A person may develop a state in which false ideas, thoughts try to take over consciousness. They attack daily, turning into an obsessive-compulsive disorder. This greatly complicates life, but there are ways to get rid of obsessive thoughts and fears. Without help, over time, the condition will only worsen. It will become more and more difficult to focus on really important things, to find the strength to overcome problems in ordinary life. Subsequently, depression sets in, bad thoughts, desires, and sometimes the disorder escalates to schizophrenia.

Why does obsessive-compulsive disorder occur?

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) occurs when the mind is unable to suppress impulses to do something. At the same time, they crowd out all other thoughts, although they are meaningless or unfounded in this moment. The persistence of these impulses is so great that they cause fear. The development of obsessive-phobic manifestations, obsessive neurosis is influenced by biological and psychological factors with varying degrees.

The obsessive-compulsive disorder syndrome has different manifestations, but they all boil down to the main symptoms of this nature:

• repetitive actions, rituals;
• regular checks of their own actions;
• cyclical thoughts;
• dwelling on thoughts about violence, religion, or the intimate side of life;
• an irresistible desire to count numbers or fear of them.

In children

OCD also occurs in children. As a rule, the causes of development are psychological trauma. A neurosis develops in a child against the background of fright or punishment; an unfair attitude towards them by teachers or parents can provoke such a state. Separation from a father or mother at an early age has a strong influence. The impetus for the obsessive state is a transfer to another school or moving. A number of factors in the field of family relations that form a disorder in a child are described:

1. dissatisfaction with the sex of the child. In this case, qualities unusual for him are imposed on him, this causes high anxiety.
2. late child. Doctors have found a link between the age of the mother and the risk of developing psychosis in the child. If a woman is more than 36 years old during pregnancy, then the risk of anxiety of the baby necessarily increases.
3. Conflicts within the family. Often the negative from quarrels affects the child, he has a feeling of guilt. According to statistics, in families where a man actively participates in upbringing, neuroses in children occur much less frequently.
4. Incomplete family. The child lacks one half of the behavior pattern. The absence of a stereotype provokes the development of neurosis.

In adults

In the older generation, the occurrence of obsessive-compulsive disorder is influenced by biological and psychological causes. The first appear, according to doctors, due to disturbances in the metabolism of the neurotransmitter serotonin. It is generally accepted that it regulates the level of anxiety, having a connection with the receptors of nerve cells. They also take into account the influence of living conditions and ecology, but the connection has not yet been scientifically proven.

Psychological factors are manifested in certain life upheavals and stressful situations. You can not call it the causes of neurosis - rather, they become a trigger for those people who have genetic predisposition to the development of obsessive thoughts and fears. It is impossible to identify such hereditary features of a person in advance.

obsessive states

People with certain personality accentuations or those who have undergone psychotrauma are predisposed to an obsessive state. They are subject to an involuntary invasion of feelings, images, actions, they are haunted by obsessive thoughts about death. A person understands the groundlessness of such phenomena, but cannot independently overcome and solve such problems.

The clinical signs of such a condition largely depend on what exacerbated and arose a cognitive-behavioral disorder. At the moment, there are two main types of obsessive thoughts - intellectual and emotional manifestation. They provoke human phobias and panic fear, which sometimes completely break the life and habitual rhythm of people.

intellectual

Obsessive states of the intellectual type are commonly called obsessions or obsessions. In this type of disorder, the following common manifestations of obsession are distinguished:

1. "Mental chewing gum". Unreasonable thoughts, doubts for any reason, and sometimes without it.
2. Arrhythmia (compulsive counting). A person counts everything around: people, birds, objects, steps, etc.
3. Intrusive doubts. Manifested in a weakened fixation of events. The person is not sure that he turned off the stove, iron.
4. Intrusive repetition. Phone numbers, names, dates or titles are constantly replayed in the mind.
5. Intrusive presentations.
6. Intrusive memories. Usually indecent content.
7. Intrusive fears. They often appear in the field of work or sexual life. A person doubts that he is capable of doing something.
8. Contrasting obsessive state. A person has thoughts that do not correspond to typical behavior. For example, a good and not evil girl by nature has images of a bloody murder.

emotional

Emotional obsessive states include various phobias (fears), which have a specific direction. For example, a young mother experiences unreasonable anxiety that her child will be harmed or killed. Household phobias can be attributed to the same type - fear of the number 13, Orthodox churches, black cats, etc. There are many different types of fear that have been given special names.

