Table of Contents
1 – Let the river run—do nothing!
Racing thoughts are like a river.
Try to stop it and you’ll be swept away.
Stay on the bank, observe its flow and you are safe from the current.
This is the technique that now works best for me.
But this is easier said than done. I know!
It takes practice but, slowly, you become more and more comfortable with your racing thoughts to the point that you totally ignore them!
Because what you resist persists.
The more you fight your racing thoughts, the more they fight back.
The more you try to get rid of them, the more stubborn they become.
The key to controlling your racing thoughts is letting go of the desire to control them.
This is what I’ve found to be the best approach to overcoming anxiety.
The other benefit of doing nothing is that you send a signal to your brain that there is nothing to be fixed.
You’re OK.
You can get on with your life and…
2 – Do what you would be doing without the thoughts
If you were not experiencing racing thoughts right now, what would you be doing?
How would you spend the next hour of your life?
Do that.
An engaging activity will disrupt your racing thoughts.
And if you say: ‘I would be sleeping!’, don’t try to fall asleep.
Do the next thing that’s available on your list.
What would you do if you didn’t feel like going to bed?:
- Go to goodreads.com and discover your next read?
- Read or write a poem?
- Watch a documentary about someone you admire?
- Go through old family photos?
3 – Journal
Journal, journal, journal.
Get those racing thoughts out onto the paper.
They are not inside you anymore.
You took them out and you’re now looking at them from a perspective.
See them for what they are.
You’ll see that thoughts generate thoughts.
This is what the mind does and that’s OK!
You may wish to answer this question (or may not):
Can you do something about it?
If so, what, when, how?
Is there anyone who could help you?
Journal, journal, journal.
4 – Stretch or microStretch!
Are you experiencing racing thoughts when trying to sleep?
Get off your bed now and practice these 8 stretches.
Or you may wish to try microStretching!
Microstretch is a very light gently stretch that goes up to 30% – 40% of a maximum perceived stretch.
You hold a microstretch for 60 seconds.
Dr Nikos Apostolopoulos, the founder of Stretch Therapy and microStretching, says:
Flexibility work, if done properly, has a calming effect. A lot of my patients are taught to stretch before they go to sleep.
When you prepare your body for sleep through [gently] stretching, you’re helping your body recover and regenerate.
The key is in the word gently:
You don’t want to generate any form of pain or discomfort especially before you go to bed.
Dr Apostolopoulos who also works with athletes says:
It has been suggested that the best time to stretch is just before the athlete goes to sleep, ensuring a greater recovery from training or competition due to the natural activation of the parasympathetic nervous system.
Want to give microstretching a go?
Download Dr Apostolopoulos’ paper which induces 7 microstretches with pictures and instructions below:
I interviewed Dr Apostolopoulos to get the best answers right from the source. Here’s the full one-hour interview with him in which he explains microStretching, stress, anxiety, recovery and regenerative sleep.
If you don’t have the time to watch the full interview here are some top takeaways:
- If you want to enter a relaxation state, your stretching should be gentle! DON’T force yourself to feel the stretch. Stretch to 30% – 40% maximum. Discomfort and pain will only overstimulate your brain and body and create more inflammation and stress.
- Hold the stretch for 60 sec and while you’re stretching breathe deeply. Deep breathing is the other way you can set yourself up for deep sleep.
- Switch off your phones and computers at least 1 hour before you go to bed. Avoid physical exercise or any activity that will overstimulate your mind and body.
- The first 2 hours of sleep are the most important for recovery and regeneration. It’s when we enter those low-frequency delta waves that promote recovery. To get those delta waves you have to prepare yourself for sleep and rest. Read a book, stay away from the TV, switch off all those lights at home.
An unusual tip by Dr Apostolopoulos: Use a pair of earplugs 1 hour before you go to bed. Listen to your heart and breathing the same way a baby listens to his mom’s heart and breathing while still in its mom’s belly. 😲
5 – Breathe deeply (but don’t explode!)
