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Controlling errant thought processes

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Does anyone remember that scene in Ghostbusters, when upon summoning the Marshmellow Man by thinking the word "Yes", The character Ray pleads "I couldn't help it! It just popped in there!" ...?

Anyway, I was wondering if anyone has any means of controlling thinking what you want and don't want to think about. How do you prevent thoughts from "just popping in"? Has it never been a problem with you? Do you have an effective way of dealing with it? I myself have been having less and less of a problem with having my mind stray all over the place, though I'm not yet 100% sure what the exact cause of it is. I still get thoughts that "pop in" but I'm more effective in propelling them away from my consciousness when I don't wish to invest any time thinking about them. I'm hoping to bounce this question against people here to see what they can come up with, and I will do my own introspection in the meantime. :)

EDIT: p.s. I couldn't decide which board was more appropriate: Psychology and Self-improvement, Metaphysics and Epistemology, or Miscellaneous. Hope I got it right.

EDIT again: Seems my memory of the movie was addled. Ray didn't think the word "Yes", he thought of the Marshmellow man and that summoned it. But I digress...

Edited by iouswuoibev
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Does anyone remember that scene in Ghostbusters, when upon summoning the Marshmellow Man by thinking the word "Yes", The character Ray pleads "I couldn't help it! It just popped in there!" ...?

Anyway, I was wondering if anyone has any means of controlling thinking what you want and don't want to think about. How do you prevent thoughts from "just popping in"? .... <clip>

You, or what you like to think of as your "conscious mind", can't control

what "pops into your head", and you wouldn't want it to.

"Why not? I WANT to only think about this narrow area. Don't I?", I hear you say.

No. You don't, because reality doesn't work that way. What "pops into your head"

are associations that have been judged in the past to have been of some value to

you being applied to your current situation.

Why would you want to limit the number of valued associations retreived to help

you deal with your situation?

Why are they bothersome? My guess is that you're not really sure why

concentrating on what you WANT to concentrate on (your "conscious focus") is

important to you.

So, you might want to really convince yourself of (find your REAL value in) your

object of concentration.

When you REALLY REALLY value that, you'll find that "bothersome stray thoughts"

simply don't happen, though they still exist, because they are seen as cool insights

about how what you're studying relate to the things in the world that you value.

Don't try to "stop thought". That is the delusion of the mystic,.. and an evil (an

evasion of reality). It only produces demons and spirits of noxious quality, to be

poetic about it. :)

And as we've seen, ANY intercourse with demons and spirits is a game that can

not be won.

(That now concludes my anti-goth rant. :))

-Iakeo

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Does anyone remember that scene in Ghostbusters, when upon summoning the Marshmellow Man by thinking the word "Yes", The character Ray pleads "I couldn't help it! It just popped in there!" ...?

Anyway, I was wondering if anyone has any means of controlling thinking what you want and don't want to think about. How do you prevent thoughts from "just popping in"? Has it never been a problem with you? Do you have an effective way of dealing with it? I myself have been having less and less of a problem with having my mind stray all over the place, though I'm not yet 100% sure what the exact cause of it is. I still get thoughts that "pop in" but I'm more effective in propelling them away from my consciousness when I don't wish to invest any time thinking about them. I'm hoping to bounce this question against people here to see what they can come up with, and I will do my own introspection in the meantime. :)

EDIT: p.s. I couldn't decide which board was more appropriate: Psychology and Self-improvement, Metaphysics and Epistemology, or Miscellaneous. Hope I got it right.

EDIT again: Seems my memory of the movie was addled. Ray didn't think the word "Yes", he thought of the Marshmellow man and that summoned it. But I digress...

This is the sort of thing Zen Buddhism concerns itself with. Zennists would take the tack that you really aren't going to control random thoughts popping into your head. They are more concerned the phenomena of series of thoughts whisking you on some way that you didn't intend to go.

This is the situation (which I am sure everyone has experienced) of starting out thinking about one thing, and realizing some time later some series of thoughts has taken you somewhere else, and you aren't exactly sure how you got there.

