NdukuOutLoud

Why We Can’t Think Our Way Out of Thinking

We all have situations or people in our lives that trouble us a lot. We find ourselves thinking of nothing else. Then, at some point, we realize that all the thinking is not helping, so we decide; ” I am not going to think about it anymore.” And that becomes the exact moment we start thinking about it even more frequently.

For me, right now, it’s a person. And I can’t suppress the thoughts; I can’t fight them. For you, it might be something else entirely.

Seeking to understand how the human mind handles unwanted thoughts- and challenging older ideas lie Freud’s notion that the subconscious effortlessly handles suppression for us- social psychologist Daniel Wegner decided to run a lab experiment.

One group was asked to think of a white bear (expression), another was asked not to think of a white bear (suppression), and a third group was told to think of a red Volkswagen instead whenever the bear popped into their head. The results were telling: while the distraction group managed fine, the people required to purely suppress thoughts of the white bear ended up thinking about it more than those explicitly told to think about it.

And it’s not just them. Most of the time, we dwell more on what we’re told to avoid than on what we actually should be expending our energy on.

Wegner proposed that thought suppression can work, but only if two mental processes run simultaneously:

• The Operating Process: Uses willpower to actively steer thoughts away from the unwanted object
• The Monitoring Process: Acts as a background detector, constantly scanning the mind for the forbidden thought.

The challenge is that the operating process requires mental energy. When we are tired, stressed, or busy, it shuts down—leaving only the monitor behind. And by itself, the monitor doesn’t have enough power to block the thought; it only keeps reminding you of it.

The experiment was repeated with food, and those trying to suppress cravings ended up overeating. Suddenly, it makes sense why we get more annoyed whenever someone tells us not to be upset, or why we feel even sadder when we try to force ourselves not to be sad. Other explanations, like reactive psychology, suggest we lean into the forbidden thing just to establish a sense of autonomy—a “you can’t tell me what to do” rebellion against our own minds.

Ultimately, it matters little what fancy name researchers give it. We will always gravitate toward what we resist because the brain only registers and translates the action.

Or, in the clearer, easier-to-understand terms of Frank H. Richardson’s dictum: “There is no such thing as a psychological negative.” You cannot ‘not think’ about something. All you can do is to think about something else.

That is the ultimate takeaway. Rather than telling yourself not to do or think something, it is infinitely easier to simply do something else. This is the true philosophy behind getting busy with our lives, hitting the gym, and pouring energy into our goals—not as a way to run away, but as a way to build a life so full that a past love, a failed relationship, or a bad business decision simply loses its real estate in our minds.