Automatically distracting negative thoughts ?

[Rakeem]

I been trying to silence my self critisism by snapping a rubber band on my arm whanever my mind gets to negative to stop my automatic negative chatter.

It works pretty well , but one thing that I thought about is that if you could strap some kind of braclet who gives you a ligth electric shock ( or something else thats a bit painful but not to painful) every two second or so and wear it during the day. May sound weird, but think about it. You stop your automatic thinking( you do concentrate more on the pain than being absorbed in the stream of mind), dont add excessive negative thoughts, become more present and can distance yourself from your thoughs so you can change them= everything that meditation and mindfullness does teach you, but its easier to keep up.

Has someone done this ? Is there some way to practicaly do this?

[SWM]

building a device that gives you an electric shock sounds more like a a matter of electronics?

what is it that you really want from a psychological perspective?

[Rakeem]

I guessed someone already did this if its workable, or there is some big flaw that I cant see ( mabey its super anoying after a while) So if someone now about a device like this mabey the could post a link  . Or tell me how stupid this is

[gone]

If negative chatter is a problem for you then I think you've done really well in finding a solution that works well for you.
Personally I wouldn't want anything to interfere with my logic, electroshock does things to the brain and I would be concerned about it alterning not only the behaviour I employ it to alter, but making other alterations too.
ECT already exist and personally I find that quick shocking. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroconvulsive_therapy
I've been wondering about the effects of magnets on the brain of late, I remember leaving one by my TV some time ago and it had a lasting damaging effect of the picture. I remember my x had two magnetic darts and put one in each nostril to which they attracted and stuck, (I'd like the say that also had a lasting damaging effect on him too but I think the damage was already there :-)..
Magnets as electricity can alter the brain and I would stay well away from such interference.

See here how a magnet can temporarily change a right handed person into a left handed one. (Totoally irrelevent but left handed people were once branded witches and burned)..

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1315655/Could-magnet-head-turn-right-left-handed.html

[Rakeem]

Sounds like a lot of rubbish to me. Giving yourself a small electric shock on the arm dont directly alter your brain, you cant get lasting brain damage from the magnetic field ( I guess thats what you implying ) steaming from a television set. The magnets the scientist use is nothing like the magnet field from normal household items.

But if you want you can put on your tin foil hat, just to be on the safe side

[sakoz]

Rakeem;  I understand your objective. When you stop your negative chatter, what occurs? The chatter is submerged, out of awareness? Does it continue to exist subliminally/covertly like unstated premises?
If you stop 'believing' negative thoughts, there's no longer any involuntary reaction to it. "Think of a image that disturbs you." Now think/imagine your beheaded, no reaction because you don't believe that 'horrendous'image.
Remember when you stopped believing the concepts of 'boogyman' and 'monster'? No more fear. ( see my post;"What Do You Do When You BELIEVE?)

[Rakeem]

Yeah its true that theres an  varitey of underlining beliefs thats keeping up my negative chatter. I am currently seeing a therapist and I am doing disputation along with the distraction, when you challange your beliefs by arguing against them. That does help, but its a hard an tidious process. When I distract I can see my thougths more clearly and doing it enough allows me to step away from them and make them more postive, at the same time being more present in the moment, as an observer of myself and others.

Oftentimes the feeling seems to be the convincer more then the actual logical process. When I distract them over and over again I think a lot of the feeling subsides and its a lot easier to dispute them with logic and reason.

[sakoz]

Rakeem; "When I distract I can see my thoughts more clearly....etc....as an observer of myself and others." That meta-perspective is therapeutic, in and of itself. It's the "change-agent".
How to 'shift' there at will would be a 'great discovery'. Have you noticed that when "at meta-perspective" interacting with someone who is not; you have the advantage? You can be compassionate rather than one upmanship,
when both are at lower level. The dynamics change at higher levels.

[gone]

My television set doesn't steam. Maybe you confuse the houshold item with a kettle.
A magnet next to a tv set causes damage to the tv set, not a person. But put a magnet next to a persons brain and it changes their behavour, it is not known if there is lasting damage from ECT but some do die during this 'therapy'..
I wouldn't recommend aluminum tin foil as this is linked to increased risk of altheimers disease.
But a potato works just as well.

