Wellness

5 Steps to Letting Go of Painful Thinking Patterns

Written by: Joseph Nguyen

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Published on: October 24, 2024

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As humans, we have evolved with a sophisticated ability to rationalize, analyze, and think because these are key to our survival.

The mind’s job is to alert us to potential dangers in our environment that may threaten our lives. It does its job so well that not only will it scan our immediate surroundings for threats, but it will even reference past experiences to create predictions of possible future dangers based on our memories.

None of this is wrong by any means. The mind is simply doing what it was designed to do. But while our minds do an incredible job of keeping us alive, this same ability does not allow us to thrive.

For instance, in prehistoric times, many things—animals, weather, illness—were a threat to our existence.

We survived because of our ability to communicate, work together, form strong social bonds, and pass down knowledge from one generation to the next. It was vital to stay in our social groups, and being thrown out of our tribe meant certain death.

And so our minds evolved to fear being judged or doing the wrong thing in order to remain accepted by others and not get kicked out of the tribe. Because of this, we sacrificed our individuality and uniqueness to fit in. We learned to not be too different or weird because it might result in us being ostracized. While this may have helped us survive, it also cost us our peace and happiness.

Although our brains are still hardwired this way, we no longer live in a world where social acceptance means life and death. Losing a social bond may be painful, but it no longer means we have to fend for ourselves in the wild.

Today, the question isn’t whether we will survive but whether we are happy with the time we are alive. Our quality of life is determined by the peace, fulfillment, and joy we feel on a daily basis.

And yet there is a mismatch because we are navigating today’s world with a mind that is still programmed with this primitive fear. The problem is that we often forget this distinction. Our mind’s duty is to keep us alive. Our consciousness’s duty is to help us feel fulfilled.

If we keep allowing this thinking to direct our lives, we will stay in a state of fight or flight, anxiety, fear, frustration, depression, anger, resentment, and negative emotion because the mind views everything as a threat to our very existence. And it is this tendency of our minds that leads us to the torturous thinking at the root of our suffering.

If you want to be free and at peace, then you will need to let go of only listening to your mind’s fight-or-flight thinking. You are not just a product of your environment but a co-creator of it. With this understanding, you can begin to shift your experience of reality from merely surviving to truly thriving.

Learning to overcome our thinking may be simple, but it is not always easy. Becoming aware of our emotional states and letting go of our painful thinking patterns without fighting them will take practice.

If you are still struggling with how to stop thinking, it is okay. Do not beat yourself up over it. What we need most during difficult times is not more self-criticism but more love, compassion, and patience for ourselves.

Here is a simple five-step process to help you let go of your thinking:

The first step is to pause and begin taking deep breaths to help calm our nervous systems. Deep breaths pull our focus away from the thinking mind and into our bodies, anchoring us in the present moment. This allows us to become aware of our emotions and also detach from them.

Pausing creates space between our emotions and actions, giving us the opportunity to choose a new response rather than repeating the same conditioned reactions that keep us in the cycle of suffering. Without this space, change cannot exist. Space has the illusion of emptiness on the surface. It is not empty but filled with infinite possibilities for us to choose a new experience of life. Within the space between your thoughts and your thinking lies the peace you’ve been seeking.

Step two is to ask yourself, “Is this thinking making me feel the way I want?” or “Do I want to keep suffering?” These questions remind us of the power we have to choose whether we want to emotionally suffer or not. If we want to keep feeling the way we do, then we can choose to do so. We’ve all had times when we are not yet ready to let the negativity pass, and that is okay. But if we want peace, we can choose it by letting go of the thinking that is causing our suffering.

Step three is to understand that you have the choice to stop and let go of your thinking. At this moment, you must decide what you want. Is it peace, or is it to continue the thinking that is causing the suffering? This can be scary, but if you trust yourself and that you will be okay no matter what happens, it becomes easier to let go.

Step four is to say and repeat to yourself, “Thinking is the root cause of suffering.” Reminding yourself of this disempowers your thinking, making it easier to manage because you begin to see through it. Repeating this phrase to yourself like a mantra when you begin experiencing negative emotions is a powerful practice. It is difficult for our minds to have multiple thoughts simultaneously, so repeating a single phrase forces the brain to focus only on it rather than something else. The reason mantras are effective is not just because of the power of words to influence our beliefs but because they reduce or even stop our minds from thinking.

Step five is to experience your emotions fully. Most of our destructive habits and behaviors come from the avoidance and suppression of emotions. When we ignore or fight our feelings, we only make our suffering worse. We are not trying to bypass our emotions. Rather, we are trying to accept and feel them fully without judgment. Suffering comes not from our emotions but from the thinking we attach to the emotions.

What would it feel like to experience your emotions without judgment? Can you feel how there’s less resistance to them? Can you feel how much easier it is to let them go? How much more liberating does that feel?

We unnecessarily create our own suffering by trying to make our minds do jobs they are not designed to do. Your mind’s job is to anticipate threats. Your body’s job is to regulate the resulting emotions. Everything has a role. When you let your body feel and process emotions fully without the interference of your judgmental thinking, emotions will naturally pass more easily and quickly than you realize. The mind and body will always restore balance and harmony naturally when we get out of the way.

To help you remember this five-step process more easily, use the acronym PAUSE. Whenever you’re feeling overwhelmed by your thinking, pause, go through the five steps, and remember that you have the power to let go of it at any time.

P—Pause and take deep breaths to calm your nervous system and ground yourself in the present. Become aware that you are thinking, but do not judge it.

A—Ask yourself, “Is this thinking making me feel the way I want?” or “Do I want to keep suffering?” If not, you always have the choice to let your thinking go in order to find peace.

U—Understand that you have the choice to stop and let go of it.

S—Say and repeat the mantra “Thinking is the root cause of suffering” to help quiet the mind from thinking until it subsides and passes.

E—Experience your emotions fully without judgment, resistance, or thinking (don’t think; just feel).

Repeat this process until you have calmed your nervous system and the thinking has passed.

 


 

Excerpted from Don’t Believe Everything You Think, Expanded Edition by Joseph Nguyen. Copyright © 2024. Published by Authors Equity, October 29, 2024.