Human phobias

1. Oxyphobia. The problem manifests itself in the fear of any sharp objects. A person is worried that he can injure others or himself.
2. Agrophobia. Obsessive fear of open space, attacks cause squares, wide streets. People suffering from such a neurosis appear on the street only accompanied by another person.
3. Claustrophobia. An obsessive problem is the fear of small, enclosed spaces.
4. Acrophobia. With this obsessive state, a person is afraid to be on top. There is dizziness and fear of falling.
5. Anthropophobia. The problem is the fear of large crowds. A person is afraid of fainting and being crushed by the crowd.
6. Misophobia. The patient is constantly worried that he will get dirty.
7. Dysmorphophobia. It seems to the patient that everyone around is paying attention to the ugly, incorrect development of the body.
8. Nosophobia. A person is constantly afraid of contracting a serious illness.
9. Nyctophobia. A kind of fear of the dark.
10. Mythophobia. A person is afraid to tell a lie, so he avoids communicating with people.
11. Thanatophobia is a type of fear of death.
12. Monophobia. A person is afraid to be alone, which is associated with the idea of ​​helplessness.
13. Pantophobia. The highest degree of general fear as such. The patient is afraid of everything around.

How to get rid of intrusive thoughts

The psychology of fear is designed in such a way that obsessive states cannot go away on their own. Living like this is extremely problematic, fighting on your own is difficult. In this case, close people should help, and for this you need to know how to get rid of obsessive thoughts and fear. Support can be provided by psychotherapeutic practices or independent work on the advice of psychologists.

Psychotherapeutic practices

With a clear psychogenic nature of the disorders, it is necessary to carry out therapy with the patient, based on the symptoms of the obsessive state. Apply psychological techniques individually for each patient. Obsessive-compulsive disorder treatment can be done individually or in a group. To cure a person, use such psychological types of therapy:

1. Rational psychotherapy. In the course of treatment, the specialist reveals the "trigger point" of the neurotic state, reveals the pathogenetic essence of the conflict. Tryna step up positive sides personality and corrects negative, inadequate reactions of a person. Therapy should normalize the system of emotional-volitional response.
2. Group psychotherapy. The solution of intrapersonal problems occurs through the study of defects in interpersonal interaction. Practical work aims at the end problem to solve intrapersonal obsessions.

The degree of obsessive states can be different, so the presence of the latter is not a direct road to psychiatry. Sometimes people just need to figure out how to distract themselves from the bad thoughts that originate in the subconscious. To overcome obsessive fear and anxiety, you can use the following techniques:

There are a number of reasons that complicate the process of recovery from obsessive fear. For some, this is due to lack of confidence in themselves and their strengths, others lack perseverance, and others do expect everything to go away on its own. There are a number of examples famous people who, on the way to success, managed to overcome their phobias and fears, coped with internal problems. For this, they are used psychological tricks helping a person to remove obsessive fear from the path.

Psychological tricks

1. Fighting negative thinking. They call this technique a “knife switch”, because the essence is to present your obsessive fears in the form of a switch as clearly and in detail as possible and just turn it off at the right time. The main thing is to imagine everything in your imagination.
2. Proper breathing. Psychologists say: "Inhale courage, exhale fear." Uniform breaths with a slight delay, and then exhalations, normalize the physical condition during an attack of fear. This will help you calm down.
3. Action response to an alarm. A difficult practice when a person "looks fear in the eye." If the patient is afraid to speak, then you need to put the patient in front of the public. It will be possible to overcome fear due to the “drive”.
4. We play a role. The patient is invited to play the role of a self-confident person. If this state is practiced in the form of a theatrical game, then the brain at some point may respond to it, and the obsessive fear will disappear.

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Negative thoughts, how to get distracted? Man is what he thinks. In this article, we will talk about how to distract yourself from negative thoughts. Here you will find the most effective ways how to deal with obsessive thoughts that plague our lives.

Every person in life has periods when they are sucked into the abyss of negative thoughts, which sometimes turn into obsessive ones. We play them over and over in our heads. This poisons our lives, our mood deteriorates, we fall into depression, despair. Life becomes unbearable, devoid of joy.

An obsessive thought, as a projection of your fantasy.

We all know that thought is material. What happens to us is what we think about, what we fear the most. And when we hang in negative thoughts, then life is completely painted in black.

Before we talk about how to overcome such thoughts, let's first understand why this happens to us. Why do we dwell on bad thoughts and can't just let go of the situation?

Obsessive negative thoughts are a kind of bad habit. A person understands that it harms his health, but cannot get rid of it. Obsessive thoughts can bother a person for several days, and sometimes months. It can be certain fears, resentments, experiences, painful memories.

But what is most interesting, when time passes and these thoughts disappear, a person realizes that these thoughts did not pose any threat to him. Often, after a while, a person realizes that the thoughts that poisoned his life long time, this is generally dust and you should not even think about them.

Negative obsessive thoughts arise in the mind of a person involuntarily, against his will. A person is aware of pain, these thoughts are accompanied by depression, anxiety.

Causes of intrusive thoughts:

1. The most common cause of obsessive thoughts is stress. No matter how a person tries to forget a difficult situation, it is still reproduced in memory again and again.
2. Obsessive thoughts can arise as a consequence of psychological trauma.
3. The cause may be severe overwork and exhaustion of the nervous system.

Negative thoughts: how to get distracted?