Deep belly breathing activates your vagus nerve, the longest and most complex of the cranial nerves.
The vagus nerve interfaces with the parasympathetic control of the heart, rest and digest.
But when you breath deeply, you shouldn’t feel discomfort or struggle to breathe!
Most of us take this tip too seriously, and we move from shallow breathing to the other extreme, ie. uncomfortably deep breathing!
Don’t practice deep breathing now expecting to feel better later.
You can feel and enjoy this exercise from the very first deep breath.
This applies to all exercises, meditation, yoga, breathing, etc.
Remember microstretching?
All you need is some gentle and focused practice, no matter what the practice is.
6 – Talk things out with someone
Talk to a friend or someone who can offer an attentive ear.
Don’t keep all your worries bottled up inside.
Talk to a coach who’s good at listening.
Someone who has your best interest at heart can offer a new channel for you to fuel your thoughts.
The exercise of explaining to someone what’s going on can put an end to your racing thoughts.
A soul-to-soul conversation will calm your mind-chatter.
A friend’s fresh perspective can give a new meaning to what you perceive as a problem.
This is what usually happens when my coaching clients explain their bigs problems to me:
Client: Blah blah blah…
Me: And?
Client: Blah blah blah…
Me: And?
Client: That’s the problem!
Me: What problem?
Client: Isn’t this a problem?
Me: I don’t see any problem.
Client: Oh, actually, you’re probably right…
7 – Take a cold shower
Cold water will calm your racing thoughts and will offer immediate relief from heightened cortisol levels.
Because when you splash cold water on your skin, your brain goes like:
Hey, what’s going on here?
Where’s all this stimulation coming from?
I’ll carry on with my racing thoughts later but let me first take care of this shock!
Cold water exposure activates the sympathetic nervous system, increases blood flow to the brain and blood levels of endorphins such as beta-endorphin and noradrenaline.
Cold water also helps calm systemic inflammation, which is strongly linked to depression.
Also, because your skin has far more cold receptors than warm receptors, sudden exposure to cold water sends a huge amount of electrical impulses from peripheral nerve endings to the brain, stimulating it in such a manner that it produces an antidepressant effect (a bit like electroshock therapy or acupuncture).
8 – Practice the Contact Points Exercise
If you have experienced trauma or you feel extremely stressed, simply observing and acknowledging your racing thoughts may not work for you.
Because thoughts sometimes can be too painful!
In some cases, a mindfulness-based approach (let the river run) can make things worse.
If you’re feeling extremely anxious practice the Contact Points Exercise developed by Georgetown University Professor, Elizabeth Stanley:
- Find a comfortable place to sit, preferably in a chair, with your feet flat on the ground.
- Notice the contact between your feet and the ground, your butt and the chair, your lower back and the chair.
- Notice the feeling of being supported by the chair and ground without you having to do anything at all.
- As you notice this support, briefly scan your body for any places holding tension or tightness. In particular, check your brow, jaw, neck, and shoulders.
- Without trying to make anything particular happen, see if by bringing attention to those places, the tension shifts. It may or may not, but either outcome is perfectly fine.
- Now, bring your attention back to the physical sensations of contact between your body, the chair and the ground.
- Give your body and mind time to settle and relax feeling this support by the chair and the ground.
- If your attention wanders off, just notice it and gently guide it back to this place of contact.
- Keep feeling the chair and the ground supporting you without you having to do anything at all.
- Notice now if anything has changed in you. Do you feel anything different in the body or the mind?
- These moments you spend allowing your body and mind to settle really help regulate your nervous system.
The best way to practice this exercise is by listening to the guided recording below.
It will take you only 5 minutes!
Why is this technique effective for those with acute stress response?
Here are four reasons:
- Your body is always in contact with something so you have a portable tool to use anywhere and any time your mind goes crazy.
- By noticing whenever your attention wanders and then nonjudgmentally choosing to redirect your attention back to the sensations of contact, you strengthen your attentional control (which is an exercise against racing thoughts).
