305: Five Ways To Remind Yourself That Thoughts Are Just Thoughts

Hey, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Real Health Radio. I’m your host, Chris Sandel. I’m a nutritionist and a coach and an eating disorder expert, and I help people to fully recover.

Before I get on with today’s show, I just want to say that I am currently taking on new clients, and you can fully recover despite what the eating disorder thoughts may be telling you. I’ve been doing this work for over 15 years, so I’m very good at helping people to get to this place.

This episode really is just a sample or a tiny example of some of the things I work on or I help people with. So if what I share in this episode resonates with you and you are tired of living with an eating disorder and want to make changes and want support to be able to do that, then I’d love to help. You can send an email to info@sevenhealth.com and just put in the subject line ‘Coaching’, and there I can then send you more information about how we can have a strategy call to figure out if working together is the best next step for your recovery.

What I want to cover on today’s show is looking at 5 different ways that you can remind yourself that thoughts are just thoughts. This is one of the things that I think is really important for people to understand, because I think what often happens with an eating disorder – and this isn’t just about with an eating disorder; I think this is true for life in general because of how we are as humans. We all have lots of unhelpful thoughts, and these will show up, often, when we don’t want them to, and we can often get hooked by those thoughts. It can feel like these thoughts are true, these thoughts are our thoughts, that we’re the ones that are thinking them. It can feel like these are a belief of ours.

What I really want to demonstrate as part of this episode is (1) that thoughts are just thoughts and they’re no more than just that, and (2) looking at different ways of reminding yourself of this.

00:02:18

Thoughts are just thoughts

A lot of what I’m going to cover today comes from acceptance & commitment therapy, and one of the books that I really love is this book here, which is ACT Made Simple by Russ Harris. This book is aimed very much at practitioners, but I think even as a layperson, you could read it and there would be lots of valuable information you’d get from it. He’s done a book called The Happiness Trap, which is very much aimed at the lay public. So if that’s an easier place to start, then I recommend there. But I really love this book, and if you’re a practitioner, I would highly recommend getting this book and going through it and looking at the different things that he shares as part of that.

If I’m thinking about acceptance & commitment therapy, there are 6 main principles or areas, and one of the areas is called defusion. What defusion is about is creating room between yourself and your thoughts, creating distance between yourself and your thoughts. Really at the crux of it, it is the reminder that thoughts are just thoughts. So when a thought comes to mind, it’s not necessarily because you are the thinker and you have thought that thought; it’s because your body and your mind has generated that thought. You’re in a particular state, and that thought has been generated because of that state.

And that state is connected to how much sleep you’ve had, what you’ve had to eat, all of these things in the now, but it’s also connected to the environment you’ve grown up in, the parenting you’ve had. There’s all of these different variables connected to this.

But the thing that is really important to remember is that thoughts are just thoughts, and really, thoughts think themselves. Thoughts will appear in your consciousness. You then become aware that thought is there, and then it feels like you are the one that has had that thought.

One of the ways that is a good way of noticing this is: think of a city. You can think of a city anywhere in the world. Just think of a city. It could be a capital city, it could be any city in the world. But I want you to spend just 10 seconds thinking of a city and just notice what city comes to mind.

Okay, so now you have that city in your mind. Was that city Paris? Maybe the city was Paris, and maybe the explanation is “The Olympics was just on and that’s why I’ve picked Paris.” But maybe it was something else. The question is, why did you think the city that you thought? There is no really good answer to that question. You can come up with lots of explanations for “why I picked Sydney” or “why I picked Canberra” or “why I picked Perth” or “why I keep mentioning cities that are located in Australia as opposed to places in the US or places in Sweden” – and there could be lots of reasons that you come up with for why you picked that particular city, but the reality is you didn’t pick that city. You were prompted by my question and then these thoughts just came up.