“You need not get rid of thoughts, but direct your attention to them: what they are about, dive into them and find the reason from which they come. Perhaps this is some event in your life that gives rise to fear in you ... You need to deal with the reason. And then the “bad thoughts” will go away by themselves.”
D. Krok Freeskiing

1. Compliment yourself, praise yourself. As soon as a negative thought visits you, start saying the phrase in your head: “Shut up immediately.” Then start complimenting yourself. This is the methodology of the psychologist V.K. Nevyarovich, who described this method in the book Soul Therapy.
2. The right mindset will help you get rid of negative thoughts. Always confidently say: I can! I can do it!
3. Relaxation will help to distract from bad thoughts. Relax your body and enjoy. Our body immediately reacts to negative thoughts. We have wrinkles, the corners of the lips are lowered, we look older by 5 years. Go for a massage, take a bath with aromatic oils, visit a beauty salon, go to the pool, sleep off. Yoga and meditation will help you with this.
4. You can get rid of bad thoughts if you throw them out. Feel free to cry, yell, or talk to someone you trust. In the process of speaking out the problem, much becomes clear and resolves itself.
5. You can write down all your negative thoughts on paper and burn them. This is a kind of ritual of purification and release of the situation.
6. Imagine your thoughts very small. Clench them in your fist so hard that they crumble and scatter them in the wind.
7. The nature of the problem needs to be established. Analyze when problems with negative and obsessive thoughts appeared. You must clearly understand what is happening to you. There are no hopeless situations and your emotional condition can change. Some people have been haunted by negative thoughts since childhood, it develops in them a common negative attitude to yourself and the world around you.
8. To get rid of negative thoughts, you need to be aware of your fears. Often your fears are instilled in you by your parents or those around you. Perhaps you have often been told: "You are a loser, you are poor, you have no talents, etc." Such phrases sit in the head of a person, he begins to believe in them and feel and behave accordingly. To get rid of this kind of thoughts, you need to write down all your achievements and joys, even the smallest ones. This will show you who you really are and distract you from the bad thoughts in your head.
9. The main cause of obsessive thoughts is anxiety. People worry all the time, about anything. These thoughts are exhausting, although often there is no real cause for concern. In this case, it is necessary to control the obsession, this means not talking about it, not allowing yourself to think about the bad. You can distract from negative obsessive thoughts if you do some important business, start singing or repeating the multiplication table in your mind.
10. The main reason for negative thoughts is the inability to be in the present moment. We can worry only when we think about the future and we are upset only by what has already happened, that is, the past. Therefore, in order to distract from bad restless thoughts, you need not think about the future. Self-confidence and a positive attitude will help to distract from any negative thought.
11. Controlling your thoughts will help you not only get rid of them, but also get rid of them forever. You must understand that only you can help yourself. Write down your biggest fear on paper and what will happen if it comes true. For example, I can't pay off a loan. What will happen? They start calling and threatening. What will I do? I will contact a specialist. which restructures the loan. What if they get sued? In this case, they will break the loan into parts, and it will be easier for me to pay it off. Any problem can be disassembled and analyzed in this way. Then it will not seem so scary, because there is a way out of any situation.
12. Repeat to yourself in your head the phrase: "Everything passes and this will pass."
13. Learn to correctly understand life priorities. There is nothing more important and valuable than your life. Everything else is dust that will disperse and be forgotten.
14. Never compare yourself to others! You have your own life and your own life mission. You can learn from successful people, but don't try on their lives. Envy is the source of obsessive dark thoughts.
15. Don't get stuck in the past! You must love and forgive yourself. It is already impossible to change what happened, so why torture yourself. There is no need to remember failures. Concentrate better on what you can do.
16. Learn to control your emotions. It is necessary to accept the situation in a neutral way, then any thought is perceived simply as information for reflection. After all, you yourself paint situations in colors with your emotions.
17. Learn to forgive yourself and those around you. If you received negative attitudes from your parents, then you must understand that they simply did not know how to live differently.
18. To distract yourself from bad thoughts, keep yourself busy with an interesting project. You can draw pictures, start writing a book, develop a business plan. When a person is busy with something interesting, he does not have time to think about the bad.
19. Write plans for the future. Write down what you want to do one month ahead. Planning will help get rid of constant anxiety and distract from negative thoughts.
20. Psychologists recommend that every time you have a bad thought, punish yourself. For example, put an elastic band on your hand and, when a bad thought appears, pull and hit yourself with an elastic band on your arm. It sounds crazy, but our brain begins to understand that a negative thought will be punished, and it will be less and less likely to reduce such thoughts.
21. The acceptance of a thought means the cessation of the struggle with it. Learn not to drive away thoughts, but to find the positive aspects of your problem.
22. When negative thoughts hit you, remember a moment when you were happy. Keep this picture in your head and replay it whenever a bad thought comes up.
23. Think about it, you may have a secondary benefit from obsessive thoughts. For example, by thinking constantly about one situation, you avoid thinking about something else. Perhaps there are more important issues for you, but you are afraid to think about them. This disguise must be recognized.
24. Very often, obsessive negative thoughts are the reason to consider yourself unhappy and this relieves you of some responsibilities. For example, a person believes that he cannot find a job until he gets rid of obsessive thoughts. This is a secondary benefit. Obsessive thoughts are an excuse. In fact, a person simply does not want to look for a job.
25. Obsessive thoughts cause a lot of tension, so in order to cope with them, you need to learn how to relax with every cell of your body. Relaxation meditation is the best way to help you.
26. If you believe in God, prayer for protection from bad thoughts will help to cope with a bad mood, relieve despondency. Take good care of your soul. Take care of spiritual purity, because any thought is material and it is the first step towards the abyss. The words of prayer have tremendous healing power. As soon as you feel that a negative thought overcomes you, pray.

