It is very common that throughout our lives we directly or indirectly meet people capable of capturing our full attention.
There are human beings who simply attract our thoughts to them, either because of their own personality and characteristics or because of the situations we have experienced with them. However, there are times when this is a problem. At that point, how do you stop thinking about a person?
Related article: “Why can’t I stop thinking about my ex-partner?”
The reasons why we may want to stop thinking about someone They are very varied.
For example, we may try to leave behind intrusive and constant thoughts about an old relationship that jump into our consciousness all the time and without us being able to avoid it, or we may also try to avoid thinking about someone with whom we will never have the relationship we would like, or It may be the case that we try to leave behind the sadness caused by the death of a person.
The human mind is so complex precisely because there are an infinite amount of experiences that can leave an imprint on it, and this also applies to personal relationships.
Make those thoughts go away
No, dreaming about the same person many times does not mean that we have an internal conflict related to them. However, if when we are awake those thoughts linked to someone who has been important in our lives do not disappear and constantly intrude into our consciousness even though they cause us discomfort, yes we have a problem One that can affect our ability to concentrate, and that if prolonged for a long time can increase anxiety levels.
But… how to solve this problem? What to do to stop thinking about someone all the time, if precisely this seems to be something independent of our will? Although it may not seem like it, there are strategies that, once implemented, can help us “disengage” from this unconscious and annoying habit.
The idea is to prevent our mind from getting trapped in the same type of memories, to stop thinking about the same thing constantly. Here you have a series of strategies and guidelines to follow to adopt healthier psychological habits.
1. “Not thinking about it” is an ineffective method
Regardless of how varied our motives may be, the truth is that there is one method that simply does not work. And, furthermore, it is the simplest and most intuitive method, the one that we would all try to implement if we did not know anything about how intrusive thoughts work. It is about the option of trying to voluntarily suppress these thoughts, that is, trying to make them disappear.
Thought suppression is known to be a completely unproductive option. In fact, it will make us think more about that person. In this regard, the research of Daniel Wegner in which he asked a series of volunteers to think of a white bear. Then, naturally, they were asked to prevent this thought from happening again. The result was that all participants began to think about something as unusual as white bears much more than before
Therefore, trying to voluntarily suppress these thoughts and memories not only does not work, but it causes us to continue thinking about what we want to keep away from our minds, which makes us feel more stressed. It is a full-fledged rebound effect: the very fact of avoiding thinking about that person causes us to continue reproducing the way in which we think about them.
One of the strategies to follow may be to practice accepting these thoughts, that is, not fighting to make them disappear from consciousness. There is evidence that people who follow these acceptance strategies experience fewer problems than those who try to suppress these thoughts.
However, the benefits of this method have more to do with the way these thoughts make us feel than with the frequency with which they appear. That is Accepting memories and fantasies related to certain people does not stop us from thinking about them in the short term but it does make us not feel so much stress about it.
3. Managing attention
So, we have a method that does not work and another that partially works. But… What is the best way to stop thinking about a person permanently?
From what has been researched, the most effective way to get rid of intrusive thoughts is focus one’s attention on a series of actions and thoughts in which we can get lost and that, of course, have no relationship with that person we want to stop thinking about. Getting someone out of your head, then, has more to do with proposing alternatives to those obsessive thoughts than with trying to eliminate them.
4. Fantasizing about who you shouldn’t
One of the examples of the effectiveness of this strategy is found in an experiment whose results were published in 2008 in Evolution and Human Behavior. In this experiment we wanted to explore the best alternatives when it came to making people who were in a stable relationship stop fantasizing about a person they considered attractive and who was outside the couple.
To do this, the team of researchers presented a series of images of attractive people to each of the participants in the experiment and asked them to choose the one they considered most attractive. They were then prompted to imagine what it would be like to experience a series of situations with those people, asking them to explain in writing why they thought that person was attractive and to describe what they thought the perfect date with them would be like.
Then, some volunteers were asked to stop thinking about that person. Of course, they didn’t succeed: They couldn’t get the other person out of their heads and, in fact, thought about them more than participants who had not been asked to stop having those thoughts.
5. The solution to these fantasies
What did work was focusing attention on the couple: thinking about them, why you are with them, and, especially, why you love them. These types of thoughts, which have the ability to capture attention, were the reason why the participants were able to stop thinking about the other person. Besides, The most effective thoughts in “catching” the volunteers’ attention were not those related to the sexual attractiveness of the partner but those that had to do with the love he felt for her.
After practicing this strategy, the volunteers began to forget details about people they had previously been unable to stop thinking about.
You may be interested in reading: “Types of love: what kinds of love exist?”
Get someone out of your head
So thatthe trick to stop thinking about someone is to find something that is capable of making our attention go towards them naturally without effort, so that little by little the thoughts that we want to avoid become more blurred until they no longer invade our consciousness constantly.
