Trying to quiet my mind makes me want to scream

[cbreeze]

I cannot control my incessively invading thoughts - they seem to multiply upon replacing negative one's w/positive and/or loving one's, however, I am having such a difficult time quieting my mind. Any advice and thx in advance.

[Love]

You seem to have a lot of thoughts running through your head. When you saying "quieting the mind," I instantly think of meditation. In my opinion, you can learn to do traditional meditation, or you may learn to do anything that will quiet and still your mind. For example, I don't think any thoughts when I do capoeira, a martial art. So for me it serves a meditative purpose. Do you have anything like this that you can do?

[Chinese Dragon]

Try doing a pysical activity like running or cycling. Whenever someone says something that makes me so angry and negative I want to jump on a plane and move to China I go for a run around the block and afterwards I usually feel much more better. Plus exercise is good for thinking more clearly and positive.

[Brad Isaac]

annah, I have a lot of experience with this and my suggestion is simple.

Sit still for 1/2 hour to an hour.

• Yes, it will be uncomfortable,
• yes it will be nerve racking,
• but yes it does work.

[John Hill]

Maybe this might help quiet your mind How to Stop Thinking.

John

Attracting People.com

[shiatsustudent]

Whatever you do the important thing is not to beat yourself up about it. Even if you get some mental quiet for just a second recognising when that changes back to chaos is the important step. Only then can you start the process again! But being relaxed and patient with the process is the key.

[rapidsnyc]

" Our mind is pretty much like a garden. In this garden either flowers will grow or weeds will grow. Weeds don't need any encouragement to flourish, they need no fertilizers either, they just grow by themselves unless we deliberately remove them. So we must be carefully with what grows in our mind's garden. Some people are so unhappy because their mind is full of weeds, it is as simple as that. "
James Allen

[Gary]

Our thinking comes from beliefs we have invested in. Thoughts are like echoes of old beliefs. Attempting to replace negative thoughts with new ones doesn't work very well because you aren't removing the source of the negative thoughts. To really take out the negative thoughts and end the incessant thinking you have to address the core beliefs behind the thoughts.

For background read the article The Voice in Your Head If you are serious about this then do the exercises in the Self Mastery course on my site. It will walk you through some practical steps for quieting the mind. It's a much faster path than meditation.

[wolfgang]

Originally Posted by annah

I cannot control my incessively invading thoughts - they seem to multiply upon replacing negative one's w/positive and/or loving one's, however, I am having such a difficult time quieting my mind. Any advice and thx in advance.

Why do you want to quiet the mind? I think sometimes it's not a matter of trying to get to a point where you are not having incessive invading thoughts. It's more about letting the thoughts run and not following them or adding to them. I think trying to not have thoughts is a tough way to quiet the mind.

Thoughts come from habitual patterns in the brain and also from your conscious awareness part of you. Usually most thoughts are habitual and trained by you, the awareness part of you. So the approach I'd suggest and use is to use your awareness part to look at or watch the habitual thoughts but not to keep reinforcing those habitual parts. It doesn't quiet the mind right away but you are exercising the ablilty to use your awareness and detach from following habits and from reinforcing the invading thoughts. Also it is a practice of noticing what is the aware part of you versus the habits of the mind.

The habitual thoughts are mostly good or were at least useful at one time when we started training our brain to deal with something. We choose to train our brains in a certain way for a reason (that reason may not exist anymore but the brain will keep doing habits for you) It would be hard to live in 3d without the computer part of our brain. However, most of us are raised through school and society to use the mind more than spirit. That spiritual part of us is not the mind, but can effect our thoughts - usually only our awareness thoughts. In other words we can't expect spirit to come into the habitual thoughts that run because we trained our brain to function in a certain way over and over. But we can let spirit come into the thoughts that we do have awareness of.

[{aspiring_to_clarity}]

annah, I would suggest that the word you use - control - is an indicator of why this is so difficult. Constantly trying to be in control of anything is a sure way to lose your mind...and not in a good way. If you are vigilantly trying to replace negative thoughts with positive and keep your mind quiet at all times, you will certainly be exhausted and frustrated. For me, allowing the thoughts to come as they will is fine. Then, instead of focusing on them and continuing down a particular line of thought, I just notice the thought and then go on with whatever I was doing.

