Treatment number 14 today…needing encouragement.

Hi I too am in my third week and haven’t had much improvement. I also have terrible morning anxiety. We just have to hang in. Many people don’t experience any relief until the very end. Bobby

You are on point bobbypec. The initial outcome after treatment was not the end result of treatment for me. I continued to improve for nine months. Very interesting that the brain is still working on developing improved efficiency long after treatment ends. Patience sometimes is in short supply when feelings are so dark, but when the darkness lifts, life is different, very different. As others’ stories indicate, there is reason for hope.
Improvement may be just a breathe away for you. Sending good wishes for an effective outcome.
Colleen

• This reply was modified 8 years, 10 months ago by  colleencasey.

Bobby: I hear your sadness and recall those days. Just know that your duration in treatment to date means little in terms of the outcome of TMS. You need more time and treatments. Many do not experience the lift or the light early on because the brain needs time to work in those changes such that it affects mood. Keep your eyes open for the little changes, as those appear first!

Hi I’m on treatment 17 and started to feel a little better. I also started Pritiq with no side effects. Bobby

Bobby: Thanks for the update. Good news indeed. Sending positive thoughts for continued progress!
Keep in touch. Colleen

Martha:
There is always a solution so take a deep breath and let’s see what the possibilities are.
Neuronetics has a doctor locator on their site. If you type in neurostar.com on the right side on the top of the initial page you will see a physician locator. Type in your zip code to see locations for providers offering TMS.
Here is the number to customer service at Neuronetics – 1-877-600-7555. Call them and explain your situation and ask for guidance, help and direction in locating a treatment center. Here is the link to the customer service contact page where you can send a message about your situation – make sure you communicate your needs. https://neurostar.com/contact-us/
Martha, try these connections, be persistent and keep connected. There are always options. If you need additional ideas for resources, get back on this site and ask! Please keep us posted.
Sending my best
Colleen

Hi Martha:

So Sorry to hear about these issues with getting access to TMS. Colleen is right about checking out the patient locator on the neurostar site, and there is a doctor locator on this page (http://tmsyou.com/directory), but I think not all doctors are on this one. Depending on where you live, there may be a couple options for TMS doctors

As for insurance, there can be a lot of variation in coverage and that can be very frustrating. If TMS is not covered by your insurance you have two big options.

1. Neurostar has a patient resource where they can help work with you to get your insurance to cover the treatment in your specific instance. The website for that is here (https://neurostar.com/hcp/reimbursement-support/neurostar-reimbursement-services/) or you can call them directly at 1-877-622-2867

2. Your doctor may be able to work with you to directly appeal your health insurance to cover the cost. This route has helped patients in the past and may work for you, but you’ll have to work closely with your doctor.

Buddy:
You have provided needed support and information. Thanks for sharing. Keep us posted on how you progress through your treatments. This is very helpful. Sending positive thoughts for a continued positive response.
Colleen

Keep_Hoping: What is your doctor or treatment team saying about how you are feeling after 4 weeks of treatment?

Colleen,

They are saying that I may not feel any better until after treatments are done. One of them told me I may not be seeing results but people around me may notice changes. Great, so I feel better but don’t know it?

I get more discouraged after finishing each week and still not seeing the slightest improvement. Tomorrow I start week 5. During the last session of week 4 cried the entire time thinking this has been a big, painful waste of my time.

Keep_Hoping: rebtar has some wise words about not experiencing improvement until after treatment ends. And an eclectic approach to dealing with depression is spot on! I also did not experience improvement till after treatment ended even though my TMS Coordinator did and verbalized that to my doctor. I got so angry saying to my doctor, “I don’t notice any change. Why don’t you believe me!, instead of the Coordinator. The depression is in my body!” Whoaaa, I was not happy. So yes, it can and does happen that others may see the changes first. There is no doubt that this medical treatment is a challenge and most often to the depths that we never could have anticipated. You are doing the right thing by talking with your doctor, continuing treatment and reaching out to this site and possibly others. Keep doing what you are doing. The unknown outcome can be tough to deal with. It may not feel it but your efforts are definitely on the right road. Keep connected. Your journey is important not only to you but to others as they may have the same struggles and will gain strength from your posts. I know I have. Sending positive thoughts!

