Dr. Nicole Cain teaches a visualization technique to handle obsessive thoughts: evoke the thought, move it to your forehead, then push it offstage so it stays present but stops intruding. The method works by acknowledging thoughts without engaging them, and repeated practice rewires your thinking patterns.
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Obsessive thoughts. Obsessive thoughts can be so intrusive and so debilitating. And today you're going to learn the backstage technique for sending your obsessive thoughts backstage. Hi, I'm Dr. Nicole Cain, and I am here to help anybody who's dealing with anxiety to turn the page and write a new story where anxiety isn't the central focus. If you would like to get your life back, if you want something other than the pill for an ill model, then you're in the right place. We have an anxiety breakthrough springboard, and so check it out. It has free resources that will help you get results really quickly and really effectively. And like I said, I created it for you for free. We'll make sure to put a link in the comment notes. And so check it out today. So let's talk about sending obsessive thoughts backstage. An obsessive thought is a thought that is exactly how it sounds. It's obsessive, it's intrusive, and it's just rolling around in your brain. This can be a worry. It can be a repetitive thought that's just like out of the blue, or it can even be an earworm. An earworm is an obsessive or repetitive song that keeps playing in your head. Have you ever had that happen? When I'm in a high stress situation and I'm trying to go to sleep, either my brain will get stuck on some sort of a phrase or a word or even a song, and it can make it really hard to just focus on resting and going to sleep. And so there's a technique that I developed called the backstage technique for Obsessive Thoughts. And so in order to do this technique, I want you to practice something with me. I want you to think a thought. And so for practice, I'm going to think the thought. I've got it. So I want you to imagine where that thought is in your brain. And you might want to close your eyes to practice this because it's easier to focus on in your brain. And we're actually going to practice relocating. So I want you to imagine I've got this. And I want you to think the thought and notice the thought in the front of your head, like the forehead, that thought, you can place it there, like, maybe even imagine that there's somebody right in front of your forehead who's saying it to you. I've got this. I've got this. And notice the placement of that. I want you to notice that you can feel it really close to your head. I've got this. And notice how it can feel a little bit louder. And then I want you to actually mindfully push that. I've got this. A little bit farther from your head. Notice how it might sound different, how the voice in the head, like your mental voice, might sound a little bit farther. Right, I've got this. And then the next steps you've practiced, you've evoked the thought. You've put it close to your head, and then you push it away. And now I want you to practice shifting it. I want you to imagine shifting it to your right side. And notice, like, what does it sound like? If somebody on your right is saying, I've got this. You're having the thought, you're thinking it. I've got this. And you're noticing it as though there's somebody speaking to the right side of you. They're on your right side. They're speaking. It's in the right part of your mind. I've got this. And then I want you to notice, going to the other side and notice what it feels like, how it's different. I've got this. And that thought is on the other side. You can feel it. Like, I. Even when I feel it, when I think it, I almost notice, like, a sensation, like maybe an energy on the side of my head. So I've got this. And then the next thing I want you to do is I want you to send it backstage. You've practiced bringing it close. You've practiced pushing it away. You went to one side, and then you went to the other side. So we know that you can move the thought, right? And then I want you to send it backstage. I want you to actually mindfully push that thought away. I've got this. And put it in the back. And so that's where you're going to keep the thought. So an important thing with obsessive thoughts is that your brain is going to think. The brain loves to think. That's what the brain's zone of genius is, is it just thinks, it analyzes. And what we want to do is we want to acknowledge it, and then we want to relocate it. We don't want it to be in front of you and intrusive and irritating. So practicing learning how to position your thoughts is going to help you be able to, on command, send that thought backstage. So that as it's back there kind of doing its thing, it's thinking, it's talking, you're able to ignore it. It's kind of like if you have this, like, pestering Little person that's sitting next to you and you need to focus on the task at hand is just tuning them out. Imagine them going backstage. They can deliver their lines, but they're behind the curtain. They're backstage so that you can be fully present, so that you can be on center stage, so that you can be the star of your show, so that you can write your story the way you want it. So today we talked about how to send obsessive thoughts backstage. And we're doing that by doing the relocation of the thoughts. And so every day I want you to practice, pick something that you want to think about and I want you to actively think it and I want you to place it close. Notice how you can push it far away, side to side and then send it backstage. And then sometimes those sneaky little actors are going to want to come from backstage and get right back on center stage. And that's because we have well paved highways going to right in front of us. We have well established actors who've been playing their roles, writing their stories, doing their bit parts with all the zest of somebody who's a histrionic stage hog. Right? And so we have to start teaching them that they belong backstage. And so we have to carve out the brain chemistry to do that. So we're first changing the software, which is how you're thinking about it and where you're putting it, and then eventually the hardware of your brain, the stage of your life, will start to change. So practice mindfully working on that. And I'm so excited to hear how this works for you because if you're anything like me, and obsessive thoughts are trying to run the show and they're getting in the way and you can't even see the main actors. You gotta practice loves, send them far to the side, send them backstage. Because the more that you practice just acknowledging they're gonna do their thing and ignoring them, the less power they're going to have over your life. So. So I'm Dr. Nicole Cain and my passion is to help you get your life back, to get results, starting now. So check out the Anxiety Breakthrough Wellness Springboard. This is going to give you amazing tips. It's a beautiful book. There are things that you could start putting into play right away and it's a great resource for me to use. So definitely check it out. And I will be here again on Wednesday next week and it will be 1 o' clock Eastern. So if there's any topics that are interesting to you, if you'd like to learn more. You can check it out by going to www.Dr.nicolecane.com thank you so much for being here. Take.
