Thought Supression

The following is learned from my Cognitive Psychology course tonight, and I am sure many of you will find this to be useful information about Thought Suppression.  This is especially important to those with Pure-O.

What you’re thinking.
Don’t think about __.  You just had a thought that is highly unwanted.  You are now distressed by the fact that you had that thought.  You are worried about the meaning of the thought, so you tell it to go away.  You supress the thought as best as you can, by rejecting it and telling yourself not to think about it.

What is actually going on.
You tell yourself to suppress the thought, to get rid of it. Your mind does a controlled search for all thoughts about The Thought.  It does this so it can supress all thoughts in relation to the thought.  Causing you to keep thinking the about it more and more. You’re also trying to refocus attention which puts your consciousnesses at work, creating conflict between the two processes.  The thought still comes because you are unconsciously still thinking about it and consciously you can relate it to what’s going on.

How to stop thinking about it.
Stop pushing it away.  Let it be there.  After so much of the thought, your mind will grow bored of it.  It will stop forcing it upon you because it doesn’t know what else to do with it.  Suppression enthuses your brain, while not suppressing it gives it very little to do with the thought except let it take it’s course on your mind.  This may be harder than it sounds, but remember that thoughts are just thoughts.

* Now with OCD it’s important that you understand that these thoughts may still come back from time to time, which is why it’s so important that you don’t react to them and that you stayed exposed and practice relaxation with exposure.  When these thoughts do come back, it will seriously be like any other thought, in one side and out the other, because you’ve learned that it’s not important and to stop supressing it.

37 notes
Posted on Thursday, 2 February
Tagged as: ocd   bad thoughts   unwanted thoughts   I seriously hope this helps you guys