Getting rid of the myths
Who hasn’t had a bubblegum thought in their head? You walk around and think about the same thing for days, or even weeks: “I should have answered him this way and that way!” or fantasize about some significant event in the future. I don’t know about you, but my fantasies about “How it will all happen” never coincide with reality.
Getting stuck in the thought process is a signal to organize your thoughts, to clear your head of all unnecessary things. The fact is that thinking in life should take about a third of the time, and the same amount of time should be spent on feelings and actions. Inna Didkovskaya, a Gestalt therapist, is convinced of this. If the balance is disturbed, a person begins to replace real experiences with fantasies about the future or criticize themselves for past actions. Particularly toxic are thoughts in the category of “If I had done things differently, things would be better now” and dire predictions of the future. No less harmful are the thoughts someone else has instilled in us (“You’re a failure”, “You’ll never make it”). We start to believe in them, constantly replaying them in our heads. This leads to loss of energy and depression.
To sweep all this mental garbage out of your head, Inna Didkovskaya recommends practicing the “Morning Pages” technique, when, after barely waking up, you write down three pages of stream of consciousness in a notebook. This helps to isolate repetitive useless thoughts, and make useful ones clearer.
Getting stuck in the negative
When I wake up in the morning, I usually remember what thoughts I fell asleep with yesterday. Their character sets the tone for the mood of the new day. And if the day before I fell asleep thinking about “how hard it is to live” or “everything is gone” (although I usually do not allow such a mess in my head), the next 24 hours are unlikely to be sunny and joyful.
Mental garbage stuck in the head: depressive thoughts “I feel so bad”, “It’s unbearable”, “I can’t do it without him” set a black and white filter of perception of reality, a person begins to feel sorry for himself, looking for a “vest” to pour out suffering. But pouring negativity on the “vest” does not always help. In this case, you can try to plunge into the gloomy thoughts to the top of the head, having previously agreed with yourself about the time frame. For example: “For half an hour I think about unpleasant things, suffer to the point of total immersion, but when the alarm clock rings – the event is over”. Or turn to the good old method of reframing – changing the attitude to what is happening. You can perceive scattered things as hateful chaos, or you can perceive them as physical evidence of living in the same house with your loved ones.
– In order to get out of the trap of gloomy thoughts, you should first understand what positivity there is in a negative experience,” advises psychologist Alla Konyaeva. – Let’s assume that someone annoys you a lot by being demonstrative, by trying to focus all the attention on themselves. Think about what is good in your rejection of this type? Thank your psyche that in this way it frees you from the obligation to follow stereotypical behavior, laugh at stupid jokes, or waste time interacting with an unsympathetic person. All you have to do is distract yourself from the narcissist’s defiant behavior and focus on pleasing people.
Outdated beliefs in the mental garbage
Somebody was walking, fell down, hurt himself and decided that he would not walk down this street again. But it was repaired, landscaped, the way through it became shorter and more convenient, but a person, following his stereotypes, still walks bypassing paths. Such outdated, irrelevant beliefs go straight to the trash can. This is where we should also send such mental garbage as thought-forms that plunge us into fear and captivity of prejudice (“Oh, what will happen”, “He gave me a crooked look”).
Often it is quite difficult to clean mental garbage out of the head on our own, because we are used to it. It is desirable to have a person around – a friend or a psychologist, for whom this garbage would not be native. He can help clear his head by asking the right questions. To avoid thinking about bad things, Lyudmila Bogush, a time management specialist and head of BogushTime Time Management Studio, recommends going out and doing something useful.
– One day at yoga I caught myself thinking that it was unbearably hard for me to do asanas,” Lyudmila Bogush recalls. – Suddenly, I noticed a newcomer, a woman, who was much more difficult – she could hardly understand the instructor’s commands, made mistakes, and I started to help her, to prompt her. And at some point I realized that I had forgotten about my discomfort.
The most frustrating part
Unprocessed resentments are another toxic and common mental garbage. It’s got it all: chewed-up thoughts (“How could she do this to me!”), stuck negativity (“I’ll never forgive her”), and outdated beliefs (“Should I call her first, talk to her? No, no way! I wrote to her once, and she didn’t answer me!) Perhaps the “offender” has long since repented and would be happy to talk about what happened, or maybe he did not even notice how he dropped a careless word without thinking about the consequences. If the situation cannot be clarified, then it is necessary to apply the method of reframing to it – to transfer it into the category of life lessons and sources of strength.
Oksana Todorova, a psychologist and artist, recommends the exercise “Metaphor of Transition”, when we schematically depict ourselves in the present and future, writing down in words what we want to move from.
Another effective technique is to write notes with happy episodes of the day. After noticing something pleasant, we write down the impression on a piece of paper, roll it up in a tube and throw it into a special vase. In moments of sad thoughts, the notes help us: we take them out, read them and rejoice from the heart.
Mental garbage by inheritance
Often, when people find themselves at dead ends in life, they realize that they carry with them outdated beliefs of previous generations, their teachers, although it is important to regularly rethink and archive them. But do it not with irritation, but with gratitude, realizing the role of such attitudes in the past, when someone may have benefited from them.
Often I heard from the elders in our family the phrases “You can’t cope alone”, “You won’t do well without me”, “There is nothing good in life”. Surely the ancestor who repeated them many times did not want to harm his descendant, but when now at a crucial moment in the head out of nowhere such a thought pops up, you are weak, stifled and ready to back up. In such situations I remember cases when I coped with life circumstances without this ancestor. I managed to overpower the situation there, and it will work out here. Catching a negative message from the past and realizing its toxicity is like vacuuming your brain and clearing it of limiting beliefs.
Such mental garbage is usually expressed by words or phrases “I don’t have enough (money, health, time), never, no one, will never succeed, I’m afraid, everything, always, forever, the most, must (should, need)”. The first step towards a general head-cleaning is to catch these beacon words, become aware of them and neutralize them. According to the observations of life coach Tamara Suhenko, general head cleaning happens more often in times of crisis, in moments of important life events and upheavals. And this is a positive process, because as a person develops and evolves, he or she revises his or her worldview, expands the picture of the world, becomes more inclined to non-evaluative judgments and leaves behind outdated beliefs.
