It’s important to distinguish between:
- BIOLOGICAL FEAR: fear you are experiencing due to in-the-moment experience,
- PSYCHOLOGICAL FEAR: fear you’re experiencing because of an idea or an expectation of the future.
Even in a situation that is very real and happening around you, the truth is that most of it is not happening right now and in your immediate environment. Most of it is happening in your mind. This is important to know because your thoughts are what create your emotions.
The first thing you need to acknowledge to yourself is that this worrying and fearful thinking is NOT helping the situation. Worrying doesn’t fix it, solve it, help anyone, or make it better. It only puts you in a damaging negative emotional state.
How to STOP a negative, fearful TRAIN OF THOUGHT
Like a train that picks up speed, once you have an emotional thought going, you cannot stop it and change directions right away because it has MOMENTUM. If you did, the train would derail! In the same way, you can’t simply tell yourself to stop thinking about it. It’s impossible!
You cannot stop or control thinking, but you can get better at managing it. The key to developing better control of your thinking is to practice observing your thoughts.
Observing Your Thoughts
Thoughts come and go, like trains in a train station. Sometimes they move fast, other times slow. Sometimes they quickly pass through the station and other times you jump on board and get carried away by the train of thought. Sometimes they’re negative trains, sometimes positive ones.
Our minds are like our very own Train Station with new trains of thought coming and going around the clock.
The key to minimizing worrying is to be more careful which trains you get on! You do not have to ride every train that enters your station. The goal is to stop it BEFORE it becomes a runaway train. You do this by practicing being aware of what thought trains are going through your mind.
Here is how to watch a train of thought. Practice it now and practice it often. The more you practice it the better you get at it, helping you prevent yourself from getting on trains you don’t want to ride on.
- A train of thought comes in
- Identify it (“I notice I’m having the thought that…”)
- Now watch it leave, without engaging it
- Repeat for every thought that enters your mind (for as long as you can stand)
Jumping Off a Runaway Train
You might be wondering “what happens if I notice that I’m already on board a train of thought that is going out of control?”
Remember, you cannot stop it. However, you can jump from one train onto another. This is where healthy distractions can be useful. When you notice you’re worrying or locked into fearful thinking, do something to shift your focus. Remember, your thoughts are what are causing your emotions, so if you shift your thoughts to something else you will feel better.
Do something, anything, that distracts you from that train of though. The more intense your focus needs to be on this new train, the easier you will find it to not just hop back on the worry train. But, if you do catch yourself thinking about it again, simply redirect your mind back onto something else.
