Obsessing about your worries is like scribbling on your writing to make the page clear again

What about thought? Have you ever tried to erase a thought or scribble over a thought? 

 As a teacher, I get to see this frequently. A student will write something that they decide they don’t like. Sometimes the student will try and erase what they wrote. Other times they will scribble over their old thought. 

If the child tries to erase what they wrote, they often create a much bigger mess on the paper than they had before. All of the aggressive erasing ends up creating a big smudge, potentially ripping the paper and wasting an enormous amount of time. 

Erasing a thought would be like trying to not think something you already thought. You might laugh reading that sentence. How can you not think something that you already thought? But, I’m sure you have said, I need to stop thinking about this at some time in your life. That is trying to erase a thought. You can’t actually do it. 

Other kids prefer the scribble over technique. They will start by making a few lines through what they wrote, but that is not good enough. Next they scribble over and over till they can (hopefully in their minds) not see what was originally written on the paper. With pencil, that is really hard to do. So a lot of scribbling happens. 

Or maybe you try and scribble over your thoughts. That looks like having a lot of thinking about the thought to try and get rid of the thought. This could look like talking aback to the thought, making a positive affirmation that says the opposite of the thought, talking about it with other people and obsessively thinking about it in circles. 

Just like with erasing, once the scribbling starts the writing often stops for a good long time. 

With my thinking the moment I'm obsessing over something I have thought, I'm also not moving on with my life. I'm obsessing. And obsessing can stop me clear in my tracks and make me feel stuck and frustrated and overwhelmed all at the same time.

As their teacher I can see that neither technique works.  As a thinker I habitually use both techniques probably on a daily basis!

So one of my first lessons is to teach the students a different way. I teach the students to draw one single line through what they wrote and then move on. 

The thing is, I can’t just tell them that I want them to draw a line and then move on. They have to practice this. They need to see me model it. They need me to acknowledge when they try the new technique, even if they don’t do it perfectly. 

Over time they will spend less time erasing and scribbling and more time writing. After a few weeks students no that they can not spend their time erasing and scribbling during writing. They have to write. (And if that is too hard, we will use a pencil and count how many words they put down in ten minutes. Then we will graph and work to improve that amount every day.) 

What if you could cross off the thought and move on? What would that look like? For me it looks like using the ten minute worry timer and the clicker. Or it looks like me saying in my mind, click next. Or it looks like me noticing that I’m trying to erase or scribble and choosing to focus my attention on what is right in front of me right now. What am I seeing and hearing and doing right now. 

Sometimes I need to amplify what is happening right now. Yes I turn up the music, turn on some music, put a book on tape, notice the sounds I hear around me. I’m not trying to erase the thoughts so much as make help my ears and mind focus on the here and now. Sometimes I can remember that repetitive thoughts are like the cat meowing when we moved.

How do you cross off the thought and move on? And if thinking about this causes you to get upset, well you don’t have to know the answer to it. What works for me might not be what works for you but I promise you, at some point your mind will move on.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts. Maybe what works for you will help someone else.