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Jon can help you recognize where you are, and become more clear. My work with him has not been about plotting out my future, it has been about helping me come into deeper relationship with myself so that next steps unfold easily and effortlessly.

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What to “Do” With Thoughts

January 24 2012

“What can I do about all these thoughts?” my client asked. “I can feel how destructive they are. I can even tell how untrue they are. But I can’t seem to stop thinking them, or stop listening to them!”

The real answer, of course, is not to do anything at all. But when someone is caught in a whirl of spinning thoughts or feels trapped by the emotions those thoughts bring up, “don’t do anything” isn’t a very helpful suggestion.

When you’re struggling with anxious, fearful, sad, or angry thoughts — thoughts we’d typically call “unpleasant” — you may feel trapped in an endless spin cycle of thought and emotion. And you’ll tend to feel separated from yourself, from other people, and even from your own life. “It hurts to feel this isolated,” my client said. “I know the feelings come from the thoughts I’m thinking, but I can’t seem to disconnect from my mind. I keep getting stuck trying to convince myself to think differently, even though I know that doesn’t work.”

She’s right — it doesn’t work — and it leads to the first step in what to “do” when you feel caught up in your thoughts.

Don’t debate!

My client was getting sucked into a debate with her thoughts. She was trying to convince her thoughts that they were untrue and that they should go away — and that’s an argument you cannot win. Ever.

Of course it feels natural to try. If you’re thinking thoughts that you know cause discomfort — anxiety, fear, sadness — it seems reasonable to try to talk yourself out of having those thoughts.

As she said, “I know that doesn’t work.” She went on, “But I don’t know what else to do. It’s just as futile to try to stop thinking the thoughts — that’s just a different sort of debate.”

Right.

Move into your body

Instead of debating your thoughts, move into your body.

Feel yourself present inside your own skin, deep in the muscles and bones of your physical self.

This is more than just being aware of your body.

Not sure of the difference? Hold your hands out in front of you, and allow yourself to be aware of them.

Then lay your hands in your lap and close your eyes. Become your hands. Inhabit the internal space of your hands — palms, fingers, right down to the tip of each finger. Attune to your sense of self within your hands. This is a particular quality that feels like yourself — not an idea, but a feeling.

Feel the difference?

“When I’m fully in my body,” a client told me, “I don’t just feel different. I move differently. People respond to me differently. And,” she said, “the most wonderful part is, I stop spinning around in my thoughts.”

Exactly. When you’re fully in your body, the thoughts simply move through, without demanding attention. You might even discover that you hardly notice them.

And then you relax, and your responses flow from a place that’s far deeper, and far more naturally intelligent and intuitive, than your thinking, analytical mind.

Gentle, persistent attention

“Some days, it seems like I’m reminding myself to move out of my thinking mind and into my body every thirty seconds,” a client said ruefully.

Some days are like that. The good news is that this process of paying attention to your experience creates increasing awareness simply through that consistency: awareness creates more awareness.

And as awareness develops, the need to continue reminding yourself to be in your body will diminish. It will become instinctive.

To inquire — or not

If you’ve been reading my articles for a while, you’ll notice that this is a bit different from some of my other suggestions. I’ve often recommended inquiry — a gentle questioning of thoughts and beliefs to uncover their fundamental emptiness and to experience the cost of believing them.

Inquiry can be helpful in unraveling deep conditioned beliefs and thought patterns. Yet there are times — as my client described — when inquiry can lead to fruitless arguments with your thoughts instead of allowing their unravelling.

In those cases, obviously inquiry isn’t useful. Instead, moving into the body helps break the identification with thoughts and the emotions they generate.

“It’s such a relief to experience this letting go of my grip on thoughts and feelings,” my client said. “It’s so simple and so powerful to be in myself, to feel myself whole, and to experience my thoughts as simply passing through, without my getting stuck in trying to figure out how to make them go away.”

“All of the struggle to get out of it and free of it just creates more of it.” Adyashanti, American spiritual teacher and author; from material handed out at a 2010 retreat.

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