[Rakeem]

" I remember my x had two magnetic darts and put one in each nostril to which they attracted and stuck, (I'd like the say that also had a lasting damaging effect on him too but I think the damage was already there :-).. "

I got kinda confused by this sentence , but I did kinda not read your post that throughly becouse you brougth up Electroconvulsive_therapy for some random reason, so I can see now that I got it a bit mixed up

As far as I know th aluminum and Alzheimer link has not been proven, but thats a diffrent story

[sakoz]

Rakeem; Initially you wrote you want to silence your self critisim. Obviously to stop the effects and affects of the critisim, right? What if you stopped BELIEVING  the critical 'chatter'? You may have overlooked BELIEVING as a vital component of your experiencing. 'Beliving' could be the key to your 'situation', or rather to stop believing some thoughts/images.
"Think of a image that disturbs you". For purposes of this demonstration, suppose your image is of having been bitten by a dog at age six. Let's say the dog was a large adult dog that took a running leap at you, knocking you down and then biting you. That could be traumatic or very close to traumatic. Let's say the incident occurred tweny five years ago, chances are the dog is dead and  can never bite you again.
How can a image evoke emotions?  Only by believing the image is real. Before you say believing images are real, is ludicrous, let me forewarn you, I will not be able to convince you to relinquiish believing some of your images are real.  " All creatures are involuntarily responsive to perceptions." ( Even images MISTAKEN to be perceptions of/from the environment.) Placebo Effect demonstrates not recognizing automatically/subliminally BELIEVING  fake pills are medicine. We are 'conditioned' by language, to believe some images are real.  Reacting to perceptions is 'hard-wired', but 'believing' is not, (you don't react to everyone of your image). Language causes us to HABITUATE believing and so the effects are the same as being hard-wired. In my prior posts no one acknowledges agreeing with me or even understanding this, yet they do it and experience it every day. That's virtually like being in 'trance' (cultural trance). Otherwise 'intelligent' people do not recognize when doing it themselves; others yes, but not themselves. Involuntarily reacting to images in mind, is analogous to Pavlovs dogs involuntarily reacting to the sound of his bell. At least the sound of the bell was ACTUALLY in the environment, but our images are only inside our skulls (so to speak) and cannot be transferred out. The part of the brain can 'light up' but the actual images remains personal, unique, not transferable.

[Rakeem]

Well its true that a lot of us go through life in sort of a trance state.  The knowledge of this dont automaticly change anything though, but with practise you can learn to unlearn your beliefs.

Thats basicly the basis of cognitive therapy.

[Zepher08]

"What if you stopped BELIEVING  the critical 'chatter'? You may have overlooked BELIEVING as a vital component of your experiencing." ~ Sakoz

Sakoz hit the point. Now how to stop believing. Here is my method.

First of all I make sure I am aware of the messages the critique is giving. They can be sneaky and change because one thinks it only sound one way and expect that but then it morphs. So one must be aware of the frequency and the emotion to the message.

Next I deal with the underlying emotion that comes with the thought or belief. I get really involved with that aspect because if you plan to pull the hair out you got to get to the root and the root is emotionally charged.

I learned to hear the messages and feel them 100% and not act on the feeling. the more I stopped acting on the feeling such as one that would result in feeling not empowered or less than or devalued ... I would not allow the message to create an action. I left it as a feeling that comes and goes rather than a truth to create a behavior out of.

Another one of my favorites that is more up to date is hearing the criticism(s) and listening like it is a tape recorder ... pressing rewind/play and every time I hear it faster and faster until the thoughts are non distinguishable. Then I press stop. I do this visualization.

There is a great audio to listen to ... it is called "the creative fire" by Clarissa Pikola Estes'. She is a Jungian psychologist and really gets to the point of how to see this aspect ... the critique that puts a lid on creative powers. Check it out.

