Dr. Goldstein on Neuroscience and Mindfulness
There's a name I like to use for the negative, unconscious thoughts that run through us: NUTS. Negative Unconscious Thoughts. The acronym fits, because in the moment those thoughts arrive, we often do feel a little nuts. So I'll ask people to sit with theirs for a while. What are your top five? Put a bit of humor on it. Name the five that come up most. Sometimes they aren't unconscious at all; they're right there on the surface, the negative lines that keep a person circling back into the same depressive loop.
The work starts with turning those thoughts into objects. Objectify them, again and again. Once a thought is something you can look at rather than something you're buried inside, you can crack it open. Ask what's actually true about it. Ask how it makes you feel at that exact moment. And then a different question: if thoughts simply arrive and pass, what sits underneath them? When people stay with that, they frequently notice a quiet underneath, a contentment or a calm that would be there if the thought weren't. Imagine the thought gone, and something steadier shows up in its place.
Behavior is a harder nut than thought. I won't have time to go deep on it here, but reversing a bad behavioral habit, getting unstuck from one, tends to be the difficult part. Of everything I've seen, the single most powerful lever is other people. Surround yourself with a community that feeds and encourages the change you're trying to make.
I'd put that above anything else. You can read every book on the subject and work through every program built around quitting whatever it is you want to quit, and those have their place. But in my experience, professionally and personally, the people around you matter more than any method. Having them be supportive of the change, that's the piece I'd protect first.
It isn't always easy to find those people. Sometimes it has to happen virtually. A site like meetup.com can put you in a room, physical or otherwise, with someone you'd never have crossed paths with on your own. That's one more route in.