Learn how to stop repetitive thoughts and get practical tips to help you quiet your mind.
Repetitive thoughts, or thoughts that circle round and round, are called rumination. The repetitive thoughts usually focus on the following:
why a situation is the way it is or the cause
what could happen because of the situation or the consequences
how or what the person is experiencing or the symptoms
For example, when something embarrassing happens, it’s unpleasant, which can result in thinking about the situation over and over after it is over. When you ruminate about something negative, it often feels like you can’t turn off the thoughts, which usually leads to feeling even worse. That’s how repetitive thoughts transform a situation from a regular human fumble into a big event that leaves you feeling emotionally spent, ashamed and regretful.
Here are some things that may lead to rumination:
Stressors (kids, work, relationships, money)
A traumatic event (chronic illness diagnosis, unexpected accident/loss, natural disaster)
Perfectionism
Low self-esteem
Facing a fear
Reminders of a past mistake or failure
2 Types of Rumination
Repetitive thoughts or ruminations with a quality of being obsessive are one of two types: reflective or brooding. Reflective rumination is a cycle of thinking focused on problem-solving. Brooding rumination is passively comparing your situation to a standard you haven’t attained.
Brooding usually leads to negative self-talk, which can then lead to a cycle of negative coping behaviors, such as pessimism, comparisons, worry, stress-related eating, drinking, over-exercise and the list can go on and on.
On the other hand, reflective rumination, while uncomfortable, is more forward-thinking. It involves thinking about changing the situation and relieving stress to get unstuck from the repetitive thought cycle.
How to Stop Repetitive Thoughts
1. Gratitude
Showing gratitude can seem far too simple, yet the research suggests that gratitude teaches repetitive thoughts. Practicing gratitude can lead to being more appreciative of difficult situations and lead to strategies that transform them into positive ones. Starting a gratitude practice is simple. It could be listing three things you’re grateful for in your day before you go to sleep, saying ‘thank you,’ or even smiling at someone who has helped you. Small gestures of kindness and appreciation can go a long way.
2. Body Scan
Body awareness can help you be in the present moment instead of focusing on the past, which is what repetitive thinking does. A body scan lets you locate your body in space and time and supports your ability to stay grounded in the present. Do a quick body scan the next time you notice thoughts cycling in your brain. You can start with your feet or at the top of your head. Pay attention to physical sensations – your feet, legs, torso, arms, neck and head will all feel slightly different. Allow the experience to ground you in the present moment and focus only on your body scan. You’ll notice that the repetitive thoughts are quiet as you give your brain a new task to focus on.
3. Meditation
Consistent meditators with long-term meditation practice report fewer instances of both rumination and depression. Meditating can help improve your emotional awareness by staying present and reducing your focus on regrets. Meditating also helps to strengthen self-compassion, which is essential when the repetitive thoughts focus on mistakes or negative situations.
4. Stop Overthinking
Many studies in the psychology literature show paying too much attention to your thoughts leads to distress. Most people who struggle with repetitive thoughts report their thoughts are about negative situations or evaluations of themself. Many repetitive thoughts are likely focused on shortcomings in your life, your ability to control your emotions, or relationships. Mindfulness can give you some mental space and reduce overthinking so you can transform it into increased self-awareness.
5. Self-compassion
Rumination is often focused on a negative interpretation of a situation and self-criticism usually follows, resulting in fueling the repetitive thought cycle. The antidote can be found in a self-compassion practice. The psychology research shows that a self-compassion practice makes it less likely that adverse situations will lead to repetitive thoughts and depression. Another benefit of self-compassion is it can help reduce overthinking by getting you outside of yourself and connecting you with others.
Conclusion
If you struggle with repetitive thoughts or rumination, the tips above can help you stop overthinking and break the cycle. The result is that you feel less isolated, so you can interrupt the cycle. The first step is to take action and break the cycle so you’re in control of your thoughts.
Have you heard this advice on how to practice self-acceptance?
love yourself regardless of your body
you need to love yourself and you’ll overcome your ‘trouble spots’ and learn to love them
you need to (fill in the blank – work harder, practice acceptance, stop focusing on the negative, etc.) a little more
If I had a penny for every time a client has told me some version of one of the statements above…
It seems that this type of advice makes logical sense. But the problem is that it treats your body as a thing or object you can easily change. It’s like you’re a sculptor and your body is a lump of clay easily shaped, molded and manipulated.
