I think there is a real danger of avoiding unpleasant thoughts/feelings. You mentioned meditation. When I find myself thinking of something during meditation, I try to reestablish my focus and in the process I just drop the thought. I think that’s correct during formal meditation, but dropping an unpleasant thought after noting it in daily life is wrong, as it leads to avoidance.
See the emotinal acceptance article that eugman linked to on why avoiding bad feelings is bad. If you feel sad because your dog died, just not thinking about it might be acceptable. But if you feel anxious because there is a deadline coming, ignoring the situation only makes it worse. If not-thinking is an automatic habit you can’t distinguish between those two situation.
So the first thing to do after noticing that you thought something that makes you feel bad should be to not flinch away. If it’s an irrational thought, dealing with it rationally probably keeps that particular thought from arising again for a while. If it’s a rational and valid concern you should probably do something about it! If you can’t (say, you are at work, so you can’t do your taxes) you might feel bad, but I think not training yourself to avoid the problem is worth feeling a little bad (otherwise you might not do you taxes even when you are home).
I think eugman is more referring to negative thoughts that cycle through a depressed person’s head on a regular basis. They’re messages that remind you that you’re a failure, you let people down, you’re not going anywhere, and they play through your brain almost all your waking hours.
The negative thoughts you described are the ones that healthy people encounter in real, negative situations that must be dealt with. In that case, rumination is appropriate and finding rational solutions is desirable. But when your brain is essentially buggy and constantly replaying cached, (often incorrect or completely out of proportion) negative beliefs, it might be entirely appropriate to forcibly jump to another track instead of dwelling on it.
Put another way, in a depressed brain, rumination and focus on the “problem” is the default mode of operation. Sometimes it eventually yields positive solutions, but frequently it’s more of a death spiral. Short circuiting that kind of process seems entirely reasonable to me.
The amount of worry and anxiety some people have in regard to their problems (say, health or financial problems) might not be healthy at all, and might lead to depressive moods. And yet, avoiding those problems by avoiding to think about them would be really bad.
Rumination and worrying are a habitual, unmindful and irrational type of thinking. They are just replaying cached thoughts, and that shouldn’t even be dignified by being called “thinking”. It’s not good for depressed people, for anxious people or for anyone else. I absolutely agree that one shouldn’t dwell on such thoughts. I’m just saying that instead of automatically stopping your thoughts, or doing anything automatically, one should have at least one good look at those thoughts and think. And I mean think mindfully, rationally and critically. I’m not saying one should necessarily think about the “problem”, but rather about the thoughts themselves. Are they rational? How would I think about that if I weren’t depressed? And no, don’t feel depressed about being depressed or worry that you will never stop worrying ;-). Once that’s done, you can let that thought drop, but not before.
Thanks for the clarification, I see what you mean. The distinction between repetitive, droning thoughts and actively reasoning about the problem makes sense.
May I make a comment? So first let me say you are right, it’s bad to avoid negative thoughts. I think you made a very valid counterpoint and I updated on it. So I (now) think this is something one has to be careful with.
However, at times in one’s life these depressive thoughts can be so overwhelming that none of them get the attention they need because the person just doesn’t have the energy for them. So this has at least given me the chance to start fixing these thoughts, one at a time, instead of all at once.
When I find myself thinking of something during meditation, I try to reestablish my focus and in the process I just drop the thought. I think that’s correct during formal meditation, but dropping an unpleasant thought after noting it in daily life is wrong, as it leads to avoidance.
I agree, that’s something to be careful of. I think it depends on what kind of formal meditation practice you’re trying to do. Concentration meditation (such as zhiné from Tibetan dream yoga) encourages you to focus solely on the object in question and to let thoughts drop. Apparently that trains a different part of the brain than does mindfulness meditation. (See The Clinical Handbook of Mindfulness, Destructive Emotions, and Mindsight for some of the research behind that claim.) Formal mindfulness meditation focuses on just being aware of thoughts as they arise without getting “sucked in” such that you lose awareness of your surroundings. My own experience with this has been that ugh fields and related phenomena seem to become much, much easier to notice as a result of mindfulness meditative practices.