Maybe you even started to think of certain countries and then realised, “That’s not a city, that’s a country.” Or you had something come to mind and then you were thinking, “Is that even a city?” But what this exercise helps you to recognise, or I hope it helps you to recognise, is that what your mind brings up isn’t really in your conscious control. There can be times where it feels more like it is in your conscious control, but the reality is, it is your mind that is generating these thoughts. So recognising that just because you had a thought, doesn’t mean that it’s important to you, it doesn’t mean that it’s a value of mine or yours, it doesn’t mean that it’s true, it doesn’t mean really anything apart from the fact that you just had a thought.

What happens a lot when in recovery, but also when living with an eating disorder, is there are lots of thoughts that come up, and there are lots of thoughts that I would put into the basket or the bracket of being unhelpful thoughts. They’re thoughts that help to perpetuate the eating disorder, and to keep you continuing to do behaviours that perpetuate the eating disorder.

As I said, what I want to do as part of this episode is go through 5 different ways of breaking that spell so that you can have a thought and you can recognise it’s a thought as opposed to being hooked by it and believing it is true or believing that it’s really important or believing that “this thing is going to happen and that’s why I need to pay attention to it.” Instead you can recognise that this is just a thought.

00:06:54

Pick an example thought for these 5 methods

What would be useful for you while going through this is think of a thought that you’ve had – it could be today, it could be something that comes up again and again when you’re trying to make a change in your recovery. I’m going to use one here, just so I can use for each of the different examples I’m going to go through. But if there’s something that feels a lot more relevant to you, ignore the one I’m using and pick the one that feels better for you and feels like this is something that “really resonates a lot more with me because I’m constantly having this thought.”

The thought that I’m going to use is “That’s too much food to eat for a snack.” This is something that comes up a lot when people are trying to make changes. It could be “That’s too much to eat for breakfast”, “That’s too much to eat for dinner”, “That’s too much to eat in an entirety of a day.” But let’s just stick with “That’s too much to eat for a snack.”

00:07:49

Technique 1: Add on to the thought

The first way of using defusion or helping to remind yourself that this is just a thought is to add something on to that sentence once you’ve noticed that thought has come up. There is this ‘taking a pause’, noticing that a thought is coming up and then saying, “I’m going to take a pause and I’m going to notice what that thought was.”

I notice that there is the thought that that is too much food for a snack. What I want to do now is recognise, “When I pay attention to that, when I lean into that thought of ‘that’s too much food for a snack’, what starts to happen?” Maybe spend 5 seconds, 10 seconds, 15 seconds, just noticing what starts to happen. And again, you can pick the thought that you have if it feels more relevant.

What I’m going to assume starts to happen, because this is what happens every time I ask people about this, is there’s this further cascade of thoughts that start to arise. There’s certain uncomfortable feelings or sensations that start to arise connected to that. There could be emotions that are connected to that, whether that is anxiety, could be guilt, could be shame. There’s lots of things that are then contained in when I get hooked by that thought or when I start to really believe that that thought is true.

So we have this thought “That’s too much food to eat for a snack.” What I want you to do is add a sentence in front of that. I want you to add in the sentence, “I’m having the thought that…” “I’m having the thought that that’s too much food to eat for a snack.” I want you to do that and recognise or notice what happens when you do that.

For most people, what they notice is this creates a little bit of a buffer. It creates a little bit of a distance between themselves and that thought. And that really is the goal. The goal with all of the techniques I’m going to go through isn’t that this thought instantly goes away, because that just isn’t really the reality of what is going to happen. What you’re wanting to have occur is that you’re creating some distance between yourself and your thoughts. You’re creating an awareness that that was just a thought. You’re really creating a situation where you’re relating to that thought in a different way. It’s not having the same power over you as it did before.

And that thought might come up again and again as you have that snack, but by using this form of defusion, it helps to remind you that this is just a thought and to create that distance.

You can use different variations of this. It could be “I’m having the thought that that’s too much food to eat for a snack.” Another one is “My mind is generating the thought that…” So “My mind is generating the thought that that’s too much food to eat for a snack.” or “I’m noticing that my mind is generating the thought that that’s too much food to eat for a snack.” You can play around with it and just experiment and see what you notice with these different ways.