[sakoz]

"You may have overlooked BELIEVING as a vital component of your experiencing."   Zepher08 you are an exception; not only do you RECOGNIZE BELIEVING , you have a 'procedure' you describe for stopping.
Most of the time we do NOT RECOGNIZE 'believing' when WE DO IT. We're all aware of the placebo effect; based on believing what is NOT so, believing fake pills are medicine, that belief does NOT fit the facts.
If we vicariously step into the subjects shoes, or better yet, we could be a 'subject' of believing a false thought, we would not recognize doing so; conversely,  if we knew the thought is false , we could not, would not BELIEVE it.
The only way placebo/nocebo effects work is  not recognizing BELIEVING is occuring. ( In daily living there's many more nocebo occurring than placebo, 100 to 1?) The 'key' is if you recognize 'believing', you have the option of NOT believing any particular thought. This is very subtle, some readers may not 'get it'.
Are we BELIEVING AUTOMATONS ?   " In the beginning was the word and the word was made flesh". Is this just a ancient myth? Is it relevant to-day? It certainly is if it refers to REIFICATION of CONCEPTS. Then it's an admonition rather, not merely a description. It's a 'double edged sword' to make "words flesh", as the placebo and nocebo effect clearly demonstrate.
We have the capaciity to THINK  thoughts and the ability to BELIEVE them. And both can be done involuntarily, when done involuntarily/habit we are vulnerable and at risk of believing FALSE/ERRONEOUS thoughts.
The question is;  Is 'believing ability' inherent/hard-wired or acquired/learned habit? Beliefs can be modified,revised, relinquished etc. indicating they are AMENABLE/MUTABLE.  Laymen act/behave as if they don't recognize that.
Cognitive Therapy 'works in the trenches'. I prefer alternative means, like 'shifting/transcending' to meta-level where 'problems' don't exist and those at lower levels easily dispenced with.
 

[Zepher08]

Sakoz, it would be so simple to just tell folk... OH just go and transcend. HA HA HA. in fact I just stepped out of a class where I had to put a stop to the distractive stinking thinking. If one person starts talking out loud about what their inner critique is going on about it catches like wild fire and every one starts up. This happens.

so I explained to the class that the energy they are giving in attention to the distracting thoughts which are the kind of thoughts that say... I can't, I used to, ooooh poor me  or horrible me etc.

So I explained how we are making a commitment to accepting where we are at and working from their not gazing into the past of who we used to be or into the future to who we may never be. That sort of stuff.

But internal dialogues/chatter no matter what they are about happen all the time. Of course not all of it is trash but organizing is an important skill in terms of being present.

I also think that CBT is a great way to move into transcendence. It gets the ball rolling in the right direction. Yet, with some internal dialogue there is a core issue or root that needs to be addressed.

Altogether it is quite the task to teach people that one can either use the mind to transcend or one can use the mind to remain stuck. People don't actually realize how user friendly the head brain is until a few trench like measures are taken on. that is what I have discovered in teaching people to get in the moment and get in the body and be the breath (not the thoughts).

 

[sakoz]

"be the breath (not the thoughts)."  - Excellent. I'm (sporadically) trying to attend to inhaling and exhaling WITHOUT being distracted by thoughts. I can't go 15 seconds yet, but my goal is to go  one whole minute.
I am extremely interested in understanding unstated, implicit, unrecognized premises. A common example, and the one causing the most pernicious effects, is the one everyone makes when they read the definition of the word "believe". Can you "spot" your covert assumption as you read the definition? - "believe: to take as true,real." Do you believe that definition? Then, most likely the chances are 99.99% that you implicitly assume ANY thought you believe is also 'true,real'. Let's take a closer look at the definition, the part that says "to take"; that's something we 'do'; we TAKE a statement or thought to BE true,real.
Where in the words,"to take" is the GUARANTEE that 'what' we believe is actually 'true,real'. That is congruent with facts? ('beliving" makes it 'true, real' to us, believing is a direct order to our involuntary to react to the belief.)
"Beliving" does not 'make' it so in the environment but only in our 'mind'. You can believe fake pills are medicine but upon analysis it's seen that the pills did not transform/morph into medicine. ( Jesus 'turned' water into wine; you believe you have the 'gift' too.?) The 'belief' itself causes the results/consequences,( if there is pain relief or healing) as all believed thought are involuntarily reacted to. (" I thought the gun was empty;" the sound of the discharge was NOT expected.)  Most of our "problems' are caused by reacting to/from unrecognized, false,BELIEFS. By believing the premise of the definition of the word 'believe', you ARE guaranteed problems galore.
"To take" is something we 'do'; what we 'do' is often believe false thoughts, that amounts to TAILORING/ENGINEERING ourselves "problems".(inadvertently but problems nonetheless).
The next best demonstration of 'unrecognized beliefs' is the Nine-Dot puzzle. Take another look at it.

