Thoughts feel so powerful, especially when you have anxiety.

Thoughts can get really loud, and feel really overwhelming. Thoughts can seem huge. Thoughts can cloud your judgement and get in the way of you moving forward.

But taking a step back, we recognize … thoughts are just thoughts. Your brain is just firing off neurons, and sending chemicals across different synapses. Thoughts are just a normal bunch of noise. They’re not all powerful or all knowing. They’re just there.

Your brain tells you that your thoughts are facts. But that’s not really the case.

If you closed your eyes, and thought about your brother’s hair turning blue, would that actually change the color of his hair? Of course not. Not all of our thoughts are believable or actually happening, but we often act as if they are.

Thoughts aren’t always important. Thoughts aren’t always wise.

Sometimes, our thoughts are just nonsense. Our thoughts can act like 5-year-olds, making up stories, telling us we’re being doo-doo heads, throwing tantrums, bossing us around, and just generally being ridiculous. Why on earth should we treat our thoughts as all powerful and all knowing?

Recently, a journalist had reached out to therapists asking them for their top tips on how to banish toxic thoughts.

She had asked, for 2019, the top thoughts to banish and never think of again.

The problem? Banishing thoughts DOESN’T WORK!

From an acceptance and commitment therapy perspective, it’s actually a lot more useful to focus on allowing these thoughts to happen rather than banishing them.

You can let them pass you by, and come up with something that may feel more helpful, but telling a thought to STOP is like getting into a finger trap. The more and more you pull away, the tighter and tighter the thought holds on. 

When you fight a thought, you’re giving that thought so much more power than it actually has.