Almost everyone suffers with occasional anxiety, and probably no one has absolute control over their thoughts. However, there are some people who experience agonizing bouts of anxiety, which sometimes are magnified by the presence of unwanted thoughts.
If you are familiar with such uncomfortable mixture and you’re looking for a way to sever the bond between your anxiety and your unwanted thoughts, this article might help. In fact, you might be surprised to find out that your anxiety sets the stage for unwanted thoughts just as much as those thoughts add up to your anxiety.
For anyone who struggles with anxiety, unwanted thoughts are perhaps the most common symptoms: ceaseless worrying, increasing concerns, unabashed fears. It may be related with health, financial or emotional problems… which in turn may be real or imaginary problems. You may fear for your own sake or for the sake of someone you love. Regardless of its specifications, anxiety is generally experienced as being overcome by negative an unwanted thoughts.
In fact, you may think that your anxiety causes your anxious thoughts… but oftentimes it’s actually the thoughts that fuel the sensations of anxiousness. Those unwanted thoughts lie at the root of the problem, and it’s by understanding and dealing with your thoughts that you can stand a chance of dismissing your anxiety, not the other way around.
Actually, that’s not quite right: you see, no one can easily control their thoughts. The more you try to suppress a certain thought, the more you will actually make it stronger and reinforce its power over you. As such, focusing on controlling a thought is more likely than not a lost cause. What you should try doing is controlling your reaction to your own thoughts… which isn’t quite the same thing.
Thoughts are usually involuntary, especially unwanted thoughts. But as long as you’re conscious, you always get a say in how you respond to something… even your thoughts. So, rather than trying to suppress your unwanted thoughts, you need to be attentive to how you react to those thoughts:
If you acknowledge a thought but refuse being overcome by it (it’s just a thought, remember?), then you stand a real chance of keeping the thought to add up to your anxiousness. By controlling your reaction to your unwanted thoughts, you actually stand a chance of controlling your anxiety.
