Stress is one of those insidious, underrated things that there’s plenty of advice on (including on this site), but ‘being in the moment‘ isn’t always as easy as it sounds.

I’ve long had the opinion that putting off stress, hiding from stress, escaping from stress or pretending things are OK (when they’re not) are not good solutions.

Why?

Because when we try and deal with any kind of negative thoughts, when we try to suppress that inner voice – those negative thoughts don’t disappear. In fact they often get stronger. Even if you manage to avoid them for a while, it’s like they’ve just been hiding in your mental cupboard, ready to spring out on you, even louder than before.

So what should we do instead?

What I feel has been working very well for me when I have these thoughts or feelings (which also tend to come from thoughts) is to recognise that I am not my thoughts.

Rather than engage with them and identify with my thoughts, I instead tell myself something like ‘so my mind is thinking these thoughts’ – i.e. to allow the thoughts to happen, explore them even but to detach from them.

It’s kind of like having a conversation with myself – basically my conscious self, the one who is present, here and now – observing the thoughts of my wandering mind – because when these thoughts are negative they are almost certainly wandering somewhere into the past (a past argument or event, ‘I should have said’, a plan to revisit a discussion and say something more about it…) or concerned about something in the future.

Being an observer of our thoughts rather than ‘in’ our thoughts does create a certain detachment
and it’s that detachment that is the secret.

I believe that as long as that detachment is there then we can actually allow ourselves to give these thoughts a little airtime whilst remaining sufficiently in control to say ‘OK that’s enough for now’ before the thoughts start spiralling out of control.

In doing so hopefully with that detachment we can also be a little critical of our wandering mind and keep our thoughts in perspective avoiding too much over-thinking, drama, exaggeration etc.

I’m not saying this is going to work for everybody or fix all stress and anxiety problems, but trying to remain ‘detached’ from any negative thoughts rather than trying to shut them out completely (or even worse engaging with them and spiralling into total despair) feels like a much better approach to me.