There are those times that we all have (or have had) that we get in a negative thought spiral, anxiety, fear, panic attacks, & thinking we are losing our minds. It’s like your own mind/head becomes a hell/nightmare that you can’t escape from. The victim mentality mode is part of it too and falling into those thought loops. All of this is of course re-programmable which you can start doing anytime you wish, the first part of the process is your awareness of the thoughts.
I’m going to share some techniques that can help get you out of this loop so you can then be present and approach things from a different angle. ANYONE can use these techniques. You don’t have to be “spiritual” or believe in anything specific. You can do these while you are at work, at home, or out and about too.
1.) This one I’ve found is best done while standing up. Close your eyes and then feel your entire body. Try to put your attention on all parts of your body at once and really feel your body. If needed you can specifically direct your attention the feet, the head, and mid section, and even try to imagine what feeling every cell of your body is like. Once you have done this for 10-20 seconds (can go as long as you want/need too) then direct ALL of your attention to your feet. Your focus should be entirely on your feet. Now with your feet feel the floor/ground. If you are wearing socks/shoes that still works, just feel through your socks and shoes too. What surface are you on? Is it carpet? Tile? Wood? The pavement? The grass? Just feel what it is. Now wherever you are, feel the entirety of the floor. For example, if you are in a room, feel the entire floor of that space. If done outside in a place like nature I generally like to just square off a certain amount of space, but I’ve just focused on feeling all of the ground out there too and it works great as well.
That’s all you need to do for that technique. That technique is VERY GROUNDING too. If you need to ground yourself and are too floaty, you can use this technique to come back in and ground into the present space.
One other similar but different variation of this can help with falling asleep at night. If you are in bed, feel the entire bed. Feel the material and the whole mattress and specifically feel and put your attention on all 4 corners. Hold your attention on all 4 corners of the mattress and feeling the bed. This has the potential to help you fall asleep.
2.) Breathing… this one is one that is very popular and shared frequently so I’ll keep it short. Take slow deep breaths and put all your attention on your breath taking the breath in and blowing the breath out.
3.) Utilizing your senses. To get out of your head you need to come back into the present reality. Using as many of your senses as you can will help accomplish this.
Tell yourself to look at things in the distance and also give yourself an acknowledgement after you looked. You need to say this in your head each time or out loud, it’s an essential part to this in order to get yourself off the other thoughts. Say “Look at that tree” then look at the tree, then say “Good, now look at that fence” look at the fence “Good now look at…” keep doing this and rotate here and there between things in the distance and things nearby you. Sometimes this can take a bit depending on how chaotic things are in your mind. This could take 10-20 mins, but you can do it for however long you want or need. Do not stop early because it’s not working, keep going. And if you are still struggling with the thoughts, then make sure you are saying to look at things and acknowledging much faster. If you do it faster and make sure that there aren’t any breaks/pauses in between, it can help make the difference if needed.
You can do the same thing but with touch. You can tell yourself to go touch something around you, then you go and touch it. When you touch it really feel what it is and how it feels. Don’t just feel but look too, use as many of your senses as you can. Now walking around your house telling yourself to touch things and acknowledging things may seem just as crazy as what’s going on in your head, but hey it works! Do this if you need to, whatever it takes.
Overall just use as many senses as possible. Wherever you are, cycle through and use as many as possible. Look at everything around you, notice the patterns and shapes of what you see. Feel your body, feel what is around you. Use your smell, taste, and hearing. Keep using your senses and in your mind keep telling yourself to use different senses in specific ways. You can ask yourself questions: What does this feel like? What is that smell? What can I see? What does the air taste like? Close your eyes and focus on every single thing you can hear around you in the environment. There’s no time limit on this, you just do it until you feel you snapped out of your negative thought loop and feel much better.
That’s all I wanted to share today but these have worked really well for me and I still use them. It’s not like I consider myself fully worked through my own journey yet. I still have some of these things come up and have harder days. The difference now is that I have a lot of tools in my toolbox and awareness. I am aware of when things come up and then use the tools I have to shift myself out of it, heal it, or let it go in the moment. Or at least very quickly.
Try using these out next time you are in a negative thought loop to get yourself out of it. Then you can start reprogramming your negative thoughts with positive ones/affirmations.
Love & Blessings,
Meashenu
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