Thought Stopping--from Laurie..the DB COACH!

[Jamesjohn]

^^^^

[Noni]

Thought stopping is a great idea! I could have used this before the separation about millions of things. My mind has always seemed to go millions of miles an hour!

[startingover]

Just thougth I wold add an idea that worked for me. I am still very new to this, been add it for a week. The thought stopping is very hard. Anyway today I am cleaning and wanted to listen to music. I have a hard time with music right now as most of it is about love and breaking up. My D wanted to listen to her CD. It is children bible songs. I will tell you this was a great thought stopper for me. Sounds silly but give it a try.

[janetb]

Hi. I'm new here too. Day 5 in purgatory and the thought stopping ideas sound really helpful.
I'm going to give some of them a try.
I have one that helps a bit that I got a while ago from a therapist I was seeing. When you are getting overwhelmed feeling bombarding you and you feel like falling apart, put it off. Tell yourself that at a certain time of day, everyday, make an appointment with yourself to let yourself experience all the negative thinks that are flowing through your mind. BUT...there must be a time limit. Give your self say 30 minutes to start and then start to cut the time down. Giving yourself permission to be sad but at a set time everyday makes it a little bit easier to control since you can tell yourself that you will deal with this later. And then you deal with it and let it go. I am going to be adding the stop signs and so on to this method.
Thanks of all the terrific ideas.
Janet

[FA]

Well, being only a month into my situation and not having the DB book yet, the way I handle it is I walk out of my office and just say to myself quietly, over and over....."Stay focused, stay focused"..

[trytoohard]

I am new to this as well and I have discovered a very effective thought stopping technique...when I need to "thought stop", I picture an extremely large naked man with the word "STOP" painted across his chest...he gets in front of everything I am trying to think about and it makes me laugh and immediately I want to think of something else.

[FA]

HHhhmmmm....that's disturbing enough to throw off ANYBODY'S train of thought!

[forwardever]

Laurie is great. It took both my elderly parents becoming ill, my self-run business on shaky ground, me a biopsy and a daughter 15 acting like 30yr., to stop and pay attention. I am crazy about my ex but my focus on his contact with me was very distracting and somewhat self-centered on my part. In the big scheme of things I had to remember heart aches mend.

[blueblonde]

I really wish I'd come across this site some time ago. It's been almost 6 yrs since my H's most recent PA. I still have really dark moments, and will now use the techniques listed here to *stop* them. I *still* have trust issues though, perhaps that is part of the reason why I am going through what I'm going through now. Not to be a downer....

[I_Surrender]

Okay I have two. I am a swimmer, so when I am feeling down, a vigorous workout helps release the built up tension, and is also very meditiative. A jog alone, or bike ride, will do similar things. Having the water negate any outside sounds, and being weightless, helps I think.

As gross as it sounds (I am in construction) I am a visual person, so I think of a portable toilet on a construction site. When I have a negative thought, I immediately imagine lifting the lid, and placing the thoughts in there, closing the lid back down. The more negative thoughts I have the more FULL the portable toilet.
If I want to revisit those thoughts, I give myself permission to go back to the porta potty and lift the lid and dig around in there and look for them. It's going to be messy, smelly, gross, disgusting, I think to myself. I'd have to want that negative feeling very badly to go back and get it.
I think when things were really bad, I had a whole giant untreated septic tank full of negative thoughts and emotions. I imagined going down a dark hatch to get those thoughts again. I climbed out in my mind and did not go back down there again.

I tried traditional thought stopping "Stop Stop Stop" etc, with only marginal success in the past.

Hope it helps some of you