Why Can’t I let this thought go?
Learning to respond differently, even if the thought returns over and over.
5 Minute Read
You have already thought about it.
A lot.
You’ve gone over it from different angles.
Tried to land somewhere.
Tried to feel settled.
And yet,
it’s still there.
Not in the background.
But reeling your attention back to it again and again.
Confusing → Frustrating
Somewhere along the way, you were no longer only feeling confusion about what you were living through and you started being frustrated.
“Why am I still thinking about this?”
Or
“Why can’t I let it go?”
You don’t want to stay in the spiral but you don’t feel like you can leave either.
Terry’s Test
As had been the difficulty for Terry for sometime, he tried to move on, but his mind called him back to the thought.
He’s started to use it as a reference and checking everything against it:
How he feels
Whether he’s triggered
If the feeling is gone
Asking whether he’s “better”
So, for Terry the thought has become more than just the thought.
The intrusive thought is the measure by which he determines how not only his day is going, but his life.
Terry began to realize it wasn’t just during anxious moments anymore.
The thought started being there while driving home, reading his email, standing in line.
The whole situation had become so traumatic for him that he could be doing something ordinary, then:
“Am I still borthered by that?”
“I wonder if that will become an issue today?”
“Hard to believe I assoicated this mundane thing to this thought”
This is not Terry “solving.” This is Terry being followed by it.
Are You Still There?
One of the strangest aspects is this: Your mind starts monitoring for the thought. You are almost checking to see whether it’s still there.
“Am I thinking about it right now?”
“How much is this bothering me?”
“Did that trigger it?”
And the checking gives it even more room in your mind.
Sticky Thoughts
The thought begins attaching itself to normal things:
The road where you drove last time
The room where you first got hit by it
A conversation topic
A bodily sensation
A quiet moment
So life starts feeling full of reminders
Not because everything is actually about the thought – but because your mind has learned to connect more and more everyday moments to it.
Suddenly, you realize there is a host of things you are AVOIDING.
Your life begins to shift away from normal and you feel like there is growing list of things that trigger you (I speak more about this in my other article: “Avoidance and Intrusive Thoughts & OCD”)
You get caught again in the spiral of “what ifs.”
Hidden Burden
For many, this creates a new burden–the feeling that you have to keep an eye on yourself.
On your reactions
On your feelings
On whether it’s coming back
And that self monitoring is exhausting.
You find that this is different from reassurance and certainty.
It’s about self-surveillance.
You, are always watching you.
When I spoke to Terry, he was always exhausted. Always worn-out. Always investigating himself.
He didn’t only struggle with the thoughts continuing to return.
It was that they queitly became the central things in his life.
And once they became the central thing they started showing up everywhere he went and in everything he did.
Unwanted and Unwelcome
Understand, Terry more than anything wanted to not think these thoughts, to not have these fears.
But he did.
And they always returned, and began to attach themselves to everyone and everything.
Terry often said:
“I would give anything to not have this thought.”
“I don’t understand why this thought keeps returning.”
“Why can’t I let this thought go.”
However, what Terry failed to realize is that he was the one that was unintentionally keeping the thought alive.
So why couldn’t he let this thought go?
Because it has ceased being just a thought.
It has become something that threatens his sense of being okay, and in response: he hyper-analysed and scrutinized every thought, every trigger, ever association.
Terry was giving it the oxygen.
He used both the presence and abscence of the thought as something to measure himself and his day against.
Once that begins, it starts showing up far beyond the moment where it began.
In a sense, it doesn’t halt until it contaminates everything and everyone around you.
Hope For Today
Terry desperately would search online and self-survey about the thought to not only himself but others.
But, life didn’t have to be this way for Terry.
Terry, had reason to hope more than he realized.
However, for that to be true, Terry had to change. And change is hard.
Really hard.
For starters:
Terry had to begin to starve the thoughts oxygen. He had to practice allowing the thought to be there, while still moving forward.
He had to relabel the situation and say, “yes, that is a horrible thought–but what should I have for lunch.”
The goal had to shift with Terry, he had to stop trying to neutralize the thought, or avoid the thought.
Instead, he had to let the thought hang out as long as it wanted to, but act like it wasn’t there. Give it no attention.
By doing this Terry began to starve the thought and fears of their center stage.
He said, “they can be there, and I don’t have control over that, but I can decide how I choose to respond back.”
Comedy Heckler
I am a big fan of comics and their ability to engage a room.
One cringe thing that often occurs to comics is that they will be on stage, and for one reason or another someone will begin heckling them.
This is cringe, and awkward, for everyone.
The heckler will shout, yell, scream, and demand.
But the moment the comic gives them an audience, it shifts everything.
Terry began to treat the intrusive thoughts like a heckler, someone that was there, out in the shadows of the audience.
But, irrelavant and something to be ignored.
Terry decided he was going to allow the intrusive heckler to continue, but he wasn’t going to give it any light.
One Foot in Front of Another
You can’t let the thought go because it has become central to how you are mentally tracking your day.
You are tempted to engage with it, just this one time.
But the moment you do, it will steal focus, energy, and the stage.
Sometimes Terry would say “I just have to set one foot in front of the other.”
He had to go forward doing the things God had alloted for his day.
He had to see this as simply another chance to demonstrate his trust and faith was not in his ability to neutralize the thoughts and safe guard himself.
No, Terry had to trust a good God, who controlled everything and respond in faith and trust by doing the things he had been called to that hour.
If you’d like to keep reading, you can find more here → Articles
And if talking it through would help you, your always welcome to reach out and schedule a one-on-one meeting to walk through this together.