But you’re probably not a sculptor and your body isn’t easily changed either.
The reality is that you’re more than your body. Your mind and body can’t be separated, and as much as you may try to treat your body as if you can mold it at will, the further down the road of disappointment you’ll find yourself.
Developing a self-acceptance based on calm and clarity fuels a self-relationship that moves you to what you want in life.
Although you may have a guess, it’s impossible to know what someone is thinking or what their beliefs are when they remain private.
What isn’t private is another person’s body. You might even have a judgment or two based on your observation.
The boundaries between what is okay to comment, what is okay to wear, or even the acceptable language to describe the body are unclear in modern society. Yet, all of these things do communicate something.
We see this daily from pop stars wearing costumes as bare as the censors will allow, detailed discussions of their food choices and workout play-by-plays on social media to commercials selling the idea of, “I’m so bad eating this decadently sinful treat!”
Through your body, you experience life in shape, texture, color, vibrance, pleasure and pain. When you practice self-acceptance – all of your life – the “full catastrophe,” as Zorba said in the movie Zorba the Greek, you have a fantastic chance of being happy.
Who decides what’s acceptable?
We’re also bombarded with visual and mental images of the correct, most desirable, perfect shape to strive to become. It comes from the media, family, and cultural ideas about what’s best.
The question is, who’s in charge of deciding what this should be?
It is expected to make assumptions about who’s healthy and who isn’t based on snap judgments about appearance. Sometimes, you might even do this in your thoughts about your body.
One of the challenges in modern society is figuring out how to trust your self-knowledge when so much conflicting information is available.
There are too many choices, and coming at you fast makes you feel overwhelmed and unclear.
The good news is that the process of change is directly opposite!
Lasting change takes time.
Change requires you to disconnect from your judgments and instead allow yourself to be in a state of curiosity.
The most important place to start is self-acceptance. Don’t click away; that’s not code for “let yourself off the hook.” Let me explain… there’s more than meets the eye here!
Acceptance does NOT mean:
stagnation
giving up your goals
learning to love where you are right now regardless of your desire to change
Life is constantly moving and shifting and so are you. You can change your life, body, relationships, talk to yourself, and many more things at any time to practice self-acceptance.
Self-acceptance is a process.
What acceptance means will change over time as you grow. It means integrating where you are right now while focusing on the bigger goals you have for your life!
Acceptance aims to help you get from where you are today and point you toward greater consciousness and growth.
With the increased consciousness, you can thoughtfully plan with care and kindness.
The benefit is that the changes you make are more refined and speak to what you genuinely want…the possibilities are endless.
Making conscious change
Conscious change is a process that works best with a focused, step-by-step approach.
It can look like:
learning
integrating
experimenting with what works or what doesn’t
shifting and adjusting
acclimating to the new reality
When you lose sight of the big picture where patience, kindness, and acceptance reside, you can over-focus on specific results as proof of failure rather than a step toward creating the life you want.
Immediate results would be excellent; however, what you learn about yourself in the struggle to figure it out will help you get what you need – faster!
Ask yourself this question from time to time: how has your life improved, even when you make small changes?
Conscious change allows you to focus on small changes step by step. It helps keep you motivated so you continue adjusting your actions and continually iterate, even if it takes a while.
How people change
In the past 30 years or so, much research and development has been published about change, the process of change and what motivates people to change.
The Transtheoretical Model of Change was founded by James Prochaska and Carlo DiClemente (for more information, look here) and is systematically and practically applied with Motivational Interviewing, founded by William Miller and Stephen Rollnick (for more information, look here).
The Model of Change, while initially used to understand how to help people struggling with substance abuse stay on the road to recovery, has been expanded. Professionals in health, business, conflict resolution, etc., also find the stages helpful to understand how people make changes and what helps at each stage of change to stay on course.
For most people struggling with stress eating—those who have dieted and dieted and dieted and want to get off that particular merry-go-round—the insights about how people decide to change and what is necessary to pivot in another direction are helpful. Self-acceptance is a big part of it (for more information on the decision to change, look here).
Truly looking in the mirror and being transparent with where you are right now free you from evaluation and judgment so you can practice self-acceptance and make the change you need in your life.
There are three ways to do this – Knowing, Consciousness and Peace.
1. Knowing
You know that you have to do something differently for things to change and it’s painful to go through the process.