Keep_Hoping – Those feelings of guilt and unworthiness are so difficult aren’t they? And when your heart is saying “I want to do this but your body and the lethargy won’t let you,” it is discouraging and heart wrenching. I am sending compassion for your struggle. We don’t know all of the medical details and inner workings of our brain in response to TMS treatments, but I just had an unusual experience (for me) with TMS that may help give some hope to keep fighting through your treatments and tapers. I never experienced the upswing or lift from depression during my initial treatments 5 years ago until after treatments were over. Since then, every year in late spring I need three booster treatments and it (in my language) pops me back to my new normal of not being depressed. However this year I needed my treatments in March because of a reaction to anesthesia. Anesthesia is a depressant and it had that affect on me. I went for my three booster treatments which usually “pops” me back before I am out of the chair after the first treatment. But this year, it took over two weeks to pop me back. I was terrified that TMS stopped working for me and went on that mental journey. It was horrible, but throughout, my doctor maintained his belief that I just needed time. And he was right. There are so many variables that play apart in this journey through TMS that we must stay connected with our doctors and treatment teams so they can keep us grounded when we struggle. Sometimes there are no words to describe the challenge, pain and discouragement. It can be all-consuming. You are so close to the end of treatment, don’t give up now. If you do, you will never know if you are one of those patients that don’t see a positive outcome until after treatment ends. And you deserve that chance.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 6 months ago by  colleencasey.

Keep Hoping,

This is something you can do, perhaps to alleviate some anxiety. Do you have any people you are close to…that you see fairly often? Family members, boy/girlfriend, kids, pets even?

I have suffered from depression for about 12 years now. It was tolerable at first, but I developed epilepsy about 5 years ago. To keep it under control, I have to be on meds that do not agree with me at all. They make me tired (I have CFS to begin with) nauseous, massive brain fog…they also make me depressed. Which is ironic because they double as mood stabilizers for BPD patients (I’m not BPD). So, for the last 5 years or so, the depression has been very bad. I can see why BPD people don’t take their meds. I hate them. If I had the added benefit of feeling really good periodically, I would be tempted to skip them as well.

Anyway, I learned from a Dr. a while back that sometimes, I need to check with my wife to see if she thinks a med (or in this case, treatment) is working. Because often times, we are showing improvement…but because everything we see, hear, and think about…is being passed through this “veil” of depression. Nothing is fully clear to a depressed person. And the thoughts we have, that we think are correct, often times are not. It’s not our fault…but it’s something we need to factor in. How much of this is possibly just the result of my depressed mind.

Therefore, if you have someone else around you can ask, they will probably notice things much faster than you. I’ve been depending on my wife for this for years now. And, she has been right every time. Because I am so hard on myself (I used to be dynamic, joyful, strong, now that I’m not, I get down on myself) I often don’t see any progress that is made. Because i’m living in a vacuum called depression. My wife, who is not, notices MANY things, that I don’t…until she points them out.

If you have anyone like that, it would be beneficial. Not just for TMS, but the rest of your life…it’s a good thing to know.

The other point I wanted to touch on, which I sort of started in an earlier post, is how TMS works….but I didn’t really give you the end of it…

How exactly does TMS work? The precise answer is, “We aren’t sure” lol. We know the mechanics, we know what tends to happen. But there are so many little in-between steps that even experts don’t fully understand. So, I noticed a change when I woke up the second day (meaning, after treatment one, right before treatment 2) then day 7, and then 16, and 20. I still have two more weeks left.