For instance, I might have a thought that says "you are a good for nothing loser" or "no one loves you" - both very distrubing and detrimental thoughts. Instead of trying to refute those thoughts or think on all the ways they may or may not be true, I simply acknowledge them and then go on to whatever is next, say washing a dish or eating my lunch. Then, the thoughts are there, but they have no power to affect my mood. I recognize them as thoughts. I allow them space and because of that, they dissipate. Trying to contain them or obliterate them seems to make them stronger.

I have been in the same situation as you. I was tormented and frustrated by all my thoughts. I felt like I had no control and I would never get peace. But I was egging those thoughts on by latching onto them and trying so hard to do something with them. I have by no means mastered anything here, I'm just letting you know what worked for me. That is, to stop trying so hard. I wish you the best!

[cbreeze]

All of your helpful comments/advice hit home and I shall apply. Mostly, I'm gratful for your time and interest in responding. There are ppl out there who care simply coz they're caring ppl.

[Andrew Brunelle]

Go out into nature if you want to quiet your mind. The sounds of the birds and the (unfortuneatly) passing cars are soothing. If you get deep enough into the woods, the car noises disappear and you can finally be at peace with yourself. What I usually do is go on a golf course near my house and walk for an undetermined amount of time. If I get lost, I get lost, but I try to stay in the moment, observing everything with all five senses. It's challenging, but try it out.

[Xin]

Originally Posted by Andrew Brunelle

Go out into nature if you want to quiet your mind. The sounds of the birds and the (unfortuneatly) passing cars are soothing. If you get deep enough into the woods, the car noises disappear and you can finally be at peace with yourself. What I usually do is go on a golf course near my house and walk for an undetermined amount of time. If I get lost, I get lost, but I try to stay in the moment, observing everything with all five senses. It's challenging, but try it out.

Yeah, definitely. Being into any place that is calm and soothing (Nature, that is!) will only do you good. Go hiking to the woods, put your feet up in a chair and enjoy a sunset, go for a morning walk.

[dnadadur]

Hi Annah,

First thing in quieting the mind, is to accept all thoughts in their entirety and accepting them to be just that. Don't label them as being good/bad, negative/positive, etc. They are just thoughts, energy. I know it is difficult, but once you stop labeling them, you will get some relief.

One thing I found to be the "most difficult" thing to do was to replace the so called "negative" thoughts with so called "positive" ones. It does not quiet the mind, but only replaces one form of thought with another. And, it actually becomes very painful. Remember this technique still entails labeling the thoughts.

Also, do not try to control thoughts. There is a story that goes like this. There was a sign in front of a Buddhist meditation room, "Do not think of Pink Elephants while meditating." This was a kind of a test. The beginning meditators would read that and say to themselves, "I should not think of Pink Elephants." They sit for meditation. They keep getting thoughts of Pink Elephants. The more they try to push them away, the stronger they become, eventually they start seeing Pink elephants dancing around their heads.

So, do not push them away. Instead you could one or both of the following techniques:

(1) Watch your breath as it goes in and out, in its own natural rhythm. Do not force it. Just observe the way the breath moves through you. Be a watcher/witness of the breath. If you like you can add the following mental chant, "sO ham" (O as in the English word "So," ham as in "hummm"). You mentally say, "sO" as the breath goes in on its own accord and mentally say, "hummm" as the breath goes out on its own accord. "sO ham" means "That I am." This is also Pranayama (Breathing or Breath control) technique. If you get distracted with thoughts, don't worry. Just bring your attention back to breath. You can do this for 5 mins or so. As many times as you like.

(2) After the above technique, you can add 1 to 5 mins of the following technique: Watching your thoughts. Let go of the "sO ham" chant and now just watch the thoughts as they come and go. Like luggage on a conveyor belt. However, none of that luggage is yours. You are just watching the thoughts as they go by. You are not even focusing on your breath. You are not focusing on any of those thoughts. This is a technique called, "nEti, nEti," (I am not that, I am not that). As the thoughts come you could say, "I am not this thought, just let go." Just relax into it. This is a very difficult technique to do, though it sounds easy. You can start with one or two minutes and then build up.

These techniques will help you become detached to the random thoughts you get and use only the thoughts you want to use.

Thanks,
- Desika

[dnadadur]

Here is another technique, "Yoga Nidra or Yogic Rest."

-Desika

[Ilya]

I agree that meditation can help, although I found that for me the main difficulty to learn meditation was to make the inner voice to shut up. See the problem here?

