Ever found a thought to be like an annoying mosquito? It buzzes around in your mind and just won't go away? An article in this month's Monitor of the American Psychological Association explains five methods you can use to rid yourself of the buzzing.
From "Suppressing the 'white bears'":
"Try to pose for yourself this task: not to think of a polar bear, and you will see that the cursed thing will come to mind every minute."
That observation comes from "Winter Notes on Summer Impressions," Fyodor Dostoevsky's 1863 account of his travels in Western Europe. But the research that proved it true came more than a century later, from the lab of social psychologist Daniel Wegner, PhD.
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He decided to test the quote's assumption with a simple experiment: He asked participants to verbalize their stream of consciousness for five minutes, while trying not to think of a white bear. If a white bear came to mind, he told them, they should ring a bell. Despite the explicit
instructions to avoid it, the participants thought of a white bear more than once per minute, on average.
Ways Dr. Wegner suggests for suppressing the bear?
- Pick an absorbing distractor and focus on that instead: In one study, Wegner and his colleagues asked participants to think of a red Volkswagen instead of a white bear. They found that giving the participants something else to focus on helped them to avoid the unwanted white bears.
- Try to postpone the thought: Some research has found that asking people to simply set aside half an hour a day for worrying allows them to avoid worrying during the rest of their day, Wegner said. So next time an unwanted thought comes up, he suggested, just try to tell yourself, "I'm not going to think about that until next Wednesday."
- Cut back on multitasking: One study found that people under increased mental load show an increase in the availability of thoughts of death—one of the great unwanted thoughts for most people.
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