So, I noticed a difference, immediately, and then about every week I notice a leap forward. Now, if I were in your shoes, I would probably also find this discouraging. “Why is he making weekly progress, and I don’t see anything?”

The first answer to that is what I said above. Right now, you may be incapable of noticing small, yet meaningful changes. Someone close to you will probably catch them. I don’t want to dwell on this part, but some things to look for (even in minor amounts) : Bathing/shaving more often, looking more presentable, talking more, more eye contact, able to stay on topic in a conversation, appetite changes (up or down), sleep changes, any changes at all in your daily activities. If a person is totally alone, their best option is to keep a journal of everything they did that day. It doesn’t have to be extensive. It can just be Y/N or short answer, like this

What time did I wake/get up?
What time did I go to sleep?
Did I eat breakfast?
Did I eat lunch?
Did I eat dinner?
Did I make any important choices/decisions?
How many “things” did I get done? (Our mental “list” of things to do)
At any point today, even momentarily, did I stop thinking about depression?

But you really can’t be a good judge of yourself right now. I’ve seen it so many times. And I’ve lived it a couple. And when we are in this state, we are not reliable judges of ourselves. So empirical data is needed, or outside opinion.

What is probably concerning you most is actually the result of a terrible habit for all of us. I am no exception. I do it constantly. I’ve had to see a therapist for a few years bc I needed to relearn how to think about myself (I’m sick, on top of the depression) and at the root of much of my angst, was comparing. Comparing ourselves to others. I’ve done very well, very quickly. Your path seems slower, so your fear/anxiety kicks in. Fear that this is never going to end, fear that you will never be capable of being a good mom, fear that you are powerless, or that the only way out, is something you don’t want to do.

As a fellow person who has been extremely suicidal many times, I understand that feeling. And I would never lie to a person like that. You have dealt with enough. So, please believe me when I tell you that you cannot judge your own progress right now. It seems like the treatment hasn’t made any remarkable difference yet, so you are still having the same thought patterns. Self doubt, guilt, judging, comparing, anxiety about the future. When I read your posts, I can see all those patterns. I highly reccomend therapy if you haven’t tried it already and it’s within your means. Until I saw a therapist, I was totally unaware of many of the things I did, or patterns of behavior/thinking. Whether TMS is your savior or not…find someone you feel comfortable talking to, and just talk. Your depression may be chemical, your behaviors (for the most part) are learned, and practiced. Your thoughts, are learned and practiced. Unknowingly, every single day, we reinforce certain thoughts and behaviors. You’ve probably seen it on TV…the “buzz” words. For instance, almost every spring you will hear ALL the news outlets, mention, “Record Breaking Allergy Season.” Every year that passes, there are more allergens in the air…that’s all it is. It’s a record breaking allergy season because that’s the environmental phenomenon. Every year will be record breaking. But saying things like “Allergageddon” or whatever the buzz words will be in a couple weeks, is just a way of tying news coverage together in your head, it makes the issue seem larger than it actually is…it’s a deliberate reinforcing of a message or theory.

Depressed people are doing that in their head every day. Our buzz words? Worthless, nothing, pathetic, lonely, weak, unreliable etc. Every single day, your brain is bombarding you with thoughts like those, partially or totally bc of the depression, but when we do that, we are wiring our head to think that way. Just like everyone will soon be saying “Sneez-a-pocalypse” or whatever stupid word they choose, your brain catches the word “worthless” and off it goes. The TMS final results may change you clinically, but those thought patterns, by this point in our lives, have rutted themselves a comfy little groove. We can think of all the reasons we are worthless…all day long. But how quickly can we think of the reasons we have worth? For most of us, it’s not very rapid. The reason? We haven’t been taught that line of thinking (either from childhood or later on) and we definitely haven’t been practicing it. Try it (everyone is invited lol) How fast could you come up with 10 reasons you are worthless? How fast could you come up with 10 reasons you are valuable? I bet when you come up with the latter there is hesitation, and a “shrug” tone to how you said it. Like, “Maybe I’m valuable as a spouse?”That time difference, is not reflex, or cognition problems…it’s practice. We aren’t thinking about why we are valuable.