[Zepher08]

Sakoz, On beliefs and belief systems... One can have a core belief system that is filled with relatively accurate beliefs right next to say unreasonable beliefs or irrational. When there are connected to a central or core beliefs it gets confusing.

Also if the belief one has is based on real experience such as... one believes him/her self to be stupid and the person grew up with actions and words to develop that belief. One was treated as stupid and so the belief is based on experience. It is in the body even on a physical level.The belief was built on 3-D experience/messages to mind and nervous system. Changing this is more then just changing a though or two. Changing core beliefs is huge.

I am just putting this out there because no matter how one qiuets the mind it does not erase the neuro pathways that were built or acted on over a course of how ever many years/lifetimes.They become a self ... transcending those conditions is why there is a practice for mind training, why there is psychotherapy and self help books.

There are those that say if you change the behavior that will change the mind... if you change the thinking you will change the mind and I go even one step further that it all has to happen at the same time and then some.

About breathing and breath. What I frequently advise in class is that we practice being oK as the mind continues to chatter. That noticing the chatter and internal dialogues is OK. On top of that instead of getting involved with the messages that we notice the quality of the message. Give it an adjetive such as ... this is a worrisome dialogue or this is a scary thought or this is critical as in judgmental. This is a wonderful practice. There are so many ways to work with the mind that isn't about trying to just shut it up as if shutting it up will actually stop the information from flowing.

What happens is changing the kind of attention we pay to mind. Same thing with the body. Practice in both direction because what is in the head is in the entire energy of the body. Becoming in tune to how thinking is held in the body as a feeling is important stuff. One has to be able to get to the point where they can tell where it is physically felt as well as the emotional quality of the thought.

The point at which silence is being interrupted by thoughts ... this is right about where one is noticing the thought as a structure that below is a feeling. I wrote about this before. You might have remembered. In order to get through all of the thoughts and feelings what one is left with is feeling ... perhaps well being , perhaps neutrality, maybe ecstatic.

Quieting the mind doesn't happen with resistance such as... I am not gonna think for 3 minutes. Take it on with acceptance. Accepting that mind is busy is part of the process.

[sakoz]

Humm, it can be complex,etc.   Even if the belief is based on experience, it is still a thought believed ABOUT 3-D experience. The person treated as 'stupid' and believes the thought, still fits the 'placebo model'. The experience is analogous to the pill. How does being treated as stupid MAKE one so? One can mistakenly believe the treatment,etc. Isn't 'stupidity' a concept, evaluation, judgement, opinion?
Yes core beliefs are deeply "imprinted" (synaptic structure) The ancilary thoughts arising from core beliefs are not preformed and stored like the core beliefs themselves.
During reverie, thoughts/images spontaneously arise into "the stream of consciousness", and just as spontaneously exit, unless selected/believed. A believed thought is one that "didn't get away".

Reverie also shows that thoughts can't be stopped, the option is to transcend and observe them  without being "hooked",  identified, attached to them. etc.

We can't stop thoughts; but are we compelled to beleive them? If you made 'believing' a habit you don't have the option of not believing.

[Zepher08]

 Sakoz, in the beginnings of one life there is no other voice then the parents and that voice begins conditioning the child with a core belief system. Do some research on conditioning and you might just get your self another layer of material to work with .

[sakoz]

Zepher08;  I'm not sure of the 'tone' of your post.
Is this what it comes to?  I thought our combined efforts might produce something helpful to all readers.
You tell me to research conditioning.  How about transcending all conditioning?
I don't have to eat the  boiled egg to know it's rotten, I can tell by the smell.

