Throughout September FD Consultants want to highlight the impact of negative thinking, which often gets activated when we are stressed. In this week’s blog we look at a mindfulness approach to letting go of negative thoughts which entails accepting the presence of these thoughts, and, as best you can, simply letting go of them. It is easy to get swept away by our thoughts, especially in the face of strong emotions. We get stuck ruminating and dwelling about the past, filled with guilt or regret. Our minds start racing and we cannot stop worrying about the future and imagining all the things that could go wrong. Or we replay conversations repeatedly in our heads, trying to make sense of them or figure out what we could have said differently. When our minds get going like this, not only is it exhausting; these patterns of thinking tend to make us feel bad, intensifying the emotions we are already feeling and generating additional negative emotions as well. Because this experience is so unpleasant, it is natural to want these thoughts to stop, and to be able to prevent yourself from even having them in the first place. We often wind up trying to make these thoughts go away and shut them out completely. But just like we cannot control our emotions or suppress our emotions, neither can we control or suppress our thoughts. So, what can we do when our thoughts start racing, we get stuck ruminating, or we just cannot quiet down our minds? One way of approaching negative and disruptive thinking is to examine our thoughts and see if there are some alternative ways of thinking about the situation. One approach is to bring mindfulness to our thoughts and learn how to just let go of them. “We do not need to fight with thoughts or struggle against them or judge them. Rather, we can simply choose not to follow the thoughts once we are aware that they have arisen,” write Zindel Segal, Mark Williams, John D. Teasdale and Jon Kabatt-Zinn in their book The Mindful Way Through Depression, about the Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) approach to depression. Mindfully letting go of thoughts is something we learn to do when we meditate. Many people think meditation involves having a blank mind completely void of any thoughts. However, in mindfulness meditation, the idea is not to shut out thoughts altogether, but simply to not allow yourself to get carried away by your thoughts. In mindfulness meditation of the breath, for example, we bring our attention to our breath, and try, as best we can, to keep our attention focused on our breath. Despite our intentions, our mind inevitably does wander from the breath, and we start thinking. For a guided meditation please click here When this happens, we simply acknowledge that our attention has wandered to our thoughts, and then let go of those thoughts and return our attention to our breath. And when our mind wanders again and we start thinking about something else, once again we acknowledge our thoughts, let go of them, and return our attention to our breath. Just as we learn to repeatedly let go of our thoughts and return our attention to our breath when we meditate, we can do the same thing as we go about our everyday life. When we practice letting go of thoughts in everyday life, we don’t always need to return our attention to the breath (though taking a breathing time out or returning to the breath for a few moments is always a great way to relieve stress). Instead, we can let go of a thought and return our attention to the work we were doing, or the book we were reading, or the person we were talking to, or whatever else we were doing when our thoughts began to steal our attention. Another way we can let go of a thought is to refocus our attention from our thoughts to our senses: the taste of the food we’re eating, the sound of the music we’re listening to; the sights around us; or the sensations of our feet striking the ground as we walk. Letting go of thoughts is as simple as acknowledging that our mind is off thinking about something other than the present moment, and then allowing that thought to pass out of our mind as we return our attention to whatever it is we are doing and whatever is going on in the present. For organisations looking for employee psychological support, FD Consultants are the trauma specialists and well-being service who will best deliver a reliable, quick, and bespoke support system in the workplace. FD Consultant’s team of accredited specialists will offer ongoing support to help manage stress, prevent burnout and provide specialist trauma care where required, enabling your staff with the tools to cope, and recover more quickly. Please do contact us at [email protected] if you require our psychological support services, either as an individual or organisation.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
CONTACTArchives
April 2022
Categories
All
|