The Zennist would say for the random thought popping into your head that you just take the attitude of "isn't that nice", as you might if someone just came up to you said some random thing and left. If someone did that random thing, many people would find themselves thinking about it over and over for the next several hours, finding it difficult to stop obsessing about it. It is the obsessing part the Zennist would control, where your thoughts start controlling you and you cease controlling your thoughts.

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You, or what you like to think of as your "conscious mind", can't control

what "pops into your head", and you wouldn't want it to.

No, but you can control "what pops into your head". You can't control WHETHER something pops into your head, but you can decide how to deal with it afterwards, which is a form of control.

"Why not? I WANT to only think about this narrow area. Don't I?", I hear you say.

No. You don't, because reality doesn't work that way. What "pops into your head"

are associations that have been judged in the past to have been of some value to

you being applied to your current situation.

What I was thinking of is where something has previously been judged to be of value, but in actual fact is not of value, and you don't want to invest any more attention on it because of that.

I think to put it succinctly, staying in control of your thoughts is an act of context-keeping. If you think the thought is of no value, spell it out verbally in your mind each time that thought occurs, including why it is of no value. If the thought is of value, but you don't have the time or energy to pursue it, spell that out in your mind too. That is what I was speaking of when I said that I was able to "propell my thoughts away".

Why would you want to limit the number of valued associations retreived to help

you deal with your situation?

Why are they bothersome? My guess is that you're not really sure why

concentrating on what you WANT to concentrate on (your "conscious focus") is

important to you.

Like I said, you misread what I wrote. I don't actually think any of these things.

The rest of what you wrote might be useful to someone, but I already knew it (just not verbally). So I'd prefer it if you didn't make me the target of your observations, but just describe them as they apply to you.

So, you might want to really convince yourself of (find your REAL value in) your object of concentration.

Here's a question that occurs to me: What would be a proper object of concentration when trying to fall asleep at night?

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Re: object of concentration when trying to fall asleep.

I try to concentrate on relaxation. That is, I count down from 10 to 1 and when I reach 1 I tell myself to relax twice as much as I'm relaxed at present. I do this over and over until eventually I naturally fall asleep. Always works for me.

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If you think the thought is of no value, spell it out verbally in your mind each time that thought occurs, including why it is of no value. If the thought is of value, but you don't have the time or energy to pursue it, spell that out in your mind too.

My only complaint with that "technique", for me personally, is that it's too much

effort spent at an awkward time.

If I have to consciously deal with "shooing away" (spelling out the reason for not

wanting to deal with the 'stray thought' ) associations that occur to me while I'm

studying something, then my "conscious mind" is not in sync with my "non-

conscious mind" as to the value of what I'm trying to study.

It's just a signal to me that there's some reason why I keep getting "distracted".

And the distractions themselves are the signal. A reassuring symmetry. :(

You're free to deal with your "stray thoughts" as you wish, of course.

I just don't like to work that hard at that point. I'd rather "clear my head" about

why I'm doing what I'm doing before I start doing it, if I have the opportunity.

Thanks..! :)

-Iakeo

Edited by Iakeo
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  • 6 months later...

Having unwanted thoughts that pop into my head is something I've always identified with my attentional problems. My thoughts just start to wander while my eyes keep scanning across a page, "reading" the words, but my consciousness is no longer processing it, so I have to catch myself and reorient myself back to what I was doing. I'm pretty sure it's one of the typical symptoms of ADHD, ie. it's possible that you could have it treated with amphetamine or methylphenidate, if you have other symptoms as well.

Another thing I recommend is meditation. I think someone above mentioned this. Most forms of meditation work. The main thing you have to do in your meditation is to try to push unwanted thoughts out of your consciousness while focusing on one specific simple thought/thing, such as counting your breaths as you control your breathing. It also helps (I've noticed) to do this in combination with some physical task, like stretching or holding a specific pose or doing a specific movement. This is what meditations like Falun Gong and Yoga attempt. It's essentially a workout for your consciousness, strengthening your ability to choose what thoughts you think about and what thoughts you don't think about.

If you do think you have attentional problems, and if you see a psychologist or psychiatrist or therapist, they might prescribe you with amphetamine or methylphenidate. If you don't want to take drugs for it, though, there are meditation-like therapies (EEG biofeedback) that therapists are starting to use to treat ADHD. I think it would work pretty well, and I've heard a lot of positive things about it.