[Zepher08]

how does it read? 

[sakoz]

Zepher08; You wrote; "Do some research on conditioning and you might just get yourself another layer of material to work with." and "how does it read?"
Let me make a 'wild assumption', it could be false, but it demonstrates how 'prone' we all are to making false assumptions,( I won't believe this one.)
Your statement ,to me, has the "smell" of 'reserved retaliation' for having been offended. Pretty wild and even funny, huh? To see if it could POSSIBLY be true, I looked at what I wrote; the only thing found that could be construed
as offensive; "( Jesus 'turned' water into wine; you believe you have the 'gift' to?") The statement is in brackets, indicating it's an aside remark , intended for all humans on the planet. IF someone took it personally, as if only intended for them, then feeling offended is a logical reaction to such a belief. In any case this demonstrates how easily false assumptions "slip" in under the 'radar' and reacted to, even if it was only me in this case. Try to recognize when you (readers) do it.   Even if you (Zepher) write, "Your full of crap,etc." I won't be offended because I recognize I was in the realm of "hypothesis".

[Zepher08]

The best thing about this is that I can certainly say I am far from retaliating. I have no reason to do so. I simply stated my thought. I could have not said anything at all. In fact ... I almost did not but in my past of writing on message boards there are times to just say what I think. That was really all I did. If you feel retaliation in stead of being curious about what I suggest well, that is that. Of course each of has a right to what we think and feel. My information is based on my experiences and yours are based on your experiences. My words do not have to fit your back ground and I am basically saying that  that my interpretation of your info ... I think that you need to dig into the subject you are talking about more thoroughly.

I am referring to core beliefs and how core beliefs shape people behaviors and that core beliefs are connecting to a self belief system ... such as to say with out my beliefs I will no longer exist "My existence is based on my beliefs" which is common considering wars based on religion. That is one of the challenges of letting go of/changing  core beliefs  even when there is evidence that the belief is not serving a person (and the person can recognize that).

Now, if you believe I don't know what I am talking about and that works for you Heck, that is your business and you can tell me to take a hike. Yet, I encourage people to be curious even with dimensions that seem threatening or illogical or...

 I also encourage myself to do the same. I usually am peaked when I find resistance to something some one says. It is my practice to check out what the threat is.
 
Commonly it is connected to a core belief about myself/my world or that there is an aspect of another persons personality that I am not claiming of my own. this is all wonderful work to do - self development.

Another thing is that after doing message boards for some time here and there It is obvious that one thing that is missing is tone. so many messages and replies are unclear. What we project on to words is something that already exists with in. Wondering how far that statement will go? Are you curious as to why I would make such a statement or does it feel like an attack?

Gees I am sorry here that the thread has been some what changed from its origins but well, here it goes, I press "Post"

[sakoz]

Opps; I wrote a page of script and it seems I didn't press  "SAVE", oh well. (maybe it is just late being posted/)

I agree, maybe a new thread is called for. (Maybe I'll start one if I decide to resubmit what I didn't save.)

You wrote;".....or does it feel like a attack?" I can only feel attacked if I construe your statement as such and believe my own construction. Being aware of that is empowering and the means of avoiding needless emotions, right?

I'm glad we can continue 'interacting', we both know the source of emotions; evoked by what we believe. etc.

[mardee]

Why don't you try to focus on things that are positive and not about you? When you focus your positive energy on things besides yourself you can help make this world a better place. One thing to keep in mind is what is it that you are doing at the very same moment your thoughts seems to occur? Chances are you are probably doing something harmful to yourself like smoking. Sometimes people who think bad thoughts are inflicting some sort of pain on themselves and they want others to feel their pain. Could it be you are dealing with some sort of guilt in your life as well? I suggest you continue to see your therapist and understand what triggers your bad thoughts. Finding the cause of your problem is 50% of the battle, learning how to change your problem is the other 50%. you'll be healed in no time, but think about what it is you are doing at the moment these thoughts occur to you.