I’ve gone off on a bit of a tangent. I type too much sometimes, and I get up and down during it…so I sometimes get off track. But about your timing and progress. I know of people who did not even START to notice a difference, until the taper. I’ve heard of people (from the person who does my TMS) that didn’t notice anything until a month after the whole thing was done! Just all of a sudden, it caught up with them. No one’s progress here is relevant to yours. And even if that amount of time passes, and no one else notices a difference in you, and you don’t notice one in yourself, there is always more to do. Some people respond better when the treatment is administered on the right side of the head. They don’t know why. If you, or no one else, have noticed any difference at all by now, that may be something to talk to the Dr. about. Some places will switch sides for ya.

Even if that doesn’t work, there seems to me a difference in what machine is being used. Some people respond to the Neurostar (the one I’m using) some people respond to other mfrs. However, in reading about this phenomenon (I’m a “numbers” guy) I have never seen mentioned yet, that the results may have had nothing to do with the machine change, it may have been solely caused by the fact that a second treatment was administered.

So switching sides of the head, switching machines, or just continuing are all things that are (w/o knowing your situation) are all future possibilities. You aren’t “done” yet. And other people have responded like you, only to blast off on week 6.

My point is – You have one (or more lol) main responsibility right now. Just keep doing the treatments. Have someone else monitor you for changes. Talk to your Dr. about the right side possibility. And try to continue to think positively.

At this point in time, I’ve talked to and read about enough people to know that you may be healing at just the right pace your body needs. Comparing it to others progress rates, or other negative thoughts (I know it’s hard not to think them) is just doing yourself a disservice at this time. You are putting yourself through a whole scenario that has not, and may not ever, occur. You are enduring the mental pain, anxiety, frustration, guilt, confusion as if it was happening….but the situation, hasn’t actually happened. So, why are we making ourselves suffer through it? We will suffer through it if/when it actually happens. I think it was a famous writer/poet (Twain?) who said (summary) “The worst things in my life, never even happened.” He put himself through a lot of angst, over a reality that was never even realized!

Try to take this time as your own. Worry about things as they actually come. And in your timeline right now, dismissing this as a failure (that’s what you are fundamentally worrying about right?) is not only pessimistic, and unhealthy….but you are putting yourself through the hells of the “what if’s” that constantly plague us. “What if” it doesn’t work? Worry about that when you know…right now, you are just making your life harder by putting yourself through the what-ifs. You have plenty of time. I understand the concern, and the compulsion to worry about it. But you have close to a couple months before you know if it had an effect or not, and hopefully other options to try from there (unless you decide to try them now). The war is not lost. The battle isn’t even lost, and just by being here and posting, I can see that you are still on the horse! From an outside perspective, it appears as though the battle is simply not going how you imagined. I think it’s safe to say that very few people here were accurate with there predictions about exactly how this battle would go. That happens to all of us. Just keep fighting.

Viva la revolucion.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 6 months ago by  Buddy.

Keep-hoping,

What you are describing is the comparing phenomenon…I think you see that now.

If it helps at all, my progress has all been in bursts. But I describe it that way, because I don’t notice anything for a while, and then one day I wake up and notice that I feel differently.

But the fact that I’m describing it that way may be misleading to you. I didn’t wake up after the first treatment and feel cured. I felt “different.” My vision was different, my hearing, music etc. It was a noticeable change, but that type of change only happened once. I didn’t seem as anxious, but I’m really not sure. I noticed I wasn’t thinking about dying that day….

After the 7th treatment, I noticed I felt a little happier. But “happier” (I’m realizing this as I think about it) doesn’t mean the same thing to me as it may to you. You may imagine I was smiling and full of joy. No, I just noticed that things that bothered me before, I wasn’t thinking about as much (the fact that I can’t work, how much I hate these seizure pills etc) So, it’s an increase in my overall level of happiness, and from where I was, it feels dramatic, even though it’s incremental.