Conclusion

As you can see, there are many ways to work through negative thoughts, get rid of them or distract from them. The most important thing is to have the desire and faith in yourself. If you can’t get your mind off negative thoughts on your own, see a therapist.

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Staying calm and focused is not easy. Crowds of people, cars, noisy streets, crowded shops, loud conversations, obsessive thoughts, problems, anxieties... This not only interferes with maintaining mental and mental balance, but also causes negative emotions. What to do in order not to let negative experiences into our minds and keep our concentration on what is important to us? The best way would be to abstract from everything that interferes with our peace and annoys.

But what does it mean to abstract? How to abstract? What benefit can this bring? What could be wrong with not being able to do this? We will try to answer these questions in the article.

Abstraction: what is it and why is it needed?

The term "abstraction" comes from the Latin word "abstractio" and means "distraction". distraction is most often understood not as a change in activity, as one might think, but a change in thinking. The bottom line is that, by abstracting, a person begins to look at things from a new perspective.

The human brain is used to perceiving everything (phenomena, events, people, situations, etc.), generalizing its ideas about what it perceives, without dividing them into separate elements. And if we answer the question "What does it mean to abstract?" precisely in a psychological context, this means mentally moving away from what is happening in order to enable your nervous system relax and recover to get rid of negative impact annoying factors, analyze the situation and look at it impartially.

You can abstract from sounds (from noise), from negative experiences, from emotions, and even from the outside world. And this can be learned, and for this you do not need to make any titanic efforts.

The ability to abstract helps in many life situations, in particular when it is necessary to get certain thoughts out of your head, move away from surging emotions, discard the unnecessary, understand the essence of a problem or situation. We can be stressed by the behavior of another person or - a classic of the genre - the noise of a neighbor's drill on a sweet Saturday morning; we may resent events at work or somewhere on the street. Giving in to our feelings, we easily forget about the main thing, lose sight of something important, lose motivation. And the ability to mentally discard all the husks helps us to remain in ourselves and ourselves.

With the help of the skill of abstraction, everyone can better define their desires and goals and find ways to achieve them, understand what they need at the current moment in time and in life in general, effectively get rid of distractions and negativity, improve intellectual activity and even speed it up.

We think that it would not be superfluous to say about what the inability to abstract can lead to. First of all, it is depression associated with a constant feeling of anxiety and fear caused by problems and stress. It is also stress itself. It tends to accumulate, and if a person does not know how to give his psyche a rest, the load on it seriously increases. This depletes energy reserves on both the physical and mental levels.

As you yourself have already perfectly understood, the ability to abstract is a powerful defense mechanism. But, of course, it is also an effective tool in the fight against distraction, procrastination, lack of time, low life and professional results. And here's another little explanation of what abstraction is, from Khan Academy.

Now let's move on to practice. And we will start with how to abstract from the manifestations of the surrounding reality in general.

How to abstract from the outside world

Anyone can learn to abstract. You yourself have already done this more than once, albeit unconsciously. Recall if there were similar situations in your life:

• Your friend tells you something, and in the meantime you think about the girl you met in the morning on the bus
• An important meeting at work, and you are in the clouds, anticipating the upcoming vacation trip
• At home, someone expresses dissatisfaction with you, and you, without paying any attention to it, read interesting book or watch an exciting movie

You must have experienced something like this. And just this suggests that you already know how to abstract. But if earlier you did it automatically, now you can start to be distracted from the outside world on purpose, and at the moment when you need it.

The first thing you have to master in order to learn how to abstract from the negative manifestations of the outside world will be controlling your thoughts. There is a simple algorithm for this:

• Exhale
• Start slowly counting to ten
• For each count, take one slow breath in and a slow breath out.
• Concentrating on your breath, pay attention to thoughts and exhale them as if

To enhance the effect of the reception, you can look at something. For example, you are standing in line at a store, and two other customers are arguing nearby. Do the above steps and look at what is happening outside the window, look at the interior of the store, concentrate on what actions the cashier performs while serving the customer. If you can play your favorite music, do it. This breathing technique can be used in any situation.

