In recent decades, what has been called the “cognitive hangover” in psychology has occurred, which is why we talk about controlling thoughts.
Index
The reason
The instrument of reason , from a powerful “tool” of analysis and understanding, has in other words been transformed into a factor of change.
In some cases, the fallacious and potentially dangerous idea has been spread that reason – and the control that accompanies it – could regulate with their enlightened presence all areas of the mental, cognitive and emotional, like the wise charioteer of those recalcitrant, and ultimately primitive, animals.
What does it mean to control your thoughts?
But there are some signs that tell us that, at the very least, we should be cautious. P
First of all, several studies, both quantitative and qualitative/clinical, indicate that trying to control thoughts through the wise use of rational reasoning can cause dangerous paradoxical effects , whereby the very thing we try not to think about comes back like a “backlash”, strengthened precisely by the effort to exclude it from consciousness.
Don’t think of a polar bear!
For example, Wegner et al. (1987) asked participants in his study to voluntarily not think of a polar bear, and those who engaged in the task more diligently showed a higher frequency of thoughts about a polar bear .
Furthermore, as Nardone and Balbi (2008) highlight, the attempted solution of the repression of unwanted thoughts and emotions can constitute the basis of obsessive, phobic-obsessive and obsessive-phobic problems.
A peculiar variant, which concerns the attempt to control thoughts through logical-inductive procedures, often constitutes the mechanism for maintaining the problem known as ” pathological doubt “ (Nardone & De Santis, 2011), in which the person, engaged in a dramatic tug-of-war with himself, stubbornly tries to refute the thoughts that assail him or dissolve the doubts that torment him, inevitably ending up by strengthening them .
Don’t control the thought, let it go
We can say that using reason to sedate or tame one’s mental world is therefore a self-deception that is anything but functional: the alternative is, patiently, to learn to allow oneself all one’s characteristics, even the less edifying ones, with the awareness that only in this way can we learn to control them; it would be advisable to ride the tiger of our least desired parts, never face it with bare hands…
Bibliography
- Nardone, G., Balbi, e. (2008). Sailing the Sea Without the Sky’s Knowing. Lessons on Therapeutic Change and Non-Ordinary Logics. Florence: Ponte alle Grazie.
- Nardone, G., De Santis, G. (2011). Cogito ergo sofferro. When Thinking Too Much Hurts. Florence: Ponte alle Grazie.
- Wegner, D. M., Schneider, D. J., Carter, S. R., & White, T. L. (1987). Paradoxical effects of thought suppression. Journal of personality and social psychology , 53 (1), 5.