It’s complicated when you want things to change, whether it’s for your body to be different, your relationship with food to be different, or to feel like you can be present in the moment so you can change things.
A question that helps to narrow the focus is:
What is the most concrete thing that will lead to results you can see, feel, experience, and trust your self-knowledge so that you can practice self-acceptance?
Often, the answer reverts to a quick fix like a diet. “Six weeks to bikini ready” or “do this cleanse and break free from sugar cravings.” It’s enticing but not sustainable.
Ultimately, you know that these tactics don’t lead to long-term change. You want freedom from stress, stress eating, and burnout.
It’s a challenge to keep moving forward when the path is unsure and the changes you experience are ones you only feel from the inside.
Acceptance is the path to a long-term transformation of your relationship with your body, allowing yourself to begin where you are each day and keep moving forward.
2. Consciousness
Recognize where you are in the change process and decide to take action.
It takes grit to stay the course of the slow road to change.
If stress eating is what you want to change, every time you log on to social media, go to the grocery store, or even have lunch with a friend, you will be reminded that the process you have decided is best for you and it takes patience with yourself to stay on track.
Trust the process, notice how you’re different today than yesterday and celebrate your success by honoring yourself – moment by moment.
You are learning what you need to fuel your mind, body, and heart for the rest of your life.
3. Peace
Find what works for you and be confident in your changes so you can live with peace of mind.
Freedom is knowing that you’re in control of your life.
You can reach a point where you no longer unconsciously give your power away.
When you treat yourself with respect and love, you can open yourself up and getting stuck on short-term results becomes a thing of the past, and you can practice self-acceptance.
Self-acceptance is caring for yourself with kindness, love, and compassion.
Kindness is the pathway toward change.
Compassion is the fuel for a more peaceful and fulfilling life.
Self-acceptance ultimately leads to more self-love.
Conclusion
For too long, women, in particular, have accepted that feeling poorly about their bodies and disappointment in their lives is the norm. The implication that women should accept being unhappy is madness!
If you can take the leap of faith—that love, kindness and compassion are the fuel that will help you change and support you to be where you want to be in life—then you already have a robust and supportive foundation to accept yourself and live the joyful life you want!
Be calm and release stress with these 5 science-backed strategies.
Maybe you’re feeling stressed about the future, disappointed about a relationship, frustrated about your life’s direction, or all of the above. These emotions can lead to an activated sympathetic nervous system. This matters because it’s difficult to know how to release stress and become calm again when you feel stressed or anxious.
Calming stress or anxiety typically means that you’ve returned to your baseline level or your normal resting state, called homeostasis. Most people experience relief, fewer negative emotions, and a sense of well-being when they’re in this state.
Stress has so many negative consequences that learning strategies to calm emotions and think clearly about your needs can directly benefit your well-being.
Check out these simple and effective strategies to be calm – no matter what happens!
1. Mindfulness Skills
Mindfulness-based skills can reduce anxiety and depression, which are significant stressors in life. Sometimes, it’s a chicken or egg situation – did the stress lead to anxiety and depression, or does anxiety and depression lead to increased stress? Regardless of what happened first, mindfulness helps a lot of people. Mindfulness isn’t helpful for everyone and can result in negative experiences, so if you find it’s not for you, there are other options. But, it is a great tool to be calm and release stress when it works. Often, mindful meditations are guided, which helps you stay focused on your breathing and not on the thoughts that lead to more anxiety, depression, or stress.
2. Thought Stopping
It’s normal and even helpful to think about the difficulties in life. You might replay a horrible interaction you had with someone over and over again in your mind. Or you might keep going over your actions if the worst happened. This can help you figure out what you need to do to repair the hurt and hopefully prevent it in the future. But going over and over it like a stuck record at some point becomes rumination or uncontrolled repetitive thought cycles.
Unfortunately, it’s not always easy to stop. There is a saying, “neurons that fire together, wire together.” This means that your thoughts can become habits and it becomes easier for your brain to keep thinking similarly. So, it can be difficult when you decide to break out of negative thought patterns.
One of the best ways to stop repetitive thoughts is to shift the brain by focusing on something else. Forcing the brain to stop—rarely works, but action does. Your brain needs to have something to do for it to change. Distraction, changing what you pay attention to, can’t help but shift the focus. Taking a cold shower or walking briskly can grab your attention and work well. Science suggests that these strategies do help calm us down. You can also try other things – reading, watching a movie or video, calling a friend, engaging in an artistic hobby, or listening to music. There are many more, but the key is to find an activity that captures your attention (FYI, you may need to try several to find one that works).
