because I grew up in an abusive household. It was a sort of way to control what was happening in my life that was out of my control. Instead of turning to sports or extracurricular activities to relieve this stress and anxiety, my control/release took the form of obsessive-compulsive thoughts. Then, years later, I found myself obsessively thinking about things that didn’t even cause me much initial anxiety (such as the angry customer who yelled at me) because at that point it was simply a bad habit. I slowly broke out of it by reading more about it, by talking about it, and learning to understand why I was doing it. Then afterwards I tried meditation (a GREAT idea like what John said above me) and I also started talking myself out of those pesky thoughts in my head, as well as working them out on paper through writing in a journal. Exercise is another great way to break free of your OCD thoughts because it forces you to focus on something else and release stress. Those are the things that helped me. I rarely have OCD thoughts now today. I hope that you will give any of these methods a try or all of them if you can! I’ve found that a combination of these methods is even better than just one. But remember to take baby steps and treat yourself kindly. Good luck!

-Reeva

Hi John,
Thank you for what you wrote. I have been having this problem as well and your words were extremely helpful!!!!!!!!!! I am going to try the things you wrote about.

Hi Everyone,
I want to share that I took John’s advice tonight and did day one of the new 21 day meditation series with Deepak Chopra. You can find it on chopracentermeditation.com. I listened to it 3 times. It was very powerful. It took me awhile before other thoughts that were coming into my mind slowed down. After a while, I felt lighter and my anxiety lifted. I felt like I finally had the say so about what I think. The meditation was about asking yourself who you are and knowing that you are your deepest desire. A lot of wonderful things came to my mind and as they did, I took a couple of minutes to repeat each thought. My first thought gave me so much joy. It was, “I am pure potential”. The other thoughts that I meditated on were, I can be anything I desire, I can have anything I desire, I am infinite possibilities, I am important, I am beautiful, I am relaxed, I am kindness, I am love, I am abundance, I am all that I desire, I am successful, I am a powerful voice, I am a powerful creator, I am a writer. What are you?