Chase the Thought to Its Origin
Have you ever been overburdened by a barrage of thoughts? Not one or two, but dozens. If you are even half as self-aware as you should be, you would have wondered where all these thoughts came from. They appear mostly random. Straight from the unconscious. No connection between them. You are reading a book, and without realising it, you are thinking about what your friend said three days ago.
Thoughts are mostly random. But they are also deeply associative. You wouldn't notice unless you stop and chase every piece of thought to its origin. The moment a thought emerges, pause and go back. Chase where it originates first. What triggered it. What were you doing when it triggered. What were you thinking right before this thought.
One thought usually leads to another. I was reading a series of books on psychology when Viktor Frankl's name surfaced. He was a Jew, a survivor of a concentration camp. I was reading about his contribution.
From there my mind wandered to something my friend had said a few days earlier, that Jews control everything. From there my thought moved to a girl who hates Israel with all her might. Then my next thought was about what she had said about me that day. She had also been looking prettier. Would it be appropriate to compliment a girl though? Would she read it the wrong way?
I stopped myself and chased every single piece of thought. By the time I reached the thought of complimenting her, I had no idea how I had arrived there. I had to pause and chase every thought to its immediate predecessor. Then that thought's predecessor. Until I connected the entire chain. The mind is highly associative, like I mentioned.
I do this with bad memories as well. You are trying to forget someone, but whatever you do, that person resurfaces in your head. They control your psyche in a way that unsettles you. Affects your daily rhythm. Everything you do reminds you of them. Moving on is easier said than done. But resolving internal conflict is possible by chasing every thought to its origin.
You cannot resolve something unless you know its origin. So trace every thought to the activity that triggered it. Resolve it from that point. Understand the mechanisms of your mind. Memory is largely reconstructive. It doesn't function like storage. So every time there's a word or an action that holds some relevance to your memories, it will get triggered. If it carries an emotional charge, like grief tied to a person, it will definitely surface.
The emotional charge is what makes everything so hard. That's why it consumes you entirely. It's not just the thought but also the emotional intensity bound to it. So every time you are overwhelmed, pause, trace the thought to its origin. Find the connections. Resolve them one by one. If you cannot resolve it, then accept that it's going to hurt for a while. It will lose its steam eventually.
The method to deal with overwhelming thoughts is not to avoid them. Suppression never works. The more efficient way is to understand how they originate, resolve them if you can, and accept that they are bothering you in the moment. By the end of it, you will gain a fascinating insight into how your mind functions.