One may feel better than the others. Sometimes in the beginning it can feel a little clunky, and that’s just what happens because it’s a weird way of phrasing things and it feels a little odd to start with. But what you will start to notice as you do this is you often don’t even have to fill in the second half of the sentence. Just uttering the phrase “I’m noticing my mind is generating the thought…” is enough to pull you out of the trance of that thought or to remind you that that is just a thought.

Like everything, this comes with practice. You doing it the first time is going to be a lot less effective and have a lot less impact versus this is a regular thing that you do, so that you’re regularly reminding myself of this. So that is the first way of doing it.

00:11:41

Technique 2: Change the voice of the thought

The next one is to change the voice of the person that is saying that thought. Often when we’re having these thoughts in our mind, it is in our own inner dialogue. It’s in our own voice or the usual voice that we have. And this can be the problem or the struggle so much when we talk about what’s the ‘healthy voice’ or what’s the ‘eating disorder voice’. It’s all the same. The words may be slightly different, but it’s not that it’s this monster voice when it’s the eating disorder voice and it’s this regular voice when it’s your healthy self. It’s usually just the same voice that is there. And yes, there can be stronger tones or whatever, depending on what’s going on, but that can be the same with us generally anyway.

So what you’re wanting to do is just recognise, “This is an unhelpful thought, and I’m going to create some distance between myself by changing the voice that it is in. I’m going to change the voice and then see how I relate to it when it is said by this different person.” You can pick any voice that you want. It can be an actor, it can be a character from a movie, it can be a character from a cartoon series. It can be anyone you want, but the goal really is – and I think it is quite helpful – if this voice is leading to you laughing or this voice allows you to create that distance between yourself and that thought.

If I’m thinking of this for myself, Will Ferrell. Some kind of Will Ferrell character would be perfect. I think of the Saturday Night Live skit where Will Ferrell was the cheerleader. That’d be one of the things that comes to mind because it puts a smile on my face. Just even mentioning that and I start laughing about it. People from The Simpsons, so Professor Frink or Ralph Wiggum would be characters that if I put it in their voice, I would start laughing. It would start to shift my state just by doing it. Flight of the Conchords I absolutely love, so Jermaine from Flight of the Concords would be another one, because his delivery, his deadpan, his way of saying things would help me think differently and feel differently connected to that thought.

But it doesn’t necessarily have to be laughter. It could be someone who is really wise or it could be someone different that creates this different feeling when you have that thought. So again, try it. Think of someone that would work well for you and then say the phrase “That’s too much food to eat for a snack” or whatever the phrase that you’re using is, and see what you notice when you do that.

00:14:20

Technique 3: Change the pace at which you say it

The next one is changing the pace at which you’re saying it. You can do this very slowly, but the one I’m going to go through now is going very quickly. Saying the phrase very, very quickly and doing it repeatedly. If this would be the phrase “That’s too much food to eat”, I would then say it either out loud or I would say it in my head repeatedly, very, very quickly.

I would suggest do it now. Practise doing this now: “That’s too much food to eat for a snack” or whatever the phrase is that you want to use; try saying it really quickly over and over again.

When you did that, what did you start to notice? What often starts to happen, what people notice, is things start to either fall apart, or certain words or syllables start getting connected to other words or syllables, and it then starts to lose the rhythm and the feel of how it was initially and take on some other kind of rhythm to it. Again, all of this helps to then change how you relate to that word or to that sentence. It actually works quite well with particular words. If there’s a particular word within that phrase that is quite a standout word, it can be helpful.

This comes from a technique called Titchener’s repetition. As part of that, what you could do to start with, to just see how this works, is I want you to think of the word ‘lemon’. Just say the word ‘lemon’ once. I don’t know how this sounds with my accent, if people can understand. I’m talking about the citrusy fruit, a lemon. Just say it once and see what comes to mind or what you notice when you do that.

