The Secret to Quieting Your Intrusive Thoughts
How often do you have intrusive thoughts?
Perhaps they come from:
- Your inner critic: You’re such an idiot!
- Catastrophic worries: What if I get sick and die?!
- Self-consciousness: What do they think of me?
- Comparison: I don’t measure up. He makes more money than me.
- Over-focus on the result: I must win!
- Temptation: Should I eat one more cookie?
- Inferiority complex: I’m not that smart, popular or powerful.
- Indecision: I could choose that… but maybe this would be better?
- Annoyances: He’s so loud when he eats!
Intrusive thoughts like these and so many others are not only disruptive, unwelcome and uninvited, they deplete, drain, distract and derail.
You can’t eliminate them entirely. But you can lessen their power and lower their volume.
Reduce the Power and Volume of Intrusive Thoughts by Deeming them Irrelevant
A clue to managing intrusive thoughts can be found in a study by Lt. Col. Henry K. Beecher, who famously observed wounded soldiers during WWII. Astonishingly, 75% of the seriously hurt men reported experiencing little to no pain. How could that be? It turns out, they had a very different concept of their injury than the other quarter who did experience pain: Those without pain had deemed their injury irrelevant.
As a result, Beecher concluded:
His wound suddenly releases him from an exceedingly dangerous environment, one filled with fatigue, discomfort, anxiety, fear and real danger of death, and gives him a ticket to the safely of the hospital. His troubles are about over, or he thinks they are.
This phenomenon is called “Relevance Detection Theory,” and it’s enormously instructive when it comes to how you and I deal with intrusive thoughts.
What could be more intrusive than the awareness of a serious wound, right? The human brain’s amygdala, the protective instigator of your fight-or-flight response, ought to be despairing at the idea of a serious battle injury. Somehow, though, it remained strangely quiet for 75% of those soldiers.
That’s because the amygdala only reacts strongly and loudly to what it deems to be relevant.
According to a study by the University of Geneva, the U.S. National Institute of Health and the Institut des Sciences Cognitives in France, the human amygdala focuses “attentional and physiological resources on cues that have…relevance for your safety or success…within the broader context of your social life.”
In other words, if you deem an intrusive thought to be relevant to the attainment of your goals, it will weigh on you and tear you apart. If you decide it doesn’t matter, it will lose its power and fade away.
Imagine this. You’re lying in bed in a hotel room the night before a big meeting. As you’re trying to fall asleep, you suddenly hear pounding feet and laughing in the room above you. (This is an intrusive thought.)
Here’s what a lot of people would start thinking: What’s going on up there!? How did I have the bad luck to be under these people? I may have to call management if this doesn’t stop because I need my sleep!
Do you see what that’s just done?
It has sent the message to the amygdala that this intrusive thought is relevant. Now what?
Your amygdala starts sending signals through the nervous system to fight or flee. Your heart starts racing, your adrenaline starts pumping, your breathing gets shallow, and your sleep is doomed!
What’s the only way to take the power and volume away from this intrusion?
Deem it to be irrelevant. Think to yourself: Wow lots of noise up there, they must be having fun. It doesn’t interest me, though. I know it will quiet down and I’ll fall asleep regardless.
How Do You Convince Yourself It’s Irrelevant?
You might be thinking right now, “Matt, that’s easier said than done. I can’t just lie to myself. What if it IS relevant!?”
These three strategies may help:
- Express gratitude. Say, “Thank you amygdala. It sounds like this caused some alarm for you. I appreciate you trying to protect me from danger!” Then, you can find other things to appreciate because of or despite the intrusive thought.
For example, when your inner critic heats up, you could appreciate yourself for taking risks. Or when your catastrophic worries start clamoring for attention, be grateful that the catastrophe hasn’t yet happened! Gratitude marginalizes the threat.
- Don’t resist or avoid. Any detouring away from or around the thought will build the case for the amygdala that it’s relevant. Simply accept the intrusive thought. For instance, if you have a self-conscious thought, don’t reason with it or avoid it; just say to yourself: “I’m definitely not a perfect person, that’s for sure.” Or, if you have an annoying thought, think to yourself, “Yeah my husband does do some annoying things.”
If it’s fear that’s intruding, take the advice of Dale Carnegie, who said: “Do the thing you fear to do and keep on doing it…that is the quickest and surest way ever yet discovered to conquer fear.”
- Move on quickly. Declare the thought is irrelevant and move on right away. Don’t mull it over. Don’t ruminate on it. Don’t feed it! Choose the “It’s not relevant” path as quickly as possible and keep choosing that path. The sooner the amygdala realizes it’s not a threat, the quicker it will release it.
Everyone has disruptive or annoying thoughts. One secret to living a full life and performing your best is to deem intrusive thoughts irrelevant.
What thought do you need to deem irrelevant?
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