Circular Thoughts: If I Don’t Want Them, Why Do They Appear?
In the first place, to understand well what this circular thoughts is, we are going to define them. These types of thoughts are ideas that appear in our mind that do not lead to any solution but that remain there, going around the same topic and resorting to the same ideas without contributing anything. They are mind traps.
Thus, circular thoughts prevent us from freeing space to create new solutions or investigate other points of view. They just go round and round as they plunge us into a spiral of suffering. They are dysfunctional thoughts because they do not help and also generate negative emotions and mental knots.
Many of them are preceded by the famous “What if …”. What if it doesn’t work out for me? What if I fail or it does not correspond to me? What if this is not my chance? What if I’m rushing? What if he is not my ideal partner? What if I don’t get it? Questions that only prevent generating other alternatives, do not contribute anything and also occupy an important space in our mind and above all, in our time.
Why does our mind insist on going round and round about the same thing over and over again? Sometimes the reason is found in our fears and anxieties, others in mental routines that we have created or simply, because our brain needs to be active. Now, instead of trying to make circular thoughts disappear, the ideal is to find new outlets and solutions for them. Let’s see how to do it.
Junk time for circular thoughts
Junk time is a psychological technique used for these types of thoughts. First of all, to start applying it we must distinguish between those thoughts that help us and provide us with solutions, that is, functional thoughts and those that appear involuntarily and only waste our time and energy, dysfunctional thoughts. The former must be strengthened and the latter, discarded.
Once we have identified the thoughts we have, it is about taking time each day to think about everything that does not contribute anything to us. Thus, every time a circular thought appears, we must divert our attention and let it pass, and then focus on it during the garbage time we have planned (for example, 15 minutes after eating). During this moment we will repeat that thought over and over again until it loses strength or we find its uselessness.
With this technique we will be able to avoid thinking about what we do not want to think and divert our attention to something productive.
Direct the mind towards what we want
We own what we think and although sometimes thoughts appear almost without realizing it, we have the power to decide what to do with them. The question is to be aware and learn to identify which of them are good for us and, on the contrary, which ones lead us to a spiral of suffering and discomfort. We are responsible for empowering them as well as for taking it from them but also for choosing when we listen to them.
As we have seen, circular thoughts avoid new solutions, therefore by reducing the time of importance they lose strength and become minimal. Junk time allows us to divert our attention towards what we want to achieve and not towards what we think and it does not bear fruit and also slows us down.
Circular thoughts are not good travel companions, so we must try to reduce them and make them lose importance. Let’s not forget that we are the ones who decide what to do with our mind, we are the owners of the value we give to what we think, we are the owners of our time and our mind. We own our thoughts.