Often, when you do that, maybe there’s the smell of the lemon that comes to mind. Maybe there’s the feeling of squeezing the lemon and the bits that come off, whatever, the juice or the vapor that comes out of the skin as part of doing that. The smell that is there. Maybe there’s the taste of the lemon. Just by saying the word, there are all these things that start to come up.

But that can change again if you start to repeat it. If you say the word ‘lemon’ very quickly, repeatedly, and do that for 30 seconds – just as an example: lemon, lemon, lemon, lemon, lemon, lemon, lemon, lemon, lemon, lemon, lemon, lemon – I stopped after 5 or 6 seconds, but if you keep that up, you’ll start to notice that the word starts to break down.

This can be the same with other words that carry a lot more emotion connected to them. Most people aren’t having upset when they hear the word ‘lemon’ repeated out loud. Maybe there is. Maybe there’s some connection you have with that word and that word being used in a way that was derogatory for you, but for most people, they don’t have that connection when they hear the word ‘lemon’. But there is that connection with other words. It could be ‘bad’, it could be ‘fat’, it could be ‘idiot’, it could be ‘selfish’, it could be ‘lazy’, it could be ‘loser’, it could be ‘incompetent’.

If you recognise that there is this word that has all of this connotation and this meaning and emotion connected to it, you can use this Titchener’s repetition. You take that word and just repeat it really, really quickly for 30 seconds. And it will start to break down; you will lose your way. Just keep going with it and see what you notice by doing that.

00:18:01

Technique 4: Name your story

The fourth way I’m going to mention is called naming your story. This is really useful because what often happens if we look at the kinds of thoughts that are coming up – especially if we’re looking in eating disorders and the recovery process, but I think this is true about life at large – there are a lot of the same kinds of thoughts that are going to come up. Even if the thought or the word is slightly different, it fits into the same category or the same bracket.

What you’re wanting to do is notice that if these thoughts and these feelings are coming up and you put them into a book or a movie and you were naming the title of that book or movie, what would it be? It’d be the ‘something-something’ story. So what would you call it?

For example, if I’m looking at the “That’s too much food to eat as a snack”, the broader category that might be in is the “that’s too much food” story or “that’s too much to eat” story – whatever feels right for you. What this means is that every time any thought comes up connected to that, you can then put it into that same story category. So “That’s too much to eat for breakfast”, “That’s too much to eat for a day”, “That’s too big a portion for me to eat” – all of these feed into the same category and this story, the “that’s too much food” story.

The reason why this is helpful is once you have catalogued it in this way, you’re basically saying, “That story is an unhelpful story, and I don’t want to get hooked by that story. So anytime I have a thought that comes up that is about that story, I’m just cataloguing it in that way.” So when this comes up again, whether this is 20 minutes later, an hour later, tomorrow, next week, you can then say to yourself, “Ah, there’s the ‘too much food’ story again.” Just by being able to recognise it, you’ve already catalogued it as “That’s an unhelpful story; I’m not going to get hooked into that. I’m not having to come up with all these explanations and reasons why this is the right thing to do or this isn’t too much food and come up with all these arguments.” It’s “I’ve catalogued it as this is unhelpful and I’m recognising it as such and just moving on.”

So naming your story is this technique – and as I said, there’s probably four or five stories that you have that will account for 80% or 90% of all the unhelpful thoughts that come up connected to recovery. So when they come up, “There’s that story again”, and then the next one, “There’s that story again.”

00:20:57

Technique 5: ‘Computer screen’

The final one I want to mention is called ‘computer screen’. This could be a computer screen, it could be a whiteboard, it could be a TV – it doesn’t really matter. I’ll go through it as a computer screen to start with and then I’ll explain how the others would work, but it works in the same way.

The general idea is you’re wanting to externalize that thought. Often, thoughts have a lot of power when they’re running around in our head. They’re getting ruminated on and they’re just there. But when we can start to externalize it, we can see it a little differently.