Always remember that, abstracting from the outside world, you need to try not to succumb to emerging negative emotions. This means that any circumstances, situations, events and people should be looked at from a different angle. Here are just a few points of view:

• Perhaps you exaggerate and attach too much importance to circumstances.
• Perhaps in the current situation there is some kind of personal benefit specifically for you, and you just need to see it.
• Perhaps if everything went the way you want, you would face more serious problems.
• Perhaps you give in to the habit of reacting negatively when something goes against your expectations.

Looking at what is happening from a similar position, you can easily abstract from the outside world, and focus on positive thoughts and / or solving specific issues. In addition, you will have more energy and strength, and life will seem better and easier.

In addition to the proposed method of abstracting from the outside world, meditation can be used. It improves concentration and perfectly relaxes. It is best to meditate at home when you want to be alone with yourself, forget about everything and everyone, streamline your thoughts. But in general, you can meditate on the street, in public transport, and even at work. We talked about meditation in detail in our article "".

Also, activities such as walking, watching movies, meeting friends, shopping, focusing on specific activities, contemplating works of art, nature, etc. will help to abstract from the outside world. And also, so that no one "gets" you, we recommend turning off all your gadgets from time to time.

But the manifestations of the external world are often expressed specifically in annoying noises and sounds - this is one of the most common phenomena that interfere with concentration and cause negative emotions. Next, we will tell you how to abstract from them.

How to abstract from noise and from sounds

Scientifically confirmed that every second in human brain 1 billion pulses are received. The brain, of course, can filter out a lot of unnecessary data, but about a hundred signals will still be recorded by it. BUT most of information comes to us in sound form, and there is nothing surprising in the fact that noises and sounds are constantly distracting and make us “twitch”.

The following recommendations will help you learn to abstract from noise and sounds:

And another good way to learn to abstract from sounds is to master the skill of not paying attention to background noises. If you start deliberately getting used to any sounds, over time it will be easy to ignore them. Play a video while working or reading and try to focus on what you are doing. If you're getting ready for a session and your neighbor keeps hammering nails into the wall, don't run away from it—on the contrary, focus on the sound for a while and then continue learning the material.

Note that such a skill is useful to you always and everywhere, because you do not know when and where the noise will overtake you again. In addition, absolute silence can have an overwhelming effect on the psyche. If you don’t hear anything at all, you will become distracted by the absence of sounds.

Now let's move on to the most important issue - negativity, negative emotions and obsessive thoughts. If it is quite easy to abstract from the outside world and noises, then it is much more difficult to distract from what is happening inside.

How to disengage from emotions

The most important thing when distracting from emotions is to learn to abstract from the negative. Given that negative emotions often have greater momentum and power than positive ones, you first need to be able to work with them (by the way, here). For this there is different ways but the most effective are:

• Ignoring bad and negative thoughts
• Ignoring irritation
• Remembrance of good events
• Switching attention
• complacency
• Thoughts on gaining experience useful in the future
• Adequate perception of what is happening

We think that these methods do not need special explanations. Pay more attention to the following tips.

accept life

Try to take everything as it is. People, situations, events - all this can be different. Life cannot be called impeccable and ideal (sometimes fair), but everything that is given to us is for the good. It is impossible to control everything, you need to understand this. The sooner you do this, the calmer and easier you will become. Treat failure and negativity philosophically.

The philosophical perception of life is that, firstly, you accept the fact that white and black stripes will always alternate, and secondly, you analyze everything that happens, draw certain conclusions and just let go of what you don’t Like. This is to abstract from negativity and emotions. Any experience is useful and necessary, and if you consider situations from different angles, breaking them down into components, you can quickly get to the bottom of things and.

Be imperfect

No one is perfect, there is not a single absolutely flawless and ideal person. And this applies not only to others, but also to yourself. If you accept this as a given, life will become much easier, events will be perceived more easily, negative will cease to cause feelings. Adequately evaluate yourself and others, give up anger - there is nothing so important that it would be worth your suffering.

Enjoy life

The only way to get rid of the negative is through the positive. Strive to see the positive side in everything, live every moment as if it were your last, perceive every day with joy and a smile. You can get pleasure from any thing. Even sitting at home and doing nothing, thank life for the fact that you can see, hear, breathe, communicate with loved ones. Thank life for the fact that you live at all, and remember that someday you will also be gone. Are your current problems important in the face of death?

Postpone things

If you feel that you are about to break loose, that it is already unbearable to work or do some business, abstract from emotions by simply postponing work. Reschedule things for half an hour, for two hours, for tomorrow. Instead, do what you love, take a walk, sleep. Distraction helps to cool down and refocus on positive thoughts. If something doesn't work out for you, moving away from it, you can find a new way to solve the problem. In addition, more does not always mean better - you can miss the details, make mistakes, overwork, and generally get sick. Distribute the load optimally and there will be more achievements in your life.