After #16 my wife said I started talking a bit more, after #20 (I think) I myself realized I was looking people in the eye more.

The point is, if I compare my progress with some other people, I could get discouraged. I’m almost done…there are many people who are outpacing me with progress with TMS. But that has nothing to do with me. It’s not really any different than if I tell you Wellbutrin XL 300mg a day was a life saver for me, almost immediately (I can’t take it now bc of the epilepsy). Assuming it works for you, it’s unreasonable to expect that you would respond just as quickly. Your brain has it’s own stuff going on, it works at it’s own pace…not the pace of other people.

Like I mentioned, you are worrying yourself into a lather, over something that hasn’t even happened yet, and very well may never happen. Why punish yourself like that? I’m sure your life is filled with plenty of real time stuff to worry about. Carrying extra burdens is just going to make things even harder on you.

There are 3 things that have really had an impact during my 12 years or so of depression. Wellbutrin, Talk Therapy, and TMS. Wellbutrin is different for everyone. TMS is different for everyone. But I’ve never met anyone who didn’t benefit from talk therapy. Seeing everything through this cloud of depression, we miss a lot. That trained 2nd party is immensely helpful in pointing out areas where our thought patterns betray us.

Hopefully this course of TMS will do it’s thing. When it does, you will look back on these posts and see exactly how much unnecessary pain, and worry you are just dumping onto yourself. You’re sick, you are trying your best. The last statistics I read said that 1/3 of TMS patients go into complete remission (from depression). 1/3 experience temporary relief and need more treatments. 1/3 don’t experience anything at all.

You are worried you are in that last 3rd. However, EVEN IF, you end up being in that 1/3, the next time you do it, you start over again. Very few people will NEVER respond to the treatment. Like I said, you have time, you have options.

But your depressed brain is just looking for something negative and scary to latch onto. That is where it feels most comfortable, because it’s well practiced. So it will skip over the good, and attach to the negative, so that it can run it’s favorite patters in your head. Remember I mentioned the cloud of depression through which we perceive everything? That cloud, often functions like a filter, blocking the good,joyful,happy but anything at all negative, your brain is like “Come on in, you’re the next contestant on “I’m a shitty person!” Then you start to think “Nothing will ever help, I’m a bad person, I’m trapped, I’m helpless.” None of that is true. Your brain is, quite literally, picking and choosing what it wants to see/think about, but in the depressed state, it only sees the bad. I’ve experienced it twice…depression “remission” I guess you would call it. Both time, when I looked back on what I was thinking a couple months before the relief, I realized that ALL of my thinking during that time…was wrong! Factually, perceptively, mentally, emotionally…all of it. Everything i though during those really dark times…wasn’t even close to accurate.

You must learn to distinguish the difference between “I am” and “I feel.” Because the things that you ARE, are probably mostly positive. What you FEEL right now, is mostly negative. “I’m a terrible person” < highly unlikely. “I’m helpless” < with very few exceptions, probably not. “Nothing will ever help!” <there is no way for you to even know that. “I’m trapped” < almost never is this the case. You feel trapped (and all the above) because you are creating barriers. You have put yourself in a little box, with walls that you have created in your head. Of course you feel trapped. I’ll give you an example. I had to stop working altogether bc of the Fibro, CFS, and seizures. I’m a 37 yo man. I look young, strong and healthy. But during that period, I would swear to you I was trapped. What am I doing to do? I can’t work anymore, I’v been trying and failing hard for 7 years. Oh me oh my, what is a man to do? I was stuck. The world was ending. A therapist helped me to realize how epically stupid I was being. I sold my biz for $90K. We budgeted a little tighter and we were fine.