There are another ways, though.
First of all, it is your head and your inner voice. You can control it. Make it louder, make more negative thoughts. Don't worry, not all of it is going to manifest. Ask your mind - can you throw any more negative thoughts at me? Tease it! Tell him to bring it on! Eventually (quite soon, actually) it will overload and won't be able to come up with anything new. Then you can start to introduce positive thoughts.

Second approach. Speak out everything that you inner voice tells you. You should be alone for this. Speaking slows down the inner dialogue. You can also read a book, a poem by heart, sing a song. You can even keep quite and make a "tongue dance" - twist and shake your tongue inside your mouth. It is very convenient when you are at a public place - any tongue movements suppress the inner dialog.

Play with it. Make it louder. It is usually easier then to make it quite. Try to imagine the remote control that makes a sound louder or quieter. Locate the sound. Where is it? Is it in your head, near you right ear, near your left ear? Above your head, below? After you locate the sound, move it. A little bit at first, then launch it to the moon. You can always bring it back if you want.
What is the pitch of that voice? Try to change it. Make it thin like when the tape is fastforwarded. Or slllllooooooowwwww, like in a player with near-dead batteries. Make this voice sexy or make it have a sore throat, coughing and sneezing.

Another trick is to look at some object and start listing the differences between this object and you. Do it aloud.
Say for example -
This kettle is small - this is not me.
This kettle is yellow - this is not me.
This kettle is empty this is not me,
This kettle has writing on it this is not me.
Go on until you suddenly won't have anything to say. At this moment your inner voice will be silent and if you look around you might notice that your visual perception has changed slightly. At first the inner voice will come back very soon. If this happens, continue the exercise. After some practice the inner voice will be able to shut up for longer period of time.

And the last one is pretty rude. Every time you hear something you don't like in your head, just scream inside your mind
"Shut the $%^& up! Shut the $%^% up! Shut the @$%! up!" It works sometimes

[Bill Zimmermann]

Mantra meditation will NOT make you want to scream. The mantra is used to distract your mind including the scream thought.

I just sent a friend a $45 course, an alternative to the $2500 Transcendental Meditation program. I don't have the link or the name of the company that has duplicated the TM program onto CD ROM's but my best friend is doing it and I hear it's GREAT. If you want the product I'll find out. Email me:

monogram1@cox.net

Bill Zimmermann

[Akashic_Librarian]

In another post a few weeks ago i gave this story, here it is again.

A man who fights against the current finds himself tired, frustrated, and going nowhere.

A man who lets the current take him, finds he can quickly swim out of the river altogether.

[justfiverules]

OP,

You might also enjoy waking up to the late Anthony De Mello's book "Awareness".

A sample of his work is here:
Articles

[MariaG]

Annah, when you say "incessively invading thoughts" are you referring to thoughts of catastrope, panic, etc.? If so, you may have an anxiety/depression issue. That often requires some medical help to deal with, but you could try to do some Cognitive Behavioral Therapy on your own if it's not that bad. The site Home - Living Life to The Full gives some good information, or you could do a search on Metafilter for more.

If you just have a hard time meditating, well, my meditation instructor said that her mind literally SCREAMED at her for months when she first started. The trick with an uncooperative mind is to let it do its thing, but don't pay it any mind

[Peleke4]

Originally Posted by annah

I cannot control my incessively invading thoughts - they seem to multiply upon replacing negative one's w/positive and/or loving one's, however, I am having such a difficult time quieting my mind. Any advice and thx in advance.

Pay attention to the tonality of the voice in your head. How would you describe it? Is it yelling at you? angry tone? Whatever tone it is, don't fight it! Simply do the following:

Change the tone to a sexy seductive voice. Slow the voice down. Again, don't fight the voice. The only thing you're changing is the tonality and pace. Very simple yet effective

[Ihavenoidea]

Well, what about images that come and go over and over again?

Mine seems to do that. Images of past events, and maybe dreams. Could someone help me with this.

[Gary]

There is a desire to change what is going on in the mind. The desire, when strong enough will spur you into action to try and change the chatter, images, or memories.

While this may seem a good idea, it is really a re-action driven from emotional discomfort. The real solution is not found by reaction. The real solution will require refrain.

Alan Watts makes a wonderful description about the mind being like water. You can not still water by trying to tap down the ripples. T