Our response to stress evolved over hundreds of thousands of years during which stressors were much more dangerous. We were regularly threatened by starvation, illness, ostracization, or attacks from animals or neighboring tribes, so our bodies responded to stress automatically and strongly. Unfortunately, our bodies respond to modern stressors with the same automaticity and intensity today despite stressors rarely threatening our survival. To me, the goal of meditation is to improve my ability to recognize this response to stress for what it is — a reflex to keep me safe rather than an imperative to control my behavior.

A common misconception about meditation is that it’s about controlling your thoughts, an impossible task, but meditation is merely about putting distance between things that we notice, like seeing an apple roll toward the edge of a table, hearing an alarm go off, or having a thought, and your reaction to that thing. Our automatic reactions–to catch the apple, to turn off the alarm, or to analyze the thought–aren’t necessarily the most desirable outcome. The guided meditation app that I use is called Waking Up because the creator likens recognizing thoughts as just thoughts to waking up from a dream. Like dreams, thoughts tend to pull you along a series of more thoughts, even when they’re not useful or even rational. Being able to break this cycle allows you to redirect your energy. I like Waking Up over other meditation apps because it goes more into depth about how to meditate, including a 28-day intro course, so that meditation doesn’t turn into thinking with your eyes closed.

Another tool I really like for interrupting thoughts is a version of therapy called ACT–Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. ACT is an evolution of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), which is a very common form of talk therapy. As an example, say you have an irrational thought that is plaguing you, such as “People at work don’t respect me.” In both ACT and CBT, acknowledging this thought is an important step, but how it’s treated is different. In CBT, the focus is on finding counterexamples of this thought or replacement thoughts that better represent reality. In ACT, the focus is on acknowledging that just because this thought popped into your head doesn’t mean you have to engage with it. While CBT can be characterized by a tug-of-war between rational and irrational thoughts, ACT instead advocates for dropping the rope.

In his book, A Liberated Mind: How to Pivot Toward What Matters, the creator of ACT, Steven Hayes, makes two important points about feeling like you have to engage with whatever irrational thought is occupying your head. First, he argues that your brain is good at recognizing patterns and solving problems. Often, it recognizes patterns and solves problems that don’t exist, and you can choose to disengage from these thoughts. Second, he argues that if you can’t disengage from these thoughts, then your brain becomes a dictator in your own mind that controls your thoughts. The worst result would be that you start treating your life as a problem to be solved.

Below are some of my favorite techniques from ACT for disarming thoughts by allowing you to see that they are, in fact, just thoughts. Of course, they require that you can recognize when you are caught up in thought, which is where a regular meditation practice is useful. I do 10 minutes a few times a week; plus, I use the following techniques when needed. Notice that all of these techniques involve acknowledging the thought, rather than ignoring it. Also, it’s much more fun to hear Steven Hayes talk about these techniques than for me to describe them, but if you’re opposed to video…

Technique 1: Thank you, George

In this technique, you give your mind a name, like George, as a way of recognizing that your mind has a mind of its own. Just because thoughts come from inside of you doesn’t necessarily mean they have more credence than ideas that come from the outside. Whenever you have a thought that is blatantly false or irrational, you can simply thank George for the input and disregard it.

Technique 2: Visualize your thoughts on leaves that are floating down a stream

This technique is also a common meditation technique. The goal is to simply recognize your thoughts in a detached way and without engaging with them. Do this by visualizing yourself sitting at the side of a stream and watching leaves float down it. You can’t control how quickly the stream flows. Whenever you recognize a thought, picture writing it down on a leaf and placing it into the stream to float away. If it comes back, write it down and watch it float away again.

Technique 3: Sing the thought to the tune of Happy Birthday

For particularly persistent thoughts, this technique can help break the facade of faux-rational thoughts. Sing the thought, out loud, to the tune of a song, like Happy Birthday. If you struggle to figure out how to make the thought fit into the structure of the song or it sounds ridiculous, even better. This technique usually has the opposite effect of getting a song stuck in your head and helps you to release nagging thoughts.

Technique 4: Picture yourself as a child saying the thought

For particularly painful thoughts, this technique can help remove some of the pain that they cause. Instead of having the thought about yourself, picture yourself as a little child having the same thought. If you can, hear your younger self say the thought out loud. Whatever compassion you feel toward your younger self, extend to your current self.

Meditation and learning to detach from the automaticity of thought can be profoundly impactful on mood and quality of life. Starting these processes is often not easy, but with just 10-20 minutes of practice each day, people quickly improve their skills. The best news, though, is that once you’ve been practicing for a while, you can maintain these skills with less time and effort. For more information, I recommend the Waking Up app for meditation and A Liberated Mind: How to Pivot Toward What Matters by Steven Hayes, which is full of techniques for responding to all kinds of thoughts.

For more blog posts about wellness, return to the wellness series page.