But I was trapped….nope. I wasn’t. I FELT trapped. And because I FELT trapped, that rolled into, “I AM trapped.” When one is running around like Chicken Little yelling “They sky is falling, the sky is falling” they generally aren’t thinking clearly, or looking around to see what is ACTUALLY happening. It’s like our brain becomes this fantasy land, in that, nothing in it is real. You most likely are not, any of the things you are thinking. You FEEL that way. Learning how to separate the two will go a long way into helping you make progress.

Depressed people are often told that they can’t control it. That’s a fallacy, and often makes people feel helpless. It takes all your power away, to hear that it’s not something you can help. I understand what the people mean, but the wording isn’t right. What depressed people should be told is that it isn’t their fault, they didn’t choose this. And holy cow are they not alone. But they CAN influence (mildly control) some aspects of it. And often times, just that little bit, can make a huge difference.

You ever hear the expression (or use it like me lol) “I can’t turn my brain off?” It’s because their is a race track in your head, that your brain LOVES to drive. It LOVES it, craves it…it actually seeks it out. Your depressed brain, every day, is actually looking for a vehicle to drive on it’s favorite little race track in your head. “I forgot to pay a bill,” “I forgot to give my kid lunch money,” “I missed a dr. app.”

Any of that…your brain picks it up, and vroom vroom, the negativity race in your head begins. Often times running all day, and all night. Till that vehicle is out of gas, and it grabs another one. Or maybe it sees a vehicle it likes better. So it will drive that one till it’s out of gas. Sometimes, it’s several vehicles at once.

No matter what outside aids we use, be it TMS, or meds, we have to learn a couple key things. 1. We have to stop letting our depressed brain pick what vehicles to drive around in our head. 2. We have to pave different tracks (thought patterns, I’m getting a little deep in the analogy lol) The old ones are ugly, full of traffic and noise. We can build new ones, we’ve just never thought about it.

Visualizing the above can actually be quite helpful. You have a favorite car/bike etc? If not, find one. Also you need a car that you hate. You have a favorite type of road/travel experience. Also a least favorite.

Every time a negative thought happens and your brain wants to take it and run, give it a good thought, imagine the nice new roads it will travel. The stops it will make, the scenery. And every time you do that, you reinforce that new road (thought process lol) Some people like to have a list of different cars they drive for different reason. E.g. My daughter told me she loved me…that’s a VW beetle type of ride (if your a woman. If your a man, step out of the car immediately lol.) Or my husband told me I’m attractive/cute, that’s more of an expensive Mercedes kind of thought. Just have fun with it.

Don’t forget your seat belt.

I just wanted to add something since we are talking about the cognitive aspect of this disorder. And this may apply more to me than other people but, I think understanding the concept is helpful.

I struggle with feelings of guilt, a lot. I’m a hardcore drug addict, a poly-drug addict actually. I’ve been clean for many years, but 15 years ago (I’m stealing the following line but I can’t remember from where) I was as pitiable a soul as you could ever meet. I have had relapses. I deal with a lot of very dark stuff from my childhood. Extreme physical abuse. Fortunately for me and the rest of the kids there, it wasn’t sexual. But as a 5 year old, I saw more violence than many people see in their entire life. Extreme violence. The first (first!) fight I saw in which one person tried to stab the other, I was 5. And I was standing 8 ft away as the mother (my babysitter) pulled out a huge screwdriver and tried to stab her son, several times. Unsuccessfully thank goodness, but he ran out the door, she threw a vase at him that smashed on the wall, she then kicked me down the steps. Which wasn’t surprising, that was a regular occurrence. I don’t know how a person, ANY person, can kick a child down their stone stairs and watch them “pinball” off the walls. But I’m sure you can imagine, if this woman was willing to stab her own son, how she treated the rest of us. It was a terrible place to be, and unfortunately, I was there for a long time. I saw many things that I will never get to “unsee.” I’m not blaming my later drug use on that period of time, but I’m sure it didn’t help. However, I’m also sure it could have been worse.

