Why can’t we stop thinking about the things we’re trying not to think about?
Your job review is scheduled in two days and, in passing, your boss says, “Well, we’ll certainly have a lot to talk about.” You try to put what he said out of your mind —what did he mean by that? —but it keeps coming back and now you’re a nervous wreck. You’re sitting in the airport, ready to board, and thoughts of every plane crash you’ve ever read about keep barging into your head. You try to shake them off, reminding yourself that plane travel is safer than driving a car, but it doesn’t work. You’re going to the doctor next week to have that mark on your thigh looked at and you think it’s probably nothing but worst-case scenarios float into your head 24/7 and distracting yourself doesn’t work. Why is that?
The answer is what Daniel Wegner has called “the ironic monitoring process;” the mind (or brain) actually searches for whatever thought or emotion the individual is trying to suppress. Yes, the brain is actually nagging you and that’s why a photo of a polar bear illustrates this post. In their initial experiments, Wegner and his colleagues instructed one group of participants not to think of a white bear while they were performing other tasks. A second group was instructed to think of white bears and then not to think of them. Interestingly, the first group who tried to keep the white bear at bay thought about them more than once a minute! And the second group thought about them more when they were trying to suppress white bear thoughts than when they were told to think about them.
In plain language, trying to suppress an intrusive thought is akin to putting out a welcome sign and inviting it to stay awhile. You may find this a bit disconcerting—I certainly do because I like to pretend I have complete control over my thoughts—but you and I probably just need to suck it up and face how much of what we think is automatic and unconscious. (And I’m not even going into unconscious “primes” and how they shape our thoughts here.) White bears, it turns out, aren’t our only problem; there’s also the way the brain deals with unfinished business.
You know how it is: Instead of feeling content about all you’ve accomplished, it’s the thing you didn’t do (or failed to finish or accomplish) that ends up dogging you all day and night. This is what’s called the Zeigarnik effect, named after the psychologist who discovered it in a series of experiments in 1927 and whose results have been replicated many times since. Zeigarnik and her colleagues instructed participants to assemble jigsaw puzzles until they finished but then deliberately interrupted some of them. Even though these people were given other tasks to complete so that they’d be distracted from the unfinished goal, they thought about the incomplete puzzle twice as often as anything else. Telling them not to think about it didn’t help. Those who completed the puzzle didn’t think about it all; there was no need for the mind to remind because the task was complete. The bottom line? The unconscious mind is a noodge, plain and simple.
The evolutionary advantage in this pushiness is pretty clear; the mind wants us to get done what needs to be done. Bag that caribou! Build that community! Alas, the brain is still doing it in the 21st-century and it’s keeping some of us up at night.
So what do to about your nagging brain?
None of this is scientifically proven but research suggests a number of strategies for getting rid of white bears and getting around the Zeigarnik effect.
1. Invite the white bear in
This suggestion comes from Daniel Wegner himself and while it seems counterintuitive, it does work. Make whatever the intrusive thought intentional, thus bringing into full consciousness. You can say it out loud or write it down. If you’re prone to rumination, you might also want to talk out your intrusive thoughts with close friends or, of course, a therapist.
2. Assign yourself a worry time
Some people can manage troubling thoughts by worrying about them consciously. You can choose a time of day to tackle these thoughts or decide that ten or fifteen minutes of worrying is all you need. You may want to write your concerns down—seeing them in black and white will bolster your awareness—so that you can begin to process what you can and need to do about them.
3. Immerse yourself in an activity
There’s plenty of research that shows that simply distracting yourself won’t stop intrusive thoughts but getting into “flow”—doing something which engages you completely enough so that you “lose” yourself in it —will. Any activity —from knitting to playing the piano or a sport or gardening or baking—that you genuinely connect to will do it. Again, whatever activity you choose must have a high level engagement so that you are actively involved, not simply distracted. Watching television or multitasking to “take your mind off things” is doomed to failure.
4. Make a plan
Research on the mind and unfinished business done by E.J. Masicampo and Roy Baumeister revealed that simply making a plan—without actually implementing it —could stop the Zeigarnik effect. The researchers had one group write about two tasks that needed to be completed soon, describe the consequences if the tasks were left unfinished, and assign the tasks a value on a scale of one to seven. The second group was given the same instructions but was required to come up with a plan to get those tasks done. The control group wrote about tasks that had been completed. Then, all three groups were given a portion of a novel to read and were tested on their comprehension.
Those who made a plan weren’t distracted by intrusive thoughts and performed better on the comprehension tests. That’s the good news but the bad news is that simply making a plan to get whatever is nagging you done won’t reduced any of the angst or worry associated with unfulfilled goals, as further experimentation show.
5. Do the work of getting it done
There’s only one solution to reducing the anxiety and negative affect that accompanies important unfinished business: You need to complete the task, whatever it is.
I am guessing that, deep in your heart, you already knew that…
Copyright © Peg Streep 2014
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Wegner, Daniel M. White Bears and Other Unwanted Thoughts. New York: The Guildford Press, 1994.
Wegner, Daniel M. “Ironic Processes of Mental Control,” Psychological Review, 101,no. 1 (1997).
Wegner, Daniel M. David J. Scheider, Samuel R. Carter III, and Teri L. White, “ Paradoxical Effects of Thought Suppression,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53, no. 1 (1987): 5-13.
Wegner, Daniel M. “You Can’t Always Think What You Want: Problems in the Suppression of Unwanted Thoughts,” Advances in Experimental Psychology, 25 (1992), 193-225.
Wegner, Daniel M. “Setting Free the Bears: Escape from Thought Suppression,” American Psychologist (November, 2011): 671-670.
Masicampo, E.J, and Roy F. Baumeister, “Consider It Done: Plan Making Can eliminate the Cognitive Effects of Unfulfilled Goals,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (June, 2011), advance online publication. DOI:10.1037/90024192