Don’t think about a pink elephant

Thoughts are a natural product of our mind. Human beings have that ability: to think about what is happening around us and even think about our thoughts. There are many types of thoughts: positive, negative, evaluative, inferential… and depending on which one we harbor, we may feel one way or another.

The Greek philosopher Epictetus already said it, it is not the situations or facts of life that disturb you, but the interpretation you make of them.

That is to say, emotions are slaves to our thoughts and independent, to a large extent, of what happens in our lives.

Human beings have a terrible fear of experiencing negative sensations.. We accept, more or less, having a headache from time to time, heat, cold… but we have a hard time embracing those emotions whose manifestations are unpleasant.

To avoid them, we either flee from the problems that we mistakenly believe cause them or, simply, we avoid thinking in order to free ourselves from suffering.

The rebound effect of thoughts

Thoughts are our choices, they are under our control and, therefore, we can discard them, maintain them, modify them, question them…

On numerous occasions, When these thoughts are negative, toxic or hopeless, we try by all means to suppress them. We make an effort to eliminate them from our heads and implement strategies as fruitless as telling ourselves that what we are thinking is not true, that it is not going to happen; or we implore them to leave our minds.

We also try do not think, distract ourselves with something that takes us away from that tangle of black ideas and magically eliminates them forever.

With these methods we verify that what we intend does not happen, that the thoughts not only do not go away, but that the more we fight against them, the more strongly they settle in our head.

The rebound effect

Why is this happening? Shouldn’t those thoughts go away if I force myself not to think about them? The answer is no, due to the rebound effect. What if I told you: don’t think about a pink elephant? What just popped into your mind? An elephant, right?

What happens is that language has enormous power over thoughts and emotions. and the fact that a word is preceded by a negation “Don’t think about…” It does not cause us to stop thinking about it, but quite the opposite.

The fact that the forbidden words that provoke our thoughts are in the phrase we say to ourselves “Don’t think anymore about the fact that your partner has left you” cause it to automatically appear in our mind that, indeed, “Our partner has left us.”

Because? Why always, To deny something, I first have to think about that something. Thus, this already makes the image or word that I want to avoid burst into the mind.

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It is for this reason that it is not convenient to avoid thinking so as not to suffer, since we will be creating the opposite effect to the desired one. Momentarily distracting ourselves may work for a short time, but the thoughts will come back again.

Think of a pink elephant

To get rid of negative thoughts, the strategy is not to run away from them, get angry with them or fight against them. The key is to leave those thoughts there, spinning around in our heads, observe that they exist but without judging them under any circumstances.

This is achieved by being clear that we are not our thoughts; That is, we have to distance ourselves from them, disassociate ourselves. Just because I think something doesn’t mean that I actually agree with that idea or that it is real.

Let’s not confuse letting them be with obsessing and thinking more than necessary. This is just as unproductive. If we feed the thoughts, becoming attached to them, we will also make them appear with more intensity.

Simply accept that you are a being that produces thoughts, whether in the form of mental images, words, sounds…and that doesn’t mean they are real or have anything to do with you. Observe them just as you can observe a mole that you have on your arm and you don’t find it very attractive.

In the same way, There will be thoughts that you don’t like, but don’t try to make an active effort to eliminate them. You can look at them, laugh at them, let them flow, write them down if you want or question their veracity and modify them, but never set yourself the task of eliminating them directly.

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Think that The more you practice, the more you will automate this habit and you will feel freer every time negative thoughts try to nest in your mind and take over your emotions.