Why thoughts come

They may keep you from enjoying your life. To stop unwanted thoughts, you focus on the thought and then learn to say "Stop" to end the thought. At first, you will shout "Stop! Then you will learn to say it in your mind so that you can use this technique anywhere. Here's how to get started:. This new image or idea is not the same thing as replacing a negative thought with a helpful thought that is related to it.

You're worried about a presentation you are giving at work later in the day. You're prepared. You know you're ready. But you can't stop worrying about it. You imagine making a mistake. When you start to think of yourself stumbling over words, you say "Stop" quietly in your mind. You get up and move around, or you snap your rubber band as you say "Stop. Current as of: September 23, Maldonado PhD - Behavioral Health.

Author: Healthwise Staff. Medical Review: Catherine D. This information does not replace the advice of a doctor. Healthwise, Incorporated disclaims any warranty or liability for your use of this information. Your use of this information means that you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

Learn how we develop our content. To learn more about Healthwise, visit Healthwise. Healthwise, Healthwise for every health decision, and the Healthwise logo are trademarks of Healthwise, Incorporated. Top of the page Actionset. Introduction Unwanted thoughts can make you feel anxious or depressed. A technique called thought-stopping can help you stop unwanted thoughts. What you think can affect how you feel. Thought-stopping helps you change how you think so that you feel better.

Changing your thinking will take some time. You need to practice thought-stopping every day. After a while, you'll be able to stop unwanted thoughts right away. Perhaps this lack of autonomy is to be expected as the foundations for almost all the mind's labors were laid long before our ancestors evolved consciousness.

Even deliberate decisions are not completely under our power. Our awareness only sets the start and the end of a goal but leaves the implementation to unconscious mental processes. Thus, a batter can decide to swing at a ball that comes into the strike zone and can delineate the boundaries of that zone. But when the ball comes sailing through, unconscious mental functions take over. The actions required to send him to first base are too complex and unfold too quickly for our comparatively slow conscious control to handle.

We exert some power over our thoughts by directing our attention, like a spotlight, to focus on something specific. The consequences of doing so can be amusing, as in the famous experiments in which about one third of the people watching a basketball game failed to spot a man in a gorilla suit crossing the court. Or the consequences can be disastrous, as when a narrow focus prevents a driver from noticing a light turning red or an oncoming train.

Once those preconscious thoughts gather sufficient strength, the full spotlight of consciousness beams down on them. The mind's freewheeling friskiness is only partly under our control, so shutting our mind off before we sleep is not possible.

This article was originally published with the title "Can we control our thoughts? They get lost all the time, sometimes for ever, but often turn up for no apparent reason in a place you never expected to find them.

Our thoughts have often been described to others, more rapidly since the invention of printing, then movable type, then the internet. Explication of thought and reasoning or rationalisation editing while typing several thoughts involved. Realisation that I was checking and editing the rationalisation as I typed another thought, which prompted more thoughts.

Perhaps not a perfect description of a thought, or of thought, but certainly a description. But perhaps they were quasi-instinctive thoughts derived from decades of conditioning of my thinking, ie they represent the sort of thing that I think once I have actually applied thought to the question. Thoughts, perceptions, feelings, sensations, are patterns of brain activation.

Memories are shortcuts to those patterns. Beyond that, no one knows, and those who say they do are lying. Only something systemic or pretty severe can do it. My experience of my thoughts is that they are semi-automatic spiritual adventures in language. My thoughts seem to form dark wordy patterns in my mind, but I can also apply them to a problem, using language, at will. No one here has suggested that they may be spiritual impulses — everyone accepts these days that they come from the brain.

Descartes thought they were the very essence of soul and self. If your thought is a mental process becoming conscious, possibly it is passing through pyramidal cells of your neocortex.

How to relate that to the actual content of the thought, and how it is represented in a neuron, or neural circuit, or group of neurons, the system of representation seems unknown, but my guess is that it invokes the neural mechanics of each sense, and the vocal apparatus.

But apart from the mere biology of it, your thoughts, collectively, really are you. The ones that stick seem to define a personality that persists through a dynamic chaos of sensual inputs. The daily things we do For money or for fun Can disappear like dew Or harden and live on.

Strange reciprocity: The circumstance we cause In time gives rise to us, Becomes our memory. Thoughts are mental events, and they reflect every aspect of experiencing. Among these mental events are every sensation and fragment of memory that may be evoked. There is a hidden character of thought which is known as associability, which seems to be an abstract function of the brain in which thoughts resonate.

This is a continuous background function of the structure and state of the brain. Repetition of any combination of experience makes the linkage stronger between those fragments of thought in mind, and they become reflexive or default perceptions, or reactions.

This means that what happened together is linked, and what is similar to what happened before becomes perceived using the current and previous context s. Also what is practised becomes more strongly unified into reusable thought objects and physical skills. All of the things we learn, including movement and language, art and poetry, are thought at every stage. Memories are neurophysiological facts whether consciously recalled or not.

It is clear that it is the human mind that is conscious of experiencing the world and thinking about it. The whole brain thinks but to experience this thinking a functioning association cortex located in the frontal lobes has to be working.