Wondering How to Stop Thinking About Something? That Might Be the Wrong Question
I'm a psychologist who teaches people to stop avoiding their uncomfortable thoughts. And for the past several months, I have been earnestly trying to avoid one of mine. 😜🤦🏼♀️
I had a weekly Zen meditation practice for years — a sangha, a community of people who gathered every Sunday morning to sit and meditate together. Then life got full. Travel, family visits, a new relationship. And I just kind of quietly stopped showing up. No dramatic exit. Just drift.
I felt guilty about it. I knew it didn't sit right with me. And then I ran into one of the group members at a networking event. He mentioned how much the group had missed me. I squirmed on the inside, smiled and said something vague about being busy on the outside, and walked away. And then I kept trying not to think about it.
Maybe you know exactly what that's like — something you don't want to think about that keeps finding its way back into your mind. If you’ve ever lost sleep doing battle with a thought that seems intent on sticking around, no matter how hard you try to push it away, there's actually a reason it keeps coming back. And understanding why is the first step toward freeing yourself from the struggle.
Prefer to watch? Here's the full video:
Why Pushing Thoughts Away Makes Them Louder — And What to Do Instead | Dr. Stephanie Best
Why Trying to Stop Thinking About Something Makes It Louder
Here's the honest truth about avoiding uncomfortable thoughts: it works. In the short term, not thinking about something genuinely reduces discomfort. That's why we do it.
The problem is, it doesn't resolve anything. The thought doesn't disappear — it goes underground for a while, starts taking up space in a different way, and then surfaces again feeling even heavier than before.
The research on thought suppression is pretty clear on this. The more energy we spend trying to push a thought out of our minds, the more we have of it. Want to experience this firsthand? Set a timer for 30 seconds and try not think about a purple platypus. Whatever you do, don't think about one.
I'll wait . . . ⏳
Right. All it takes to make something ever-present in your mind (or, at best, pressing in from the edges) is to tell yourself not to think about it. The thought you're trying hardest to avoid is often the one that takes up the most space.
What's Actually Happening When You Can't Stop Thinking About Something
In Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (or ACT) — the approach I use in my clinical work — we call this experiential avoidance. It's the tendency to avoid your own internal experience: thoughts, feelings, memories, and physical sensations that feel uncomfortable or unresolved.
It's not a character flaw. The mind is genuinely good at protecting us from things that feel too heavy to deal with right now. That's one of its key features, and it’s actually adaptive . . . up to a point. The trouble comes when the cost of avoidance quietly exceeds the cost of the thing we're avoiding — and we don't notice it happening until we're carrying more weight than we need to.
In my case, I wasn't just avoiding an awkward social situation. I was avoiding the recognition that I'd drifted from something that had mattered to me, and from people I'd genuinely cared about. The thought that kept coming back wasn't random noise. It was important information, a signal.
That distinction matters. When you're desperate to figure out how to stop thinking about something, it's worth pausing on that question rather than simply pushing harder to answer it. What is that thought really trying to tell you?
One Concrete Move That Actually Helps
So what do you do with a thought you've been trying not to think?
You don't have to solve the problem attached to the thought today. You don't have to act on it right away. You just have to stop pretending it isn't sitting in the room with you.
One move from ACT that I use with clients — and clearly need reminders about myself 😜 — is to notice and name the thought. Instead of pushing it away or getting pulled fully into it, you step back slightly and label what's happening:
"I'm having the thought that . . ."
"The story my mind keeps telling me is . . ."
This might sound small. But if you can notice a thought, you cannot be the thought. That tiny bit of distance changes things. It opens up space to be curious instead of reactive, to consider what the thought might be pointing toward, to choose how you want to respond rather than just defaulting to avoidance again.
In my case: “I'm having the thought that I owe those people a real goodbye.” OR “The story my mind keeps telling me is that I'm a bad person for disappearing.” Stepping back in this way gives me perspective. I can be more curious about the thoughts, less judgmental, more compassionate. I can see them for what they are: thoughts, not facts — no more, no less. I can also see what’s underneath them. A hidden value I'd been missing while taking the thoughts at face value. And a seedling awareness of what I might actually want to do about it.
Thoughts are not facts. But they're often signals. And the ones we work hardest to ignore tend to be the ones most worth pausing on.
You Don't Have to Have This Figured Out
You don't have to have this figured out. You just have to stop pretending the thought you’ve been avoiding isn't there — because that's the part that's actually exhausting you.
Pick one thought you've been pushing away. Not the hardest one — start somewhere accessible. And instead of trying to make it disappear, try saying: "I'm having the thought that . . ." and just let it be there for a moment.
That's the step.
If you want a gentle, structured way to start practicing sitting with discomfort instead of running from it, I made a free 15-minute guided meditation specifically for this. It's a good first move — and it's free. Link below.
