Ever notice that the harder you try to stop thinking about
something, the harder it is to forget? That cruel thing your teenage son
said this morning, that worrisome test result the doctor mentioned, that
donut in the office kitchen—banish the thought! Except that
unfortunately, it seems that the more effort you put into avoiding that
thought, the faster it pops right back up in your consciousness.
You're not the only one who feels that way, says Harvard
University psychologist Daniel Wegner, author of
White Bears and Other Unwanted Thoughts: Suppression,
Obsession, and the Psychology of Mental Control. His research
has shown that trying very hard not to think about something almost
guarantees that we will think about it.
It seems paradoxical, but in fact it makes sense. When you are
actively avoiding a thought, one part of your brain is busily working to
keep the upsetting thought at bay. It's searching out
distractors—something else to focus on that will protect you from
the idea you're trying to avoid.
At the same time, another part of the mental machinery has to keep
checking to make sure that the job's being done properly.
Inadvertently, this monitoring process calls attention to the unwanted
thought, and makes you more vulnerable to the very ideas you're
fleeing from.
"The funny thing is that when you're trying not to
think about things, you have to remember what it is you aren't
thinking about," says Wegner. "That memory, that part of your
mind that's trying to keep it fresh, in a way is going to then
activate thought."
In a sense, vigilantly struggling not to think about something or
someone forces part of your brain to be on guard for that thought.
Holding it there, even subconsciously, keeps the thought alive, and
sometimes it escapes out of the prison it's being kept in and
erupts into your active thoughts. This is mostly likely to happen when
you're under stress, mentally overwhelmed or just plain
exhausted.
"People have the intuition that you shouldn't think
about a secret in front of the people you're trying to keep it
secret from, because you might blurt it out. But keeping it a secret
keeps it on the front burner of your mind," says Wegner.
It's a lot like trying to fall asleep, or forcing yourself to
relax. The harder you try to nod off, the more likely it is you'll
stay wide awake. If you try too hard to relax, you may get more anxious
and wound up. The same problem crops up with concentration—trying
to focus on something just makes distractions like your sneezing
officemate or that annoying fluorescent light—fixture hum even more
frustrating. In these cases, struggling for control only makes it
worse.
"There are a whole range of cases when we become desperate to
control our minds," he says. "The more we try to control
them, the more they do what they want."
The answer: don't try so hard to control your thoughts!
Instead, see if you can't get your secret preoccupation out in the
open. Find a confidante to whom you can confess the idea—or perhaps
write about it. Probably, says Wegner, you'll get bored of it
fairly quickly, and the pesky thought will die away of its own
accord.
Or, instead of following the impulse to get rid of it, says Wegner,
just go with it. If you have a song in your head, trying to get rid of it
is a great way to make sure it comes back. In this paradoxical therapy,
you do the opposite of the thing you want to do. And that, he says, is
what ends up being the cure.
Tags:
bears,
donut,
funny thing,
Harvard University,
Memory,
mind control,
obsession,
suppression,
teenage son,
test result,
thought control,
university psychologist
