Thoughts Are the Thinker

""Thoughts are the thinker," my Buddhist teacher said this Sunday at our bi-monthly gathering, and I thought, "Amen, sister!" I had the instinct to rejoice and affirm (Southern Baptist style from my youth) because this notion that I don't actually think my thoughts has helped me, more than any other idea, with what I call my "looping." My "looping" is more commonly referred to as intrusive thoughts: unwanted images, impulses, words, or phrases that crash the mental party uninvited."

"Psychologist Daniel Wegner, in his book White Bears and Other Unwanted Thoughts, describes his famous experiment, in which participants were told not to think of a white bear, and inevitably, thought of little else. Wegner called this "ironic process theory," the mind's tendency to fixate on whatever it tries to suppress. The effort to push a thought away seems to feed it. What we resist, insists."

"In my case, the intrusive thoughts haven't always been objectively bad. Sometimes the unwanted words in my head are nonsense words, single syllables, scraps of language that stick like burrs. They can range from something as dark as blasphemy or hellfire to something as light as detergent or yo-yo. The issue for me, less than the content itself, is the violation of the self-imposed ban. The moment I declare a thought off-limits, there it is, banging into the cloister of my consciousness ov"

Suppressing unwanted thoughts often strengthens them through an ironic process: attempts to avoid a thought increase its salience and recurrence. Intrusive thoughts can take many forms, from nonsensical syllables and scraps of language to dark images or blasphemous content. The distress often stems less from content than from the perception of inflicting mental harm on oneself and feeling simultaneously victim and perpetrator. Recognizing that thoughts are not inherently owned or reflective of intent can loosen their hold. Acceptance and reduction of suppression can diminish looping, decrease self-blame, and reduce the frequency and intensity of intrusive thoughts.

Read at Psychology Today