Drive away bad thoughts

Even when nothing bad is happening, you can think about bad things. and fears are easily overcome when you begin to rethink them and understand their causes. When you realize that your anxiety has no explainable reason, how to abstract from it will no longer be such a big problem. If there really is a reason, think about how to resolve the situation. Any fears disappear as soon as a person begins to look into their eyes.

Take it easy

Many people complicate things, thereby worsening their mental and emotional state. But everything, absolutely everything can be looked at more simply. Consciousness is simply used to reacting negatively to some things, but if you think about them, they may not be worth a damn. Is the boss screaming? Yes, let him shout to himself - let him try to boil water with his cry. Bad grades in class? Yes, and God bless her - with this mark - tomorrow there will be five. Quarreled with your spouse? And what of it - dear ones scold - they only amuse themselves. Not enough money? When were they enough? Yes, and happiness is not in money, and not even in their quantity. Any situation can be simplified and even translated into a pun. And this is a great way to abstract from the negative.

Become kinder

Have you noticed that good people everything is fine? Let them have troubles, let them have problems, let them have hardships - but they are doing well. Being kind is very helpful, but kindness isn't just for babies or kittens. You need to be kind to events, situations, and other people, including those who “negative” you. Try to perceive everything as if you are truly a holy person. Ask yourself, how would Nicholas the Wonderworker take this? You will see - the brain itself will tell you how to behave, and it will become much easier to abstract. And also, being kinder, you will begin to attract good people, good events, good news into your life.

Learn to concentrate

The ability to abstract from the bad is the skill of concentrating on the good. Everything is extremely simple here: do not pay attention to what hurts your feelings, what makes your blood boil, what pisses you off. Instead, remember the faces of loved ones, switch to funny things that happened during the day, mentally draw pictures from jokes. Do anything that can be associated with joy, hope, good sadness, happiness, love, and other positive emotions. You can read about how to improve the ability to focus in our article "".

Control the positive

It may sound strange, but still you need to be able to abstract from both negative emotions and positive ones. If you hover in the clouds all the time and look at the world through rose-colored glasses, at one fine moment you can hit the ground well. Rejoice, laugh, sing songs, be happy, but understand that these states are destined to end, because you will spend your energy, and they will lose their intensity. As in everything, there must be a measure here too. And the best way to rejoice is to switch attention to business and worries. Such is the human psyche - soaring on the wings of happiness, it is easy to lose vigilance, forget, not have time to do something important. Keep this in mind, and keep balance and harmony within yourself.

And in conclusion, I just want to note that the development of skills and qualities that are useful for life, such as awareness, inner peace, concentration, and gratitude, always helps to abstract from the outside world, noises and sounds, negative emotions and experiences.

Be sure to make plans, motivate yourself, strive for new goals and achievements, read interesting and educational books, meditate and relax, develop. Having filled your life with these things, you can abstract from anything easily and naturally.

And to bring some more positive inside yourself, watch this wonderful video from the famous TV presenter and Comedy Club resident Pavel Volya. We wish you happiness and the ability to always and everywhere be yourself.

We all know how material our thoughts are, so if we constantly think about something bad, turning our thinking into sticky chewing gum, do not be surprised if troubles from a rich imagination begin to come true. This is where the question arises, how to distract from bad thoughts.

Where do they come from

Before you distract yourself from bad thoughts, you need to realize that every negative thought is an emotion. And the emotion that is associated with your fears and complexes. They are taken from those times when you were defenseless in front of parents, teachers, adults, the world and the world of complex children's relationships. Very often, such thoughts signal that some problem needs to be solved, but sometimes it also happens that some settings get lost in the psyche and ordinary health care turns into hypochondria, and the self-preservation instinct develops into paranoia.

This can happen after a series of stresses or after someone from relatives or friends fell ill with a serious illness. The main thing to understand, if you are overcome by such thoughts, is that they cannot be eradicated by logic or simply pushed out of your head. Everything is much more complicated.

Live to the fullest

One of the most simple ways get rid of intrusive thoughts. Find another job, find an interesting hobby, organize events, social activities, create. If you don't have a personal life, fall in love and go on dates, pair up single friends, introduce people. Do not give up interesting events and go somewhere more often.

You can not even go to distant islands and not on excursions, but to a neighboring city, where there is something interesting. This may not radically solve the problem of obsessive thoughts, but who knows, maybe after six months of an active life you will remember what worried you so much until recently and understand how ridiculous it was.

First turn on the logic

As mentioned above, it is not very necessary and it will not be possible to drive away negative thoughts by force, but at the first stage it will come in handy. Come up with clear, concise arguments against intrusive thoughts. Do not argue with yourself - this will further drag you into the abyss of unpleasant thoughts. Just say: "I am healthy and the tests have proven it" in case you have a fear of getting sick. If you feel like you have enemies, tell yourself that no one wants to harm you, etc.

