The invasion of repetitive thoughts.
Published by Maz in Anxiety and excessive thinking · 6 November 2024
Hi, welcome to my blog. I consider this series Reclaiming Calm to be crucial in any journey to good mental health, it is certainly key in my journey so I wanted to share it with you. I will include theories and tools which help me escape from constantly doubting myself. These tools help me to slow down, connect with myself and my feelings and experience life instead of just trying to survive it. I hope you too find these insights useful.
Many of us have thoughts which seem to invade our lives. These usually come in three categories:
1) Regretting what has happened. Where you keep going over and over what has happened, regretting how you responded, thinking you should have done better.
2) Overthinking the present. Where you lose your spontaneity as you think about all the different things that could go wrong, or you doubt yourself, or second-guess others. Going round in circles making everyday situations into big dilemmas.
3) Anxiety over what is to come. Where you worry about future events, catastrophising with loads of ways something could go wrong. The fear of your future that causing you to constantly worry about what could happen and can take over.
There is no such thing as an "off" button; I wish there was, but by getting our heads around some key concepts it can make a big difference and help us live in the moment instead of just trying to survive each day. Let's start in the brain.
Our brains are so sophisticated, and the different theories can be overwhelming, but I want to focus on the key ideas which I find most helpful.
Above is a picture of MacLean's 'Triune Brain' from the 1960s. It is now thought to be too simplistic, but I still find it useful. It splits the brain into three areas, roughly conscious blue area (including our overthinking). The red central area is our feelings which we can either be aware of; or as is often the case we have learnt to ignore or suppress. The third area is the lower brown part which connects us to our body and unconscious, instincts etc. I've given more details below. If you only focus on the top part that is all you get and the thoughts can become overwhelming. By learning to become aware of the information coming from the bottom part, the brown area you have more balance. You can use this information to help process the thoughts, calm you down and by the two parts working together you become what we call regulated. More about this in a later blog.
When considering our conscious and unconscious I like using the image of an iceberg. Above the water is what is seen and what we are conscious of and what is below is unseen and often out of our awareness. Consider the following:
What we are often conscious of: Thoughts, reasoning, logic, meaning making, self-reflection, decision making, body language, gestures.
What is often unconscious: Our habitual behaviours, our body sensations and tensions, posture, movement, our breathing, survival responses of when you just want to run, or react and fight back, or just freeze.
ALSO, how conscious are you of?
Your feelings, beliefs, values, biases, prejudices, fears.
We can redirect and focus on these unconscious habitual areas, but it takes time and attention as we are just not used to it.
Consider learning a new skill. It goes form your conscious to your unconscious and becomes habitual or procedural like riding a bike, driving a car or many other learnt skills. But when called for you can bring them back into focus.
For example, driving. When you learnt to drive you were conscious of each action, using a gear stick, mirror etc. Once you learn to be competent it becomes unconscious and habitual. You don't think about each action when you drive. Yet in difficult conditions you have to bring the skills back into your consciousness, focusing on different aspects of your driving.
We can make the decision to tune into more of what is going on in our bodies, relieving the head noise and finding balance. This section of my blog will bring in lots of ideas to do this and explore what it means to be regulated and how to gain greater regulation in your life.
To get your started, consider how connected you are with your 5 senses?
SEEING - We may see all the time, but stopping and taking in what we see can be very different.
SMELL - Take time to increase your awareness of smell, might be food, or household items or while out and about.
TASTE - When eating it is worth slowing down and allowing your taste buds to work.
TOUCH - We have so many different fabrics, textures; it is worth stopping to take them in.
SOUND - The range of music can be great, but it is worth pausing to listen to all the other sounds around us.
How useful was this information? I welcome your feedback.
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1 review
Jennifer Osman
25 Mar 2024
Thanks. Very interesting and informative. By appreciating the conscious and unconscious areas of yourself and appreciating away of using all the senses fully I think it will really help with controlling some of my anxiety. I will give it a go !