Danielle Jhiani, an anxiety and OCD recovery coach, explains why your thoughts race: trying to suppress uncomfortable thoughts makes them worse, and seeking certainty or perfection keeps them spinning. She offers three ways to stop them: accept the thought without fighting it, agree with it while refusing to engage, and deliberately refocus on what you're doing right now.
Foreign.
Welcome back. My name is Danielle Thornton Gianni. I'm an anxiety and OCD recovery coach, helping people recover from anxiety, insecure attachment and ocd, just like I have, so you can live a happy, healthy life free of anxiety and ocd. Today we're going to talk about how you stop those racing thoughts. Essentially, if you feel like your thoughts are racing and you can't stop them, it's because of how you are reacting to those uncomfortable thoughts that you're getting. And if you start reacting differently to these unwanted thoughts, they are going to slow down. The first thing that you're doing that's making this worse is you're trying to get rid of them. Your brain is trying to send you a thought or a message and you're trying to get rid of it, but that's impossible. What you need to do is allow that thought to come, however uncomfortable it is, but choose to accept any uncertainty or imperfection in that thought and focus on the present moment. Don't give that thought any more attention. I know that might sound difficult and if your thoughts are really racing right now, this is going to take some time and practice, but you can slow this down. So when you start to get those thoughts, I want you to remind yourself that these thoughts can come. They're just thoughts. They can't do anything to me. Thoughts aren't facts. Continue to let it be there, but focus on doing something else in that moment. Okay? Don't push them away, don't try to get rid of them. Let it be there, but try to focus on something else the best that you can. This isn't going to take them away instantly, but over time, over hours, they are going to slow down. The next reason why your thoughts are racing is because you're not only trying to get rid of them, but you are engaging with them somehow. So maybe it's a fear based thought that's causing uncertainty and you're trying to get certainty about that thing. Maybe it's a thought that causes discomfort about something that's imperfect in somebody else in your life, in your environment, and you're trying to get rid of it by seeking perfection or for things to be a certain way. The brain seeks certainty and perfection for safety, but what it doesn't realize is that certainty and perfection are impossible. So what you're doing is never going to work. The more you allow and accept imperfection and uncertainty in life, the more you're going to get comfortable with it. And imperfection and uncertainty will stop bothering you over time. So what you can do is an exposure practice of kind of agreeing with the thoughts. When the thought says, yes, this terrible thing is going to happen, you're going to say, yep, it probably will, but I'm not giving you attention. When your brain tells you that something that you fear is true, you're going to say, yep, it probably is, but I'm not going to give you attention. Now again, this technique isn't going to work right away and the thoughts are just going to disappear. You're going to do this maybe a hundred times today, but if you're consistent with it, if you don't push the thoughts away and you start responding differently, I promise you these thoughts are going to start to fade. And here's why. Your brain is trying to give you a message telling you that something is wrong. And the way that you're responding with emotion and fear and discomfort and trying to push it away is telling your brain that yep, something is wrong and your brain is hyper focusing on it even more and more. What you want to do when your brain is telling you something is wrong is to respond with, yep, maybe it is, but I've got this, I'm not paying attention. And by doing this, you're teaching your brain that you can handle it, that it doesn't have to continue to hyper focus and seek certainty and seek perfection and get rid of this stuff, that you're okay with the uncertainty, you can handle it, and that it doesn't need to continue to hyper focus and scan for danger even if you don't feel like you can handle it. But I want you to respond with that exposure technique. Yes, maybe that thing will happen. Yes, maybe that thing's true. That's the exposure and the response prevention is. But I'm not going to give this any more attention. You don't have to be perfect at this. You just have to be consistent with it. And if you're consistent with it over time, maybe hours, days, this will lessen. I've never seen these techniques not work. Again, you have to tailor trying to get rid of this, trying to feel good. You're going to allow the imperfection and the discomfort in this technique, but you're going to stay consistent with it. And I promise you, if you allow this to be hearing, you start responding differently and you're consistent with this. Your racing mind will slow down because it's only your engagement with these thoughts, wanting to get rid of them or engaging with them somehow, worrying about them or fearing them that's making your mind race even more. Typically rumination and just constantly thinking about it. So I want you to stay focused on the present moment. Go do anything. It may not be perfect, you may not love it like you usually do. You may not be as present as you normally are, but refocus your attention away from these thoughts and fears anyway. And watch how your mind starts to slow down. If you need help with anxiety or OCD or rumination, click the link in the description. I've been where you're at. I promise the techniques that I teach you will work. You will get better. We can help you with this if you need it. Have a great rest of your day.
Sam.