Anyway, feelings of guilt…or when I think of things from “the babysitter’s” we can often try to put it out of our head. Or with FMS, I have pain daily….you just try to put it out of your head. But as many of us have found, even though we are trying, we aren’t successful.

The White Bears Study is extremely helpful with this. This is not the actual study, it explains the study and comments on the results. I feel it’s more pertinent. I’m sure you can google the original. But this is pretty thorough

http://www.apa.org/monitor/2011/10/unwanted-thoughts.aspx

Here is an excerpt from the above page that explains what I’m talking about in a nutshell. But I encourage everyone to read that page. The results will amaze you….

“”Try to pose for yourself this task: not to think of a polar bear….

Don’t think about a Polar Bear

Think of anything else…

and you will see that the cursed thing will come to mind every minute.”
That observation comes from “Winter Notes on Summer Impressions,” Fyodor Dostoevsky’s 1863 account of his travels in Western Europe. But the research that proved it true came more than a century later, from the lab of social psychologist Daniel Wegner, PhD.
Wegner, a psychology professor at Harvard University and the founding father of thought suppression research, first came across the quote more than 25 years ago.
“I was really taken with it,” he said in a talk at APA’s 2011 Annual Convention. “It seemed so true.”
He decided to test the quote’s assumption with a simple experiment: He asked participants to verbalize their stream of consciousness for five minutes, while trying not to think of a white bear. If a white bear came to mind, he told them, they should ring a bell. Despite the explicit instructions to avoid it, the participants thought of a white bear more than once per minute, on average.”

Thought suppression is a tricky thing. The more you tell yourself NOT to think of something, the more you think about it. So I tell myself every day, the pain isn’t that bad. Don’t think about the pain etc. It doesn’t work. The harder you try NOT to think about it, the more you will think about it.

My therapist taught me this trick (as you will see, I highly recommend seeing a licensed Therapist). When I want to stop thinking something…I ACTUALLY let myself think it. Seems counterintuitive no? Indeed it does, but it works. The secret is to let your self think it. Don’t beat yourself up about it, don’t try and stop it. But you must do two things. 1. You must realize that the thought is just like I mentioned above. It’s the race track that your brain loves to drive, because your brain is not healthy right now. It has no bearing on you as a person. 2. You must change your activity, location or something. Your brain will follow your body. If your body changes activities, or you put it in motion, or move to another room, or get the mail, ANYTHING. The thought will dissipate in about 12 seconds. And due to the new stimuli, whatever that is, it will tend to pick up a new thought.

Most people’s brains can only concentrate hard on a thought for 12 seconds before the brain will shuffle and switch gears. Your brain CAN stay on the same topic…we learn how to do that in school. What we are doing now though, is taking advantage of the brains natural inclination to process/drop …process/drop.

So if the thought comes up, pay it no mind. Yes, you know it’s there, you know it’s happening, you know you don’t want it to. The best way to stop it is to just allow it, and put your body in motion. The brain will follow the body. The thoughts tend to dissipate very quickly. But you have to learn to acknowledge they are there, and not feel guilty about it.

It’s exactly like the white bear study above. The more I tell you not to think about a white bear, the more you are going to think about it. It’s the same with thoughts. The harder you try NOT to think about something, the more you will think about it. You are almost literally telling yourself, “Don’t think about a white bear, don’t think about a white bear.” The more you do that, the more you will think about white bears.

It’s very similar to falling asleep. The more you TRY to fall asleep, the harder it becomes.

The brain is very smart, and the control center of the entire body. However, it is PART, of a larger system, that must answer to the other parts. So we can use a little body “judo” to make the brain switch gears.

Think about it….trying to make the brain switch gears by reasoning with it as to why we should not be thinking what we are thinking…you are trying to use your brain, to try to defeat your brain. All that is happening now is you are SUPER thinking about whatever it is you don’t want to think about. Use your body, to defeat your brain.

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