How to Be Less Distracted 

Carl Chaovski Thanks!

+Amy Olive Thanks! That's great you're moving along with recovery. Compulsions in the head are tough but just recognizing that you're doing them is a great step. Learning to keep your mind with you takes practice. Keep at it!

@@everybodyhasabrain how do you keep your mind with you as you say. Do you have any exercises that I can do to improve concentration and stop me jumping from one thing to another

Enjoy the practice!

Kittens!

Thanks, Phil!

Practice! It's a lot like building cardiovascular endurance. You can only develop it through regular practice.

You can teach it to focus for two and a half straight minutes!

Stop telling yourself that first you have to get rid of the thoughts and feelings. The clouds don't have to decide how you live your life.

It might help to see that as part of the problem, not a solution. The more you distract yourself, the less able you'll be to handle intrusive thoughts and the more your brain will throw them at you so you'll distract yourself.

Hi Tanvir, intrusive thoughts can just be there. If you react to them and change your actions, then you'll have the intrusive thoughts even more. The same is true with feelings. Judging what we feel is a common compulsion. OCD is very much about trying to control what we feel. It sounds like you're trying to make yourself feel attraction in a specific way. That's no different than trying to feel safe, or clean, or right or any other feeling people chase with compulsions. The more you try to control it, the less you'll feel that feeling you want to feel.

That means if intrusive thoughts or intrusive feelings comes into mind about about my favourite things( books, videos etc) I don't have to judge those intrusive thoughts or intrusive feelings. If I judge intrusive thoughts or intrusive feelings the less I will feel that feeling which I want to feel.

+1Kilili Have an amazing time on the trail! For social anxiety, there were many different things I did at the same time. Two of the most useful were no longer avoiding places or people or things and setting exercises, like: This week, I will speak to every person I'm in an elevator with. If you set a social goal before any situation, then it doesn't matter what your brain thinks up. You simply stick to your goal.

Thank you ! I'll start with the elevator thing then.

It could be. But it also might not be.

Mark Freeman and how do I know?

+1Kilili Once you're experiencing pain, that's a feeling you can experience. It's already there. If you don't like experiencing that pain, then it might help to cut out the compulsions that led to it. The opportunity to practice acceptance of our experience comes before we start judging that experience or ourselves. When you looked at that picture, you could have chosen a variety of actions. Once you start judging that experience, it's only natural to experience feelings you don't like. This video goes more in-depth: "Stop Hitting Yourself In The Face With A Hammer" ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-5YavohiTzhA.html

***** But you remember that you liked that person and you know now you will never see her again in your life. Why would you not be sad ? Your approach is very effective and I appreciate your work very very much. But sometimes it seems so very clinical and depersonalized that it almost distresses me. But maybe iti has to be.

Haha but there's nothing wrong with being sad. That's a feeling you can feel like anything else. That's why I included the "if" in my previous comment. If you want to feel sad, feel sad. Welcome that feeling. There's nothing wrong with it. If you don't want to feel sad, don't do the things that make you sad.

Typically, I approach this as the difference between having a thought pop into your head and thinking. You don't control the thoughts that pop into your head but you do control what you do with them. Trying to suppress a thought is generally about trying to not have specific intrusive thoughts or feelings a person dislikes. But that's not something they control so it'll only make them more miserable and have the thoughts even more. But what they do with the thoughts after they experience them is something they control. If you start engaging with a thought and thinking about it and focusing on it, that is something you control. If you recognize you're thinking about something that's of no use to you, you can choose to give your awareness to something else that you value. That's not about suppressing the thought that triggered that thinking. That thought can be there. It doesn't have to go away because there's nothing wrong with it. But you have other things you want to give your attention to right now.

+Mark Freeman oh i seee.

+Ashley James Walker Mindfulness is all about being in the present, on purpose, without judgment. So it might be useful to explore where the guilt is coming from. Guilt can't stop you from recovering or being mindful. Guilt is only a feeling, like any other feeling. If that's what you're feeling in the present, then you can be aware of that without judgment. Reacting to that feeling to try to control it would only be a compulsion. Learning to be with that feeling while you do the things that matter to you is a useful skill to develop for recovery, just like learning to do healthy things while experiencing any feeling. At the same time, learning to practice mindfulness will help with experiencing feelings like that much less. Guilt typically depends on judgment. If we're being mindful, then we're not engaging in judgment compulsions, and we're not cultivating guilt. But mindfulness is a skill, so as we build our skills, we'll still find ourselves judging others and ourselves all of the time. And we can recognize that and bring ourselves back to the present and the things we love.

+Mark Freeman I see, through mindfulness I may not be able stop my thoughts, but i can act accorsing to my values. my personal dilemma lies with if I have actively thought something bad about a loved one, should i let it go?

+Ashley James Walker Would you get any benefit from holding on to it?