I think there is a real danger of avoiding unpleasant thoughts/feelings. You mentioned meditation. When I find myself thinking of something during meditation, I try to reestablish my focus and in the process I just drop the thought. I think that’s correct during formal meditation, but dropping an unpleasant thought after noting it in daily life is wrong, as it leads to avoidance.
See the emotinal acceptance article that eugman linked to on why avoiding bad feelings is bad. If you feel sad because your dog died, just not thinking about it might be acceptable. But if you feel anxious because there is a deadline coming, ignoring the situation only makes it worse. If not-thinking is an automatic habit you can’t distinguish between those two situation.
So the first thing to do after noticing that you thought something that makes you feel bad should be to not flinch away. If it’s an irrational thought, dealing with it rationally probably keeps that particular thought from arising again for a while. If it’s a rational and valid concern you should probably do something about it! If you can’t (say, you are at work, so you can’t do your taxes) you might feel bad, but I think not training yourself to avoid the problem is worth feeling a little bad (otherwise you might not do you taxes even when you are home).
I think eugman is more referring to negative thoughts that cycle through a depressed person’s head on a regular basis. They’re messages that remind you that you’re a failure, you let people down, you’re not going anywhere, and they play through your brain almost all your waking hours.
The negative thoughts you described are the ones that healthy people encounter in real, negative situations that must be dealt with. In that case, rumination is appropriate and finding rational solutions is desirable. But when your brain is essentially buggy and constantly replaying cached, (often incorrect or completely out of proportion) negative beliefs, it might be entirely appropriate to forcibly jump to another track instead of dwelling on it.
Put another way, in a depressed brain, rumination and focus on the “problem” is the default mode of operation. Sometimes it eventually yields positive solutions, but frequently it’s more of a death spiral. Short circuiting that kind of process seems entirely reasonable to me.
The amount of worry and anxiety some people have in regard to their problems (say, health or financial problems) might not be healthy at all, and might lead to depressive moods. And yet, avoiding those problems by avoiding to think about them would be really bad.
Rumination and worrying are a habitual, unmindful and irrational type of thinking. They are just replaying cached thoughts, and that shouldn’t even be dignified by being called “thinking”. It’s not good for depressed people, for anxious people or for anyone else. I absolutely agree that one shouldn’t dwell on such thoughts. I’m just saying that instead of automatically stopping your thoughts, or doing anything automatically, one should have at least one good look at those thoughts and think. And I mean think mindfully, rationally and critically. I’m not saying one should necessarily think about the “problem”, but rather about the thoughts themselves. Are they rational? How would I think about that if I weren’t depressed? And no, don’t feel depressed about being depressed or worry that you will never stop worrying ;-). Once that’s done, you can let that thought drop, but not before.
Thanks for the clarification, I see what you mean. The distinction between repetitive, droning thoughts and actively reasoning about the problem makes sense.
May I make a comment? So first let me say you are right, it’s bad to avoid negative thoughts. I think you made a very valid counterpoint and I updated on it. So I (now) think this is something one has to be careful with.
However, at times in one’s life these depressive thoughts can be so overwhelming that none of them get the attention they need because the person just doesn’t have the energy for them. So this has at least given me the chance to start fixing these thoughts, one at a time, instead of all at once.
I agree, that’s something to be careful of. I think it depends on what kind of formal meditation practice you’re trying to do. Concentration meditation (such as zhiné from Tibetan dream yoga) encourages you to focus solely on the object in question and to let thoughts drop. Apparently that trains a different part of the brain than does mindfulness meditation. (See The Clinical Handbook of Mindfulness, Destructive Emotions, and Mindsight for some of the research behind that claim.) Formal mindfulness meditation focuses on just being aware of thoughts as they arise without getting “sucked in” such that you lose awareness of your surroundings. My own experience with this has been that ugh fields and related phenomena seem to become much, much easier to notice as a result of mindfulness meditative practices.