Take the thought that you have, whether that is “That’s too much food to eat for a snack” or whichever thought you’ve been using, and I want you to imagine that there is a computer screen that is sitting next to you or sitting in front of you, and that is appearing on the computer screen. So you’ve opened up a Word document, or a Pages document for Mac users, or whatever you want to use, where this is now appearing on the screen.

I want you to notice what happens when you see it on the screen versus when you just have it in your end. That in and of itself, when you externalize it, what do you notice?

What I want you to do now is take those words and change the font of them. You can change it to whatever font you want. You can scroll through and change it to different fonts and see what happens. You can choose Comic Sans. That’s always the one that comes to mind for this ridiculous font that should never really be used outside of kids’ birthday invitations or something very childish. So what happens when I now see that phrase in Comic Sans versus how it was before? What do I notice when I do that?

What happens when I change the colour of the font? Let’s put it in a different colour. That could be one colour for the whole word; you could be making every individual letter in a different colour. But when I change the colour, what do I notice when it does that?

What happens when I change the formatting of it? Maybe I’m putting it in italics now, or maybe I put a strikethrough through all of the words, and there’s a strikethrough line that goes through all the words now. What do I notice when I do that? Maybe I can animate this, so I’m now seeing the words there, but there’s this little bouncy ball that starts to bounce through the screen and through the words.

Or I just started thinking of the Minions movies. I was thinking of the Minions films, and at the beginning of the Minions films, they have the illumination and all the Minions are doing something different to that text. What happens when you do something like that when looking at the text on a screen?

You can play around with this as much as you want. You can add a whooshing sound, or you can add something else on top and see what you start to notice. Again, the goal with this is just you starting to recognise, “When I externalize these words and this sentence, what starts to happen to how I think about it and how I relate to it and how I connect to it?”

As I said, you could do it with a whiteboard, so you’re envisaging it getting written on a whiteboard. Maybe there’s some streaks from where it’s been rubbed out and it’s not completely clean. You can put it on a TV, and as part of that you can play around with it. You can flip it upside down, you could have the words appear on the screen or start to disappear on the screen. There are all of these different ways you can do this in terms of externalizing those words and playing around with “What happens when I start to change them?”

00:24:57

Implement one or two of these – what do you notice?

So those are 5 different ways that you can remind yourself that thoughts are just thoughts. With this, what I typically recommend is pick one or maybe two ways and actually do it. I think what can often happen is you can listen to something like this and think, “Yeah, yeah, that sounds like a good idea” or “I don’t think that’s actually really going to work” or whatever thoughts may come up – because thoughts just think themselves – but the goal with this is “Let me implement this for a week or two weeks and let me see what I notice.”

And where you are really diligent and intentional about practicing it. It might be that you need to set a reminder each day, or multiple times a day, to remind yourself to do this. It might be that you jot down certain thoughts and you come back to them if you want to do it in that way. But just really being intentional about practising this and recognising that how it affects you on Day 1 or Day 2 may be very different to how you do this when you’ve been practising it for two weeks or a month or six months or this has become your default and you’ve been doing this now for years and years.

So those are the 5 ways. This is only just a snapshot of it. There are many, many, many different ways of doing defusion. There are many ways of creating space between yourself and your thoughts. But this is 5 ways that you can get started where you pick one or two and try them out for a couple of weeks and see what you notice.

As I said at the top, I’m currently taking on new clients. If this resonated with you, this is one of the tools that I use. There are many different tools that I use when helping people to be able to deal with the thoughts and feelings and sensations that arise so you can actually take action in recovery and get to a place of full recovery and the freedom that that brings you.

So if this has resonated with you, then you can send an email to info@seven-health.com, and if you put in the subject line ‘Coaching’, I can get over the details to you.

That is it for this week’s episode. I hope you have a lovely week. I will catch you next week with another new episode. Until then, take care, and I will see you soon.

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