And finally, realize that if there is a problem, then you need to solve it, and not think about it all the time and torment yourself with it. Try to ignore these thoughts and be indifferent to them. If you do not give them an emotional charge, then they will leave in time. How to do it? Don't berate yourself or force yourself to switch, just relax and let them flow freely.

Our consciousness is still a troll, and in order for it to calm down, you just need not to feed it! Try to remember your intrusive thoughts when you are in a good mood or when things are going the way you want them to. Then you will perfectly understand their absurdity.

Learn to be distracted

Let you have a hobby and you can switch to it. Physical education is a good hobby. Even if you don’t recognize sports clubs, try to stand up and squat when negative thoughts come up. Or push up. Or press. It’s just that when the body tenses up, emotions are turned off, which means that fear has nothing to feed on.

Punish yourself

Not the best way, but if you are used to tough measures, it will do. Try to put a thin elastic band on your hand and, at the first hint of obsessive thoughts, beat yourself on your hand with it, and it hurts. This will not radically solve the problem, but it will help to survive until the evening without panic.

turn on the fantasy

Visualization will help you. You can imagine that you are a large and bright ball full of positive energy. At the same time, imagine your negative thoughts in the form of funny and ridiculous insects, stupidly swarming around this ball. Pay attention to their absurdity. Take a look and see how funny they are.

If negative thoughts are related to how bad you are, you can think about your victories and your virtues. Self-confidence is a great way to deal with obsessive thoughts about your inferiority. For every negative thought, there is a positive one, and this search is worth doing.

Think about what will happen if what you are so afraid of will happen. After that, thoughts will no longer scare you so much.

get distracted

Find an activity that requires a lot of intelligence, attention and concentration. It can be an intellectual game, writing articles, etc. The main thing is that you get involved in a complex and interesting business and this will prevent annoying thoughts from overpowering you.

Some ladies are advised to be distracted by sentimental series, where there are a lot of strong emotions. There is something in this: having cried over someone else's grief, we will be distracted from our annoying demons.

Stop being afraid of the future. Perhaps it does not exist, or perhaps we can create it ourselves. Make bold plans for the near future, where the important point is the fulfillment of your desires. And carry it out!

Reading time 6 minutes

Negative thoughts, how to get distracted? Man is what he thinks. In this article, we will talk about how to distract yourself from negative thoughts. Here you will find the most effective ways to deal with obsessive thoughts that poison our lives.

Every person in life has periods when they are sucked into the abyss of negative thoughts, which sometimes turn into obsessive ones. We play them over and over in our heads. This poisons our lives, our mood deteriorates, we fall into depression, despair. Life becomes unbearable, devoid of joy.

An obsessive thought, as a projection of your fantasy.

We all know that thought is material. What happens to us is what we think about, what we fear the most. And when we hang in negative thoughts, then life is completely painted in black.

Before we talk about how to overcome such thoughts, let's first understand why this happens to us. Why do we dwell on bad thoughts and can't just let go of the situation?

Obsessive negative thoughts are a kind of bad habit. A person understands that it harms his health, but cannot get rid of it. Obsessive thoughts can bother a person for several days, and sometimes months. It can be certain fears, resentments, experiences, painful memories.

But what is most interesting, when time passes and these thoughts disappear, a person realizes that these thoughts did not pose any threat to him. Often, after a while, a person realizes that the thoughts that poisoned his life for a long time are dust in general and it was not worth even thinking about them.

Negative obsessive thoughts arise in the mind of a person involuntarily, against his will. A person is aware of pain, these thoughts are accompanied by depression, anxiety.

Causes of intrusive thoughts:

1. The most common cause of obsessive thoughts is stress. No matter how a person tries to forget a difficult situation, it is still reproduced in memory again and again.
2. Obsessive thoughts can arise as a consequence of psychological trauma.
3. The cause may be severe overwork and exhaustion of the nervous system.

Negative thoughts: how to get distracted?

“You need not get rid of thoughts, but direct your attention to them: what they are about, dive into them and find the reason from which they come. Perhaps this is some event in your life that gives rise to fear in you ... You need to deal with the reason. And then the “bad thoughts” will go away by themselves.”
D. Krok Freeskiing

