How to manage difficult thoughts with mindfulness

Thoughts and emotions are interconnected and often interact with each other. But theyre also different. Thoughts are like sounds or images in your mind. Emotions are experiences felt within your mind and body. In mindfulness, you take a slightly different approach to thoughts than you do to emotions, as youll discover.

Some difficult, negative thoughts may arise when you practice mindfulness as its often when youre more mindful that you actually notice them. Mindfulness can be a bit like turning on a light in the dark, untidy room of your mind. Suddenly you start to notice all the things that are wrong rather than the beauty of the room itself.

Mindfulness doesnt create negative or positive thoughts. Mindfulness is about awareness. You simply notice your thoughts. If you have negative thoughts that have been running in the background of your awareness, you may notice them a bit more now, but they have less impact on you if youre mindful of them.

Heres how to manage difficult thoughts in a mindful way:

Take a step back from your thoughts. You have many ways of doing this such as:

Notice the type of thought (maybe youre worrying, planning, judging, self-criticizing).

Say to yourself: ‘I notice Im having the thought that Ill mess up the presentation tomorrow or ‘This is just a thought, not necessarily a fact.

Ask yourself: ‘Am I confusing a thought with a fact?

Imagine your thoughts are projected on to a cinema screen and youre sitting back in your seat, away from the screen, watching the film.

Watch or visualize clouds passing. Then place your thoughts on those imaginary clouds, so that you can see them come and go from a distance.

Experiment to see what works for you. Be curious. Youre not trying to avoid or get rid of the thoughts – just to take a step back from them.

Turn your attention back to your focus.

If youre meditating, your focus may be your breathing or bodily sensations. If youre not meditating, you can focus on something external. This focus could be your work, the breeze as you walk or the sound of the music in the coffee shop, for example.

Learning mindfulness (like life in general) will always present difficulties and obstacles. Perhaps youre pretty nasty to yourself through excessive self-criticism when things dont work out how you want them to. The way to deal with this harsh inner voice is to listen to it, give it space to unfurl and bring to it a sense of curiosity in a gentle, warm way.