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May 5, 2020 · Ditch the 10 mental traps that are making you feel anxious and insecure! Toxic thought patterns zap your energy, kill your motivation, and upset your calm. The good news is that you can change not just the way you think, but the way your brain is wired.
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- Label your thought as a thought. Just the act of labeling a thought as a thought—"I'm having the thought that this day won't get better," rather than "This day won't get better"—is a crucial first step in disempowering negative thoughts.
- Engage in self-distancing by talking about your thoughts as an observer. You can take the cognitive defusion a step further by not only labeling your thought as a thought, but labeling yourself having it—as an observer in the third-person.
- Recognize when the thought is an unreliable narrator. Once you are viewing your thoughts in a more objective manner, you can further tame their ability to cause anxiety by recognizing the distortions they include.
- Notice what the thought brings about in your body. The anxiety cycle is about more than thoughts—a large part of it is perpetuated by your body. Notice your own individual sensations of anxiety and where they show up for you physically.
May 5, 2020 · In Detox Your Thoughts, popular psychologist Andrea Bonior, PhD, identifies the 10 most prevalent mental traps that make people feel anxious, insecure, and generally just bad.
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- Overview
- Practice mindfulness
- Write it out
- Get musical
- Sleep it off
- Take a walk
- Keep your space tidy
- Focus on unfocusing
- Talk about it
- The bottom line
Giving your brain a quick reboot when you feel stressed or stuck can help clear out the backlog of thoughts in your working memory and leave you with a tidier mental workspace.
Think about a desk stacked high with bits and pieces of different projects, memos, and important papers. When you need to find a specific piece of information, this clutter might make your job pretty difficult.
Similarly, when unnecessary or troubling thoughts pile up in your brain, you might end up cycling through the same unwanted mental data.
A fruitless search for a memory or other important thought can leave you feeling foggy and overwhelmed. Not to worry, though — when it seems your mind isn’t operating as smoothly as it could, the eight tips below might do the trick.
Training yourself to become more mindful can benefit you in a number of ways.
For one, it can help you to stay present and focused on what’s happening around you.
Being present means, among other things, you can give your co-worker your full attention as they explain how to perform a complicated task, instead of getting waylaid by:
•things you need to add to your to-do list
•the dinner ingredients you need to pick up later
•the ever-expanding list of potential reasons your recent date never texted you back
When your mind brims over with stressful thoughts, it’s not always easy to sort through them and determine what’s causing the most distress.
If you’ve ever kept a journal, you might already know that putting your thoughts down in writing often makes it easier to explore them.
Research supports the idea that journaling can help decrease intrusive thoughts and other mental “clutter.” As a result, working memory and other cognitive functions can operate more smoothly and potentially relieve stress at the same time.
The ability to read over your thoughts after you’ve written them down can make patterns or problems stand out. After a freewriting session, you might even realize you weren’t all that aware of some of the worries you jotted down. Now that they’ve entered your consciousness, you can begin addressing them for lasting relief.
What’s more, writing out your feelings can seem almost like a symbolic act. When you put them on paper, you’re transferring them out of your mind, in a sense.
Try these journaling tips:
Plenty of people enjoy listening to music, but music offers more than a pleasant auditory experience.
It can:
•help relieve stress and improve mood
•improve concentration and memory
•motivate learning
•promote neuroplasticity, or the ability of the brain to adapt
A good night’s sleep can refresh you when you feel physically tired. What you might not know, though, is that getting enough sleep can also help safeguard against mental fatigue and emotional distress.
Insufficient or poor sleep can interfere with your ability to solve problems and make decisions, and you might find it harder to remember important information or regulate your emotions.
Feeling overly tired can also lead to mental overwhelm, making it more difficult to detach from your jumbled thoughts and concentrate on what you need to do.
To reset your brain for optimal daytime performance, aim to get between 7 and 9 hours of sleep each night.
Changing your environment and getting outside for a walk offers a great opportunity to clear your head and refocus.
Improved creativity is just one of the benefits of a good walk, 2014 research suggests. Walking also helps promote more freely flowing ideas, so a regular daily walk can help you “reset” when the same thoughts keep popping back up to distract you.
Exercising for 20 or 30 minutes can help improve decision-making and reaction time just before a cognitive task, but walking also offers long-term benefits, too.
For better overall brain health and reduced stress into the bargain, try adding a brisk walk, or any other exercise, to your regular routine.
As procrastinators the world over know, an intense cleaning session offers the perfect escape from a difficult or unpleasant task. There may be more to this particular approach than simply putting off your work, though.
Consider your reasons for procrastination. Perhaps you feel stuck or unsure how to get started.
You may not realize it, but your surrounding environment can have a big impact on your mental environment. When your brain feels just as cluttered as your desk, you might have trouble concentrating or grasping the ideas you’re searching for. As a result, you end up finding ways to distract yourself from your lack of productivity.
Putting your work area back into order can help you refresh your thinking process, but it could also take up a lot of time — not good when you’re on a tight deadline. Instead, try making a regular effort to maintain the tidiness of your workspace to boost cognitive function and improve workflow.
Struggling to concentrate? Sometimes, the best way to solve this problem is to simply stop trying.
Think of it in terms of physical exercise. Your body would have a pretty tough time jogging all day without a break, right? Well, your brain needs downtime, too.
Letting yourself unfocus by briefly zoning out activates the default mode network in your brain, giving it a chance to take a rest. Just as sleep benefits you, this rest period benefits your brain. Unfocusing can help promote creativity, sharpen thought processes, and improve memory and learning.
A few key ways to unfocus:
•take a nap
•go for a walk
Ever felt energized and completely renewed after a long talk with someone you trust?
Most likely, that wasn’t just a fluke. Expressing bothersome feelings out loud often helps lighten any tension they’ve generated. When thoughts weigh on your mind less heavily, they might naturally clear out of your immediate consciousness, leaving you feeling refreshed.
Discussing your problems can help you lay them out more logically, since you have to explain what’s troubling you in a way that others understand. This often enables you to get some new perspective on the situation and arrive at potential solutions you might not have considered before.
Talking to family and friends can help you to start working through frustrations and clearing out your mind. If you can’t seem to break out of the mental fog on your own, though, a professional can offer a little extra support.
A therapist can help you:
•explore reasons behind concentration difficulties
Your brain may not actually have a restart button, but there are plenty of things you can do to reboot.
If the strategies above fail to help clear your mind and improve your focus, talking to a therapist is a good next step.
May 4, 2021 · In Detox Your Thoughts, clinical psychologist Andrea Bonior uses techniques from acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), and mindfulness to teach you to understand your thoughts--and your body--in a completely different way. For each of the 10 mental traps, Bonior uses the latest research in psychology and ...
- (410)
- Chronicle Prism
- $15.99
- Andrea Bonior
“In Detox Your Thoughts, Andrea Bonior brings you a slate of modern and proven methods to help you back up from toxic thoughts, show up to what is present, and get moving toward what you really want. Accessible, friendly, balanced, and wise, this well written book should be on your nightstand.”
May 5, 2020 · In Detox Your Thoughts, popular psychologist Andrea Bonior, PhD, identifies the 10 most prevalent mental traps that make people feel anxious, insecure, and generally just bad.
