How do I free myself from circular thoughts?

First of all, to understand well what circular thoughts are, we are going to define them. These kinds of thoughts They are ideas that appear in our minds that do not lead to any solution. but they remain there, going around the same topic and resorting to the same ideas without contributing anything. They are mental traps.

Thus, circular thoughts prevent us from freeing up space to create new solutions or explore other points of view. They just spin and spin as they plunge us into a spiral of suffering. They are dysfunctional thoughts because they do not help and also generate negative emotions and mental knots.

Many of them are preceded by the famous “What if…”. What if it doesn’t turn out well? What if I fail or it doesn’t belong to me? What if this isn’t my chance? What if I’m rushing? What if he is not my ideal partner? What if I don’t get it? Questions that only prevent us from generating other alternatives, do not contribute anything and also occupy an important space in our minds and, above all, in our time.

Why does our mind insist on going around and around the same thing over and over again? Sometimes the reason is found in our fears and anxieties, other times in mental routines that we have created or simply because our brain needs to be active. However, Instead of trying to make circular thoughts disappear, the ideal is to look for new outlets and solutions. Let’s see how to do it.

Junk time for circular thoughts

Junk time is a psychological technique used for this type of thinking. First of all, To begin to apply it, we must distinguish between those thoughts that help us and provide us with solutions, that is, functional thoughts, and those that appear involuntarily and only waste our time and energy, dysfunctional thoughts. The first must be promoted and the second, discarded.

Once we have identified the thoughts we have, It’s about spending time each day thinking about everything that doesn’t give us anything.. Thus, every time a circular thought appears, we must divert our attention and let it pass, and then focus on it during the junk time we have planned (for example, 15 minutes after eating). During this moment we will repeat that thought over and over again until it loses strength or we find its uselessness.

With this technique we will be able to avoid thinking about what we do not want to think about and divert our attention towards something productive.

Direct the mind towards what we want

We own what we think and although sometimes thoughts appear almost without realizing it, we have the power to decide what to do with them. The point is to be aware and learn to identify which of them do us good and, on the contrary, which ones lead us into a spiral of suffering and discomfort. We are responsible for giving them power as well as taking it away but also for choosing when we listen to them.

As we have seen, circular thoughts avoid new solutions, so by reducing their time of importance they lose strength and become minimal. Junk time allows us to divert our attention towards what we want to achieve and not towards what we think about and does not bear fruit and also slows us down.

Circular thoughts are not good travel companions, so we must try to reduce them and make them lose importance. Let’s not forget that we are the ones who decide what to do with our mind, we are owners of the value we give to what we think, we are owners of our time and our mind. We are owners of our thoughts.

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