A short self-help YouTube video by Lori Streator about recognizing and managing unwanted thoughts—common symptoms of anxiety. Lori emphasizes that while we can't control the first automatic thought (she cites ~60–90,000 thoughts/day), we can increase awareness and respond differently. She offers three practical approaches: (1) "forcing the thought"—brief, supported intentional focus on the unwanted thought to reduce its power; (2) journaling as a brain-dump to release and train the mind; and (3) using CBT techniques (ideally taught by a therapist) to reframe thoughts and change behavior so avoidance no longer reinforces anxious thinking. The video closes with encouragement and a subscribe prompt.
Questions this video answers
60–90,000 thoughts per day
Chapters
What's going on? Welcome back to my channel. Unwanted thoughts are just that, unwanted. We don't want them. And unwanted thoughts tend to be a common symptom of anxiety. So let's talk about what unwanted thoughts are and how to work on them to start to gain control over them so that we have the ability when an unwanted thought comes up and to make it go away. Unwanted thoughts are extremely common, but the problem is, once you start thinking an unwanted thought, it can be really difficult or seem impossible to stop. But they don't have to define you. They don't have to take over your life. And there are things you can do two stop them in their tracks and reframe them so that they don't take over your life. The big thing that I always tell my clients is you're not going to have control over the first thought you think or the first feeling you feel. We have 60 to 90,000 thoughts a day, studies show, so we're never going to be able to control what initially comes comes in our minds. I always make the joke that if we all walked around with thought bubbles over our heads, nobody would ever leave the house. But what we can do is be mindful, be aware, Recognize a thought, know if it's productive or not, if it's helping us or hurting us, and then continue it if it's a good thought, or do something about it if it's an unproductive thought or if it's an unwanted thought thought. So you're not going to necessarily have control over the first thing that comes into your head, but you can raise your awareness. Learn to trap and challenge the thoughts and do something about the ones that are a little more unwanted. There's so many things we can do about our thoughts. We sometimes just don't even realize it, or we don't know if we haven't been taught those skills. And there's three tips that I can give you today that will help you start to acknowledge an unwanted thought and do something about it so that you feel a little more in control. Again, can't control the first thing that comes into your mind, but you can certainly figure out what you want your next thought to look like. The first thing is what I call forcing the thought. Our thoughts, again, they come and go. We don't necessarily have control over them, but. But when we ignore the thoughts that are unwanted or a little more problematic, or we start to stuff them away, that doesn't help either. We have to acknowledge them. And if we have an unwanted thought and we sit and we say, okay, here I'm having the thought that X, Y, Z. And we force ourselves to think about it and recognize it and acknowledge it. And again, I highly advise you do this with the guidance of some support and a therapist so that things don't spiral out of control for you. But when we force ourselves to think about that thought, we take the power back. We don't let those thoughts spiral out of control. We're saying, okay, fine, I had that thought. Here we go. I'm going to think about it for the next two minutes and let my mind make my mind think, think about it. And then that thought loses its power over you because you're not ignoring it. You're not trying to stuff it away. You're not trying to just glaze over it, and then it's still there. You're paying attention to it, addressing it, and essentially making your brain work to think about the unwanted thought. And your brain's like, screw this, I don't want to think about it anymore. So that's the general explanation, but it's what I like to call forcing the thought and basically making ourselves think about it again with support and making sure that you can do this in a positive, effective way, but making yourself think about that thought instead of just ignoring it or thinking if you don't acknowledge it, that it's going to go away. The second big tip that I have for you is to journal. If journaling is your thing, you'll love this. If journaling is not your thing, you might be a little put off. Please just consider it. When we journal in an uncensored, I'm willing to be honest kind of way, we're constantly brain dumping. We're constantly putting our thoughts from our head onto paper. There's just something so powerful about putting your thoughts onto paper, writing them out, and closing that book, or maybe shredding that page or whatever it is for you. You, that helps once you're done journaling. But what regular journaling does is that it releases these thoughts. It teaches your mind that these thoughts aren't welcome to take up precious real estate in your head, that you're constantly going to be doing things that is journaling to get them out of your head. So when you get into the practice of doing something like journaling, your mind gets used to thinking things and then dumping them onto a page or releasing them so that they're not just taking up mental capacity and staying filed in the back of your brain for when you lay down at night ready to go to sleep and your Mind says, cool, we've been busy all day. Let's think about all the things we didn't have time to think about. Journaling can be a really powerful way to always be releasing these thoughts and training your mind that you. That we do not hold on to things that don't serve us. The third tip I encourage you to do is look into or have a therapist, preferably teach you some CBT techniques. CBT is cognitive behavioral therapy. It's our thoughts and our behaviors and how they work together. So in order to think differently, we. We have to be able to reframe our thoughts and behave in a different way. Our actions, our reactions to our thoughts are going to either affirm what we're thinking or it's going to show us that we can think differently. So if every time I go to hit record on a video, I have thoughts because I'm freaking out and panicking that people are going to judge me, I'm going to look stupid, and what if I fail? Or what if, whatever the case may be, so I don't hit record and I avoid making the video, My action, my avoidance, is affirming that that thought is okay. So a lot of CBT is being able to recognize the thought, reframe it, so that you can respond differently, to start to encourage your mind to think different thoughts. Our automatic thoughts, our automatic response might be, oh, my God, I'm going to fail, and this is going to be stupid and everybody's going to think I'm an idiot, but I need to take action and start thinking a different way. And my actions and my thoughts very much work together to get me responding in a different way so that I can do things I want to do and work toward my goals. So CBT can be really effective. There's a lot of evidence as to how effective it is, but I obviously always encourage you to have a therapist walk you through these techniques and help you use CBT to recognize thoughts, reframe them, and behave in a way that is going to support the way you'd rather be thinking that is more productive than maybe the unwanted thoughts that have been holding you back. And that's it. Unwanted thoughts are a huge part of anxiety because how we think impacts how we behave and how we behave impacts how we think. Hence, if I struggle with anxiety and I'm always having anxious thoughts, my actions are going to be supporting those anxious thoughts. So to break that cycle, we need to actively be thinking and doing things that are going to get us moving in the direction of taking control. Of our unwanted thoughts. So if you're struggling with this, whether you have an anxiety disorder or not, everybody, like I said, struggles with unwanted thoughts at times. But if this is something you're struggling with or it's an ongoing issue, unwanted thoughts do not have to overwhelm you, cause you distress, or impair your ability to. To function day to day, or hold you back or stop you from living your life. Don't forget to subscribe and I will see you back here next Wednesday with another video.