1. Compliment yourself, praise yourself. As soon as a negative thought visits you, start saying the phrase in your head: “Shut up immediately.” Then start complimenting yourself. This is the methodology of the psychologist V.K. Nevyarovich, who described this method in the book Soul Therapy.
2. The right mindset will help you get rid of negative thoughts. Always confidently say: I can! I can do it!
3. Relaxation will help to distract from bad thoughts. Relax your body and enjoy. Our body immediately reacts to negative thoughts. We have wrinkles, the corners of the lips are lowered, we look older by 5 years. Go for a massage, take a bath with aromatic oils, visit a beauty salon, go to the pool, sleep off. Yoga and meditation will help you with this.
4. You can get rid of bad thoughts if you throw them out. Feel free to cry, yell, or talk to someone you trust. In the process of speaking out the problem, much becomes clear and resolves itself.
5. You can write down all your negative thoughts on paper and burn them. This is a kind of ritual of purification and release of the situation.
6. Imagine your thoughts very small. Clench them in your fist so hard that they crumble and scatter them in the wind.
7. The nature of the problem needs to be established. Analyze when problems with negative and obsessive thoughts appeared. You must clearly understand what is happening to you. There are no hopeless situations and your emotional state can be changed. Some people have been haunted by negative thoughts since childhood, this develops in them a general negative attitude towards themselves and the world around them.
8. To get rid of negative thoughts, you need to be aware of your fears. Often your fears are instilled in you by your parents or those around you. Perhaps you have often been told: "You are a loser, you are poor, you have no talents, etc." Such phrases sit in the head of a person, he begins to believe in them and feel and behave accordingly. To get rid of this kind of thoughts, you need to write down all your achievements and joys, even the smallest ones. This will show you who you really are and distract you from the bad thoughts in your head.
9. The main cause of obsessive thoughts is anxiety. People worry all the time, about anything. These thoughts are exhausting, although often there is no real cause for concern. In this case, it is necessary to control the obsession, this means not talking about it, not allowing yourself to think about the bad. You can distract from negative obsessive thoughts if you do some important business, start singing or repeating the multiplication table in your mind.
10. The main reason for negative thoughts is the inability to be in the present moment. We can worry only when we think about the future and we are upset only by what has already happened, that is, the past. Therefore, in order to distract from bad restless thoughts, you need not think about the future. Self-confidence and a positive attitude will help to distract from any negative thought.
11. Controlling your thoughts will help you not only get rid of them, but also get rid of them forever. You must understand that only you can help yourself. Write down your biggest fear on paper and what will happen if it comes true. For example, I can't pay off a loan. What will happen? They start calling and threatening. What will I do? I will contact a specialist. which restructures the loan. What if they get sued? In this case, they will break the loan into parts, and it will be easier for me to pay it off. Any problem can be disassembled and analyzed in this way. Then it will not seem so scary, because there is a way out of any situation.
12. Repeat to yourself in your head the phrase: "Everything passes and this will pass."
13. Learn to correctly understand life priorities. There is nothing more important and valuable than your life. Everything else is dust that will disperse and be forgotten.
14. Never compare yourself to others! You have your own life and your own life mission. You can learn from successful people, but don't try on their lives. Envy is the source of obsessive dark thoughts.
15. Don't get stuck in the past! You must love and forgive yourself. It is already impossible to change what happened, so why torture yourself. There is no need to remember failures. Concentrate better on what you can do.
16. Learn to control your emotions. It is necessary to accept the situation in a neutral way, then any thought is perceived simply as information for reflection. After all, you yourself paint situations in colors with your emotions.
17. Learn to forgive yourself and those around you. If you received negative attitudes from your parents, then you must understand that they simply did not know how to live differently.
18. To distract yourself from bad thoughts, keep yourself busy with an interesting project. You can draw pictures, start writing a book, develop a business plan. When a person is busy with something interesting, he does not have time to think about the bad.
19. Write plans for the future. Write down what you want to do one month ahead. Planning will help get rid of constant anxiety and distract from negative thoughts.
20. Psychologists recommend that every time you have a bad thought, punish yourself. For example, put an elastic band on your hand and, when a bad thought appears, pull and hit yourself with an elastic band on your arm. It sounds crazy, but our brain begins to understand that a negative thought will be punished, and it will be less and less likely to reduce such thoughts.
21. The acceptance of a thought means the cessation of the struggle with it. Learn not to drive away thoughts, but to find the positive aspects of your problem.
22. When negative thoughts hit you, remember a moment when you were happy. Keep this picture in your head and replay it whenever a bad thought comes up.
23. Think about it, you may have a secondary benefit from obsessive thoughts. For example, by thinking constantly about one situation, you avoid thinking about something else. Perhaps there are more important issues for you, but you are afraid to think about them. This disguise must be recognized.
24. Very often, obsessive negative thoughts are the reason to consider yourself unhappy and this relieves you of some responsibilities. For example, a person believes that he cannot find a job until he gets rid of obsessive thoughts. This is a secondary benefit. Obsessive thoughts are an excuse. In fact, a person simply does not want to look for a job.
25. Obsessive thoughts cause a lot of tension, so in order to cope with them, you need to learn how to relax with every cell of your body. Relaxation meditation is the best way to help you.
26. If you believe in God, prayer for protection from bad thoughts will help to cope with a bad mood, relieve despondency. Take good care of your soul. Take care of spiritual purity, because any thought is material and it is the first step towards the abyss. The words of prayer have tremendous healing power. As soon as you feel that a negative thought overcomes you, pray.

Conclusion

As you can see, there are many ways to work through negative thoughts, get rid of them or distract from them. The most important thing is to have the desire and faith in yourself. If you can’t get your mind off negative thoughts on your own, see a therapist.