[cat_ncsu]

I see Martin talking a lot about how we cannot control our thoughts. I partially disagree and I wonder what others think. Sure, there are involuntary, unanticipated, uncontrollable thoughts. And a lot of them, over and over and unstoppable in many cases!

But I think that what you think or how you direct your mind in reaction to those thoughts IS under our control. This just seems like classic CBT – questioning our thoughts, whether they are useful, reframing them, etc.

Perhaps I am confused about what is meant by this statement that we can’t control our thoughts, but I choose to take a somewhat more empowering view.

What do folks think? Martin, perhaps you can clarify!

Thanks for all you do, I am very grateful to have access to the information Martin puts out and to the forum.

[Chee2308]

Hello!

I think what Martin means is you often can’t control your original but unhelpful sleep thoughts, like “I slept only 2 hours last night, now my day’s completely ruined!”. And as you pointed out, we can often adjust or control our responses to these thoughts and quite often, that response can be a thought in itself. Ultimately, as insomnia starts becoming less of a problem, we don’t pay as much attention or attach much less meaning to these thoughts anymore. It’s like you have become as indifferent to your sleep thoughts such as (my sleep was bad last night so I should worry over it) as you are to an innocent every day thought like (the sky is blue and the clouds white). Your brain processes both sleep and non-sleep thoughts identically. So the issue then becomes how seriously you view your thoughts and how emotionally and mentally upset you get over them.

[Martin Reed]

Thank you for the opportunity go into a bit more detail on this subject! I think our opinions on this are actually not all that different!

First, I think we need to emphasize that there’s a distinction between short-term “thought control” and long-term “thought control”.

So, for example, if we feel really worried we might distract ourselves by doing something else and then feel less worried. If we feel really stressed we might have a few alcoholic drinks and then feel less stressed.

Over the longer term though, that worry and that stress is going to come back.

So, what do we do then? Engage in furious and endless distraction? Drink more and more alcohol?

As human beings, we are always going to experience the full range of human thoughts, feelings, and emotions.

Some feel good. Some don’t. Some are helpful. Some aren’t.

Since difficult thoughts and feelings don’t feel good, it’s only natural that we don’t want to experience them. So, we often try to fight or avoid them.

It’s when we engage in this battle that we are at risk of getting “hooked” by all those difficult thoughts and feelings — to get jerked around by them, distracted by them, consumed by them.

The end result is we can end up moving away from the life we want to live as we try to fight or avoid all those unpleasant and difficult thoughts and feelings.

A more workable approach might be withdrawing from that battle with the mind.

Not trying to control our thoughts and feelings.

Allowing difficult thoughts and feelings to show up, hang out, come and go as they please.

Instead of getting tangled up in a battle with them, maybe we can acknowledge their presence instead. And, in their presence, refocus our attention on whatever is most useful for the task at hand.

With practice, we might start to become more aware of when we are getting hooked by our thoughts and feelings — and we might become more skilled in unhooking from them, and continuing to move toward the life we want to live, even in their presence.

So, as you suggested in your post, while our thoughts are generally unstoppable, we always have control over our response — and we can respond in a way that’s workable and helpful or we can respond in a way that’s not very workable and not very helpful over the long term.

With all this in mind, I can’t think of many things more empowering than being able to more effectively respond to our thoughts and feelings and not feel totally controlled by them!

Please let me know if this helps clarify things!

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