- When you focus on sensations of contact (rather than painful or racing thoughts), you focus on something neutral that doesn’t amplify negative emotions.
- The support you feel by the ground and the chair sends a signal to the survival brain and nervous system that you’re grounded, stable, and safe. In turn, the survival brain decreases brain hyperactivity and stress arousal.
9 – Use the Gouws Technique
This is a technique developed by my friend and famous clinical psychologist and hypnotherapist, Jacques Gouws.
It’s perfect for those who can’t fall asleep because of their racing thoughts.
Close your eyes, focus on your eyelids, pretend they are a screen, picture the number 100, next to it picture the letter A, then start going down in 3s while going forward in the alphabet like this:
- 100-A
- 97-B
- 94-C
- …
If you lose track, start over, don’t get frustrated at mistakes.
It is designed to occupy the whole brain thinking function which stops your mind spinning.
‘It takes practice, but once mastered, many people tell me they fall asleep before reaching the 70s, some even before the 80s’, Dr Gouws says.
If you make it all the way to end of the alphabet, work back in reverse.
I think I only ever had a handful of people who got that far, for them I changed to 1000-A and deducting 13, 987-B, 974-C etc. that did the trick, Dr Gouws said.
10 – Don’t think your way out of your racing thoughts
We cannot think our way out of our racing thoughts, stress or anxiety.
Can you guess why?
Because this will create more thinking!
Don’t try to understand why you’re having racing thoughts.
Don’t try to give yourself the right thought (I thought you wanted less of that!) that will stop your racing thoughts.
For those of us who rely heavily on our intellect as we move through the world, we have a lot of habits around thinking our way through the situation:
- calling up gratitude
- throwing positive self-talk
- reframing the situation
- turning to creative problem solving, etc.
But these things actually are NOT helping the mind and body to recover.
The thinking brain is not responsible for whether we recover or not.
Because, think about it.
When you got stressed in the first place, you didn’t think about it:
Oh, I need to get stressed now in order to run away from this threat and survive!
So, what makes you think that you can calm yourself down by thinking about it?
Just like stress arousal is a survival brain’s job, the threat appraisal process is going on unconsciously.
Recovery is a survival brain’s job.
And the survival brain will not start the recovery process unless it’s sure you’re safe.
No matter how much you’re trying to convince your survival brain that you’re safe, it will NOT listen to you.
The survival brain will do its job and start recovery ONLY when it perceives you to be safe.
Most of us when we’re stressed the first thing we do is we’re trying to fix it, we’re thinking what we can do differently!
That’s all thinking brain activity and it’s not gonna help the mind and body recover.
And it can get worse if we expect that these thoughts will calm our nervous system down.
So, next time you’ll feel anxious, drop all the gratitude and positive self-talk techniques.
Have an ice-cream instead! 🍨
A Reminder: You are NOT a racing-thoughts person
You may have racing thoughts but that doesn’t mean you’re a racing-thoughts person.
You may experience anxiety but you’re not an anxious person.
Please, don’t take it personally (as much as you can).
It’s our conditioning that’s playing out.
Don’t identify with what you’re experiencing.
Don’t make it about you.
When you choose not to take it personally, you can interrupt your conditioning.
You have the power to choose something else to believe about yourself.
Racing thoughts cannot define who you are.
Racing thoughts are just thoughts.
And all thoughts come and go away.
4 replies on “10 Ways to Stop your Racing Thoughts”
Best hour I’ve spent since finishing Deepak Chopra 21 day meditation course. He is amazing that Dr Nikos Apostolis. It makes so much sense with issues I’ve been facing but haven’t been able to find a cause yet.He is also well named 😉
Angela, thank you for your comment. If I may ask, what are the issues you’re talking about? I might be able to help. Be well, Angelos
Stretching at 30-40% of capacity is a new one for me!
I’ll have to try that, relaxing in that manner sounds great!
This is a new one for me Shaggy! Glad you found it useful. 😉