Of course, since unwanted thoughts popping into your head isn't necessarily caused by ADHD, you should certainly still try to motivate your mind to do it by other means, e.g. remembering the real value of your object of concentration.

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Anyway, I was wondering if anyone has any means of controlling thinking what you want and don't want to think about. How do you prevent thoughts from "just popping in"? Has it never been a problem with you? Do you have an effective way of dealing with it? I myself have been having less and less of a problem with having my mind stray all over the place, though I'm not yet 100% sure what the exact cause of it is. I still get thoughts that "pop in" but I'm more effective in propelling them away from my consciousness when I don't wish to invest any time thinking about them. I'm hoping to bounce this question against people here to see what they can come up with, and I will do my own introspection in the meantime. :)

The book White Bears and Other Unwanted Thoughts, by Daniel Wegner, has plenty of good material and leads.

--Schefflera

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My thoughts just start to wander while my eyes keep scanning across a page, "reading" the words, but my consciousness is no longer processing it, so I have to catch myself and reorient myself back to what I was doing. I'm pretty sure it's one of the typical symptoms of ADHD, ...

If I have trouble focusing on what I am doing, I usually conclude that it is something which I do not really want to do (right now). I am just forcing myself to do it because I think I should (unselfishly). So I stop doing it and do something else.

It is a mistake to treat this as a disease and treat it with drugs. It is a problem with integrating one's values and actions.

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If I have trouble focusing on what I am doing, I usually conclude that it is something which I do not really want to do (right now). I am just forcing myself to do it because I think I should (unselfishly). So I stop doing it and do something else.

It is a mistake to treat this as a disease and treat it with drugs. It is a problem with integrating one's values and actions.

The person you were responding to said that their frequent difficulty with paying attention was a symptom of a disorder. If you are able to cognitively work your way through it in the way you described above, then of course it is a mistake for you to attempt to treat the problem with drugs instead. But not all cognitive symptoms have purely cognitive solutions!

--Schefflera

Edited to remove a word typed twice, ironically enough.

Edited by Schefflera Arboricola
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Anyway, I was wondering if anyone has any means of controlling thinking what you want and don't want to think about. How do you prevent thoughts from "just popping in"? Has it never been a problem with you? Do you have an effective way of dealing with it?

One of the functions of the subconscious is to send messages to the conscious mind. Sometimes a message is like this: "The search you started three days ago is now complete and here is the answer."

Sometimes the message is a comment the subconscious is making as a result of poor instructions that the conscious mind gave it.

At other times, the subconscious is crying for attention on issues that "it" believes are more important than what you are trying to work on consciously.

One solution I have found to the problem of frequent interruptions by "bulletins" from the subconscious mind is to ask myself: Is the subject of the bulletin worth my attention? If it is, I do one of two things: (1) abandon my conscious-mind project and fully deal with the issue raised by the subconscious "bulletin," then return to the conscious-mind project; or (2) simply acknowledge the importance of the issue raised by the subconscious and add the issue to my TO-DO list. That second option often works. It is a way of telling the subconscious: "I acknowledge the problem and I have put it into the queue to work on." That usually satisfies my subconscious long enough for me to concentrate again on my conscious-mind project. Note that you must actually write the problem onto your To-Do list; it is the action of doing so that convinces your subconscious that you are taking the issue seriously.

(I highly recommend keeping a To-Do list on your computer so that you can keep updating it and keep the projects in priority order.)

Another solution, one suggested by others in this thread, is to make sure that whatever I am trying to think about is truly important to me, within the framework of my selfishly held personal values. If it isn't, then abandon it.

Last, I would suggest changing the term "control" to "manage." Dr. Lee Pierson, an Objectivist and a psychologist, many years ago presented a course at an Objectivist conference in Pennsylvannia. The name of the course was "Mind Management." That is what is required: managing your thoughts and psychological processes, to the extent that you can cognitively, as you would manage employees in a fast-food restaurant: specific instructions, constant supervision, and leading by incentives rather than chastisement.

Edited by BurgessLau
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