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I'm a psychologist who teaches people to stop avoiding their uncomfortable thoughts. And for the past several months, I have been expertly, masterfully avoiding one of mine.
Hi, I'm Dr. Stephanie Best. I teach fellow members of Club Human how to use mind-body wellness to loosen anxiety's grip, live courageously, and build lives they love.
So, I had a weekly Zen meditation practice for years. I went to a sangha — a community of people who meditate together — every Sunday morning for a long time. And then life got full, as it does. I had a lot of travel, trips out of town, family coming into town, a new relationship. I just kind of quietly stopped showing up. It wasn't really intentional at first. There was no dramatic exit. It was just drift. I bet you can relate to this in your own busy life.
I really hadn't gone for a long time. I was feeling pretty guilty about it, because I had felt warm and close with these people and I just kind of disappeared — and I knew it didn't sit right with me. And then one day I was at a networking meeting of other therapists and I ran into one of the members of my meditation group who happens to also be a therapist. He came up and I was genuinely delighted to see him, but I also felt embarrassed, and my mind started chattering at me. He mentioned the group and how they missed me and hadn't seen me in a while. He had a puzzled look on his face — puzzled by my disappearance. I smiled and said something vague about being busy, and walked away. And then I kept trying not to think about it.
Maybe you've had this experience too — where there's something you don't want to think about that keeps popping into your mind. Here's the thing: I'm a psychologist. I teach people to stay present with discomfort. And I have been successfully — well, somewhat successfully — avoiding this particular discomfort for months. Or trying to. That's not hypocrisy. That's being human.
The mind is very good at protecting us from thoughts that feel unresolved, or socially awkward, or just too much to deal with right now. And that's the thing — avoidance seems to work. It really does work in the short term. That's why we do it. Short-term, not thinking about something genuinely reduces discomfort. The problem is it doesn't resolve anything, and it just adds weight over time — because the thought doesn't disappear. It goes underground for a while, and then it starts taking up space in a different way, and then it pops up again. And when it pops up, it feels even heavier.
The research on thought suppression is quite clear on this. The more we try to suppress a thought — the more we try to get rid of it — the more we have of it.
In Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT — the type of therapy that I practice — we call this experiential avoidance. Because psychologists love to come up with fancy terms. But it's really about avoiding your own internal experience, your own experience of being a human. And the cost of it is almost always higher than the cost of the thing we're avoiding.
If you haven't recently had this experience of thought rebound, here's a quick way to experience it yourself. Think about the last time you thought of a purple platypus. Maybe you've never thought of a purple platypus. Set a timer on your phone and for 30 seconds, challenge yourself not to think about one. Try it out and let me know in the comments what you find. I think you'll find that you see purple platypuses everywhere — even though maybe you've never thought of one before. All I have to do to make them ever-present in your mind is tell you not to think of one.
So how do we get out of this very human tendency? Well, we can't eliminate it entirely. Thoughts are going to keep trying to come up and hook us. But one concrete unhooking move is to notice the thought and name it. Simply notice and name it. Labeling it in this way creates a little distance from it. You might start by saying: "I'm having the thought that..." or "The story my mind keeps telling me is..."
In my case, it might be: "I'm having the thought that I should go back to the meditation group" — or — "The story my mind keeps telling me is that I'm a bad person for disappearing on them." And here's the thing — those are just thoughts. They're not facts. Thoughts are not facts.
And naming them in this way — "I'm noticing that I'm having the thought that..." — creates some distance between you and the thought. If you can notice a thought, you can't be the thought. And in that distance, there's more freedom. Freedom to be curious and less judgmental about the thought. Freedom to consider what might be at stake, what your mind is trying to tell you. Maybe there's a value of yours that you're crossing — which I think is the case for me. Freedom to choose differently. Freedom to maybe move differently than how you've been moving.
Maybe in my case it means reaching back out to that one member and just being open and genuine — saying, "I feel crummy. I hate the way I left you guys. You really meant a lot to me, and even though it's just not very convenient for me in my new life to fit this group in, I wish I would have let you know what you meant to me and said a proper goodbye." And maybe I could make time one Sunday to come back and tell them that in person.
It's okay. I'm human. I bet every single member of that community has had a similar kind of experience in their own life — trying to avoid some other social situation or thought they felt guilty about, judging themselves for it, when probably no one else involved is judging them nearly as harshly. And just labeling or noticing thoughts like this that you've been trying to avoid — you don't have to solve the issue related to the thought today. But if you stop pretending it's not sitting in the room with you, you'll be taking a powerful step toward lessening its control over you. And you'll see that you have other options.
So if this resonated with you, I made a free guided meditation that's a good first step toward sitting with what's uncomfortable instead of running from it. I'll link it in the description. It's only 15 minutes and it's a gentle way to start practicing this. Give it a try and let me know how it goes in the comments. Thanks for being here. I'll see you next time.
