EndGameNYC

Confusion is a good thing.

I’m not good at these quick tip things, but the group of actions described in the article tends to work for a significant number of people with different kinds of anxiety. When you repeat the process enough times you’ll start forgetting that you didn’t always think this way.

Taking action can help us from descending into despair, provide a sense of responsibility and ownership for what we’re trying to accomplish. It can be a reminder that we still care.

After reading the article I concluded that you’ve accomplished something very valuable when you’ve become aware that you’re working on #1: stopping ourselves when we’re lost in thoughts that may be driving our anxiety. It felt like a superpower before I got used to it. The ability to stop our train of thought becomes something more than just automatic. It's an acquired skill for many people, one that integrates well with other cognitive abilities. Transactions between who we experience ourselves to be and the healthier part of who we are can continue to grow when we allow them to.

I've put myself through similar routines at least three different times in my life that I made up along the way. The effort has been well worth it. Learning to stop my own thoughts was always the first step.

I don’t know and am not aware of the author’s work, a J. Krishnamurti that the author mentions, or anyone else identified in or affiliated with the article.

​​​​​​https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/vie...inutes-3x-week

silentrun

Thank you for this. I have learned to stay off social media because people keep sharing the worst of human behavior and I start to think that's all there is out there.

Fusion

Great link, it's how I stopped enacting the drinking thoughts. AVRT in a nutshell.

biminiblue

...with a little mindfulness and CBT thrown in for good measure.

It's not just drinking thinking, either. It's all the self-sabotaging thinking.

It's, "I'll never," "I always," "What's the point," "It will never work," "I'll never be good enough, smart enough, handsome/pretty enough, have enough money," "Everything is going wrong," etc. and ad infinitum.

So many ways the undercurrent of despair will take me if I am not aware of my thoughts and pro-actively working for my own good.

fini

EndGame, i think you might "enjoy" Krishnamurti. i have read several of his books, or attempted to. some are easier than others

Aellyce

This is definitely a good technique that can be used for many purposes involving unwanted thoughts and urges. I agree it's similar to AVRT and some methods in CBT. I learned similar several years ago from a psychiatrist whose serious depression came with severe obsessive thinking and shared his experiences publicly. He also described the part of saying out loud whatever phrase is helpful to recognize and stop the thoughts. I found it really weird at first, talking to myself... but it does help.

As far as the COVID era, I relate to this particular part of the article:
"Another patient who has suffered from severe obsessive-compulsive disorder, which created a secondary social anxiety and social avoidance, described feeling guilty because she rather enjoyed the empty streets, closed stores, and social distancing. Her anxiety was increased by the thought of our state re-opening."

No severe OCD but definitely tendencies, and more a territorial form of avoidance in my case than social anxiety, but the rest is very true. I actually need to find a way to be back to work in my office more consistently - often I decide at night that I will go in the morning but then think/talk myself out of it in the morning. Unfortunately, I can still afford it and have the autonomy, plus justify it easily now... but I know it is not very healthy in the long run. Even if I will eventually end up working mostly from home by choice, which I love, it is still good to have some in-person meetings... if for nothing else, for the sake of more effective and richer professional discussions. Zoom etc can only achieve so much and so easy to get into a habit of now wanting to manage everything in that way for someone like me. Avoidance can feel like a powerful way to curb anxiety in the moment and it can give a fake sense of independence, but too much only makes it worse in the longer run and the social needs may come out in more imbalanced ways.

Anyway, thanks EndGame for the reminder. I like this technique because it is simple, much better for me than spending a ton of time with thinking about why I feel/act in a certain way. It is indeed like what works best in that early phase of sobriety - focusing on not taking the first drink, instead of thinking why we want to.

And I also second Krishnamurti - worth reading.

ImNotThatGuy

Good stuff. I think of it as "changing the channel." When I start along a line of thought that leads nowhere or somewhere bad, I tell myself, "Change the channel," and it is done, just like that.

EndGameNYC

I'm curious about what you may have done before you found the remote.

Steely

Thought about the remote? "It's got to be somewhere?"

Aellyce

In your head I guess?

fini

i sometimes visualize these kinds of thoughts as threads, threads that are annoyingly always hanging right in front of me.
then i take the well-imagined sharp scissors and go: SNIP!
very satisfying.

EndGameNYC

Whatever works