How to ACTUALLY Stop Intrusive Thoughts

Intrusive thoughts don’t go away through resistance; they go away through allowance.

There’s a quote that embodies it perfectly: an unwelcomed guest leaves quickly.

When we experience thoughts, memories, or emotions that we deem negative, and we don’t want them to be there…

Our first reaction is to FIGHT them.

We try to replace the thoughts. Or ignore them altogether.

But let me ask you, when has that ever worked?

It’s like the idea of “don’t think of a white rhinoceros.”

When you tell your mind not to think of something, in order to understand the thing it doesn’t want to think of, it THINKS of the very thing you’re trying not to think of…

And this creates a nasty feedback loop where the more it shows up, the more we resist it.

And the more you resist it… you guessed it… the more it shows up.

So the alternative approach is one that’s not obvious. And one that will be very uncomfortable for a while.

And here it is:

The next time you’re having intrusive thoughts, let them be there.

That’s it.

Don’t fight it. Don’t judge it. Don’t get scared of it. Allow it to be there fully.

As Ram Das would say, “invite it in for a cup of tea.” (I love that so much lol)

You beat the mind through disinterest and lack of energy. Not through force, brute, or will.

The mind is a sneaky thing. It doesn’t work simply on commands (at least until we’ve trained it to do so).

When you say, “don’t think that! Don’t think that!”

The mind says, “don’t think what?”

And there you have it. You’re orbiting those intrusive thoughts again.

But the more you learn to allow them and embrace them, the less incentive there is for it to be there at all.

This is a hard one though, because it entails becoming comfortable in the face of those negative thoughts.

Which is not easy… which is why we push them away.

But that doesn’t work lol.

So the only real option is to become so used to them, so accepting of them, that there is no longer any fuel that keeps them coming up.

They fizzle out on their own.

You become indifferent to them, rather than constantly in a battle with them.