Anxiety and Thought Stopping Techniques

What happens to you when you feel anxious? You may find that you are having heart palpitations, sweaty palms, feel flushed, or are suffering from racing thoughts. You may even think that you are having a heart attack if the anxiety is overwhelming. Many people in my practice ask me how to stop that seemingly un-ending road of fear and panic. It seems as though once you start on that road, it is difficult to pull off it.

This is quite understandable if you understand the biology of anxiety. Anxiety served as a protective purpose for us during the times of the saber-toothed tiger. These animals lived roughly about 33.7 million to 9,000 years ago and were quite deadly to humans. Humans developed an anxiety reaction to these animals to protect them from being eaten. This is known as the fight or flight syndrome and it is a primitive reaction that we have developed to protect us. However, we are no longer in danger of the saber- toothed tiger, but our well developed anxiety reactions are still present. They serve a useful purpose in times of real imminent danger. But many people find that they are suffering from anxiety that is not related to real imminent harm.
Now you ask, “How do we stop those racing thoughts and adrenaline-like feelings so that we can stop worrying and be more productive?” Well one of the tools you can use is called the thought-stopping technique. It is quite simple and many people laugh when they first hear it, but it really does work.

Imagine a Stop sign

Imagine a stop sign. It is red and white and has eight sides. In the middle of that octagonal shaped sign is the word “STOP”. Now imagine that word “STOP” being said out loud to you by either you or someone else, or printed on a piece of paper right in front of you. Usually you will stop what you are doing or thinking even for a second and wonder, “What do I have to stop for?”, “What is going on?” Then you may go back to your racing thoughts or actions you were performing just before you heard or saw the word “STOP”.

The key here is that you just shut down that cyclical pattern of thoughts even for a second as you pondered the word “STOP”. As you go back to whatever you were doing just before imagining the word “STOP”, you are still training yourself to be more in control. What we know about anxiety is that the premise is one of fear. Fear is about feeling out of control of what will happen to us. However, once you employ the thought stopping technique, you were in control of stopping your racing thoughts, even for a second.

The thought stopping technique is as easy as what I described above. It is a way to interrupt your racing thought patterns. Now if you find yourself going back to your intruding thoughts, imagine the word “STOP” again. Imagine a stop sign or repeat the word out loud over and over. Again, you may find yourself going back to your racing thoughts, but this time you shut that process down for a few seconds. Every time you do this, you are re-training your brain to interrupt the seemingly un-ending cycle of racing thoughts that are creating a lot of your anxiety symptoms.

Thought stopping techniques are very useful tools to help you when you feel that your thoughts are out of control. If you are still struggling with anxiety to the point that you are not being productive in your life, you should have a full psychological and medical evaluation to see if there is another reason for your anxiety. Some people need medications and others need on-going psychotherapy or both.

What ever it is that you choose to do, you need to take back the control in your life and understand that there are some processes that you do have control over. Thought stopping techniques will help you begin to put yourself back on that road of control.

To learn more about Jordana Mansbacher, PsyD.