Six secrets you need to know about anxious thoughts to find peace of mind
Do you find that you sometimes get overwhelmed with anxious thoughts and wish you could just press the off switch on the jittery, crazy chatter in your mind? And how would you be able to live life differently if you could tap into a peace of mind that’s with you no matter what’s going on in your life?
If you’ve never been able to stop worrying, I’m going to introduce you to 6 secrets that will help you zap away those anxious thoughts and loosen their hold over you.
I’ve always been an anxious person and for most of my life, I found it impossible to turn off the worries, the fears and the concerns. I felt this was a part of who I was and it was a fundamental element of my character and self-identity that I was never going to change. All I could hope for was to learn to manage and cope with it as best I could.
My go-to solution was to deal with my anxious thoughts by putting them under the intellectual microscope, If I analysed them, tried to discover their origin and took them apart with logic, I figured, then I’d be able to rationalize them away.
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Except if I’m honest this strategy never really worked.
This method was a train track to doom and gloom because one negative, anxious thought led to another until I was swamped. Giving my full attention and spending quality time with my worries, if anything, encouraged them to grow and multiply.
So what changed?
When I finally discovered a different way of thinking about thoughts, my perception completely changed about the nature of these worries and anxieties. I very quickly realised that these new insights had led me to a very different relationship with my worries, one where I dramatically reduced the time and attention I gave them and subsequently their power over me started to drift away.
So what did l learn?
1.Thoughts are not “the truth”
We’re all creators and tellers of stories. Not necessarily with much of an audience, because most of the time, the narrator is the voice in our head and we’re the only one listening. But that doesn’t mean that these stories aren’t important to us because we are also meaning-finding creatures.
We make sense of the external world and our internal landscape by interpreting what we experience and making sense of it, explaining it through these narratives. So we’ll have a thought like “my friend is late, so this means…”
And this thinking can be a perfectly reasonable and healthy response to life. But the problem is that we so often accept these interpretations as “the truth” without ever questioning our assumptions.
Of course, these assumptions are helpful and enable us to live life without getting caught up in constant internal debate and questioning (which would be exhausting, let alone debilitating).
Yet, when we’re struggling with anxiety, it’s because we’re overwhelmed with thoughts that are anxious predictions about what terrible things are going to happen to us in the future.
And the first, vital step we take towards living with more peace of mind is to remind ourselves that these thoughts, these stories, are not infallible.
Take your thoughts lightly, realise that they are never a truth set in stone but an interpretation and you always have the potential to see something new and fresh.
2. Thoughts have no power to hurt or frighten us
I remember once being almost terrified out of my wits by a huge monster in the corner of the room only to realise with relief a moment later that I was looking at a coat stand and a collection of rain coats. Once I had this realisation of course, the coat stand never once made me jump – I saw it for what it was, simply a harmless piece of furniture.
Remember your anxious thought is thought furniture floating through your mind and not a factual documentary on present and future problems coming your way.
3. We’re not in the driver’s seat
If you’ve ever tried to direct your thinking, you’ll have seen what an impossible and thankless task this is. We think we’re in control of the content in our mind but sit quietly for a moment and you’ll realise how impossible it is to predict what sort of thought is going to appear next. It could be a thought that makes you anxious or it could be a thought that prompts you to get up and make a cup of tea - where these thoughts come from is one of the unanswered mysteries of life.
So if we can’t control the thoughts that pop into our head, is there any way we can direct our inner landscape? The answer lies in the following principles.
4. Thoughts are part of being human
We can cause ourselves anxiety by judging ourselves on the content of our thinking. “Surely if I was a nicer/ more relaxed/ calmer person I wouldn’t have these types of thoughts” our thinking goes.
But what if having thoughts, all of them, the good, the bad and the horrific were part of being human? This takes us out of the realm of taking our thoughts personally to understanding that they are impersonal.
Everyone at some point has unconfident, anxious, angry thinking and we can let go of berating ourselves and the self-judgement and take thoughts less seriously.
5. We don’t have to use positive thinking
This isn’t about positive thinking or trying to control the low, gloomy thoughts.
You know one of the ways we try and deal with anxious thoughts is to turn them around, make the positive, reframe them, or maybe keep them tightly under control but in a way this is giving ourselves unnecessary work. In essence, to change a not wanted thought to a wanted thought means that we’re going to have to monitor our thoughts on an ongoing basis. “This thought is acceptable, this one is not” and that’s going to take so much mental effort and attention.
6. We don’t have to do anything with our thoughts
If we understand that all thoughts are just passing through and another one will be along very soon, there’s nothing to be done with them. Simply allow them to do their thing, pass through your mind and resist the temptation to grasp onto your thinking.
So what I want you to take away from this is that when we have anxious thoughts, it’s not a reflection of us, it's not about who we are. And if we do have worrying thoughts, we don’t need to follow them and allow them to lead us onto the next worry or concern.
There’s nothing to do about an anxious thought except just see it’s simply a thought, one in a long line of thoughts, no more or less important than the one that proceeded it or the one that will come along very soon.
These truths have enabled me to transform my relationship with worry and anxiety and it's been such a relief to let them go and I hope they do the same for you.