3. Journal
Daily journaling about emotional experiences can result in minor and meaningful improvements in mental and physical health. Repetitive thoughts about the past, playing it over and over again in your head, is unhelpful; sometimes, writing about a painful experience helps to get it out of your head. This seems to be freeing and breaking the cycle, which might be why journaling can be helpful.
Other types of journaling can help increase your ability to be calm and release stress. Gratitude journaling is another journaling that the research shows is beneficial for your well-being. When you shift your focus to what you’re grateful for, you can decrease negative and increase positive emotions, making you feel calmer.
4. Yoga
Yoga has been a popular mental and physical wellness activity for many years. It can help with your physical well-being by increasing your movement. It increases your flexibility and relaxes tense muscles as well. It’s also a way to calm and relax the body and mind together. The calming effect of yoga, something practitioners have known for centuries, is confirmed by current research. Doing yoga regularly can lower cortisol levels, a hormone that increases when stressed. If yoga helps you feel good, it can also support your mind and body as you calm down stress and anxiety.
5. Practice Acceptance
Relaxation techniques like those described above can help to prevent and lower negative emotional experiences. However, for some people, they can paradoxically increase negative emotional experiences. Mindfulness, yoga, and journaling aren’t for everyone. Sometimes, the solution is to practice Acceptance and passivity (versus control) over the body and mind. This is to say that instead of focusing on the outcome – less stress- we need to focus on the process – do the calming or relaxing strategies improve your quality of life? For example, instead of taking deep breaths expecting an immediate result, ‘Am I calm yet,’ focus on being present, allow yourself to experience your emotions as they happen, and then resolve them in your own time.
In Sum
Sometimes, stress relief seems like a distant goal, but simplifying simplifies it. Practical tools that support being calm and releasing stress can be as simple as paying attention, shifting your attention, getting ‘it’ out of your mind, or even allowing yourself to accept that stress happens and feelings can be intense and diffuse. Tell me, which strategy do you think you’ll try?
Has anyone ever told you to stop overthinking things?
I know that I’ve heard it a few thousand times! That might be an exaggeration, but probably not! In this article, you’ll learn five simple steps that I take to stop overthinking and be present.
You’ll know if you’re overthinking when you experience repetitive and unproductive thoughts – like your mind is on a merry-go-round that keeps circling around and around. The challenge is that overthinking keeps you focused on one thing. That one thing is usually what you’re unsure about, and at the same time, you’re invested in a particular outcome – that you can’t control.
Since thoughts are focused in many different ways, the research has generally distinguished between rumination, which is focused on the past, and worry, which is focused on the future. No matter which word you use, overthinking tends to loop around the same thought, and there isn’t a resolution to what you’re overthinking. The overthinking loop keeps the cycle of thoughts running in your mind.
One of the most frustrating things about overthinking is that it doesn’t get you any further and is generally not helpful. An excellent way to know if you’re overthinking is when you recognize that you are stuck thinking about the same thing repeatedly, but your thinking doesn’t lead to a solution.
Overthinking tends to follow a pattern.
Re-evaluating the past
Rumination is the term often used by researchers, including repetitive thoughts about the past. Regrets (feeling wrong about an event or missed opportunity) and resentments (anger about an experience) also fit within this area. Many people are disappointed that they didn’t pursue a different path in life or are angry about how they were treated in a relationship. But I often hear in my practice when clients keep thinking about something they said. It might be second guessing how a comment might be perceived or judging themselves about a comment and feeling embarrassed about it. No matter what you’re overthinking about the past, the truth is that it’s not helping you to be present or confidently move toward your future.
Be in the present moment.
Does overthinking lead to being stuck today? Many people overthink the present, feeling like they’re in quicksand. You could question your choices and how they led to your current life circumstances, relationships, or work. Typically, this results in more stress and feeling less fulfilled in life.
Your relationship with yourself is based on your thoughts about yourself, your life and the people in the present moment. Do you let yourself experience your life positively or overthink and focus on perceived flaws and mistakes? If so, this is an opportunity to reassess where you are in the present moment so that you can choose your next steps.
Controlling the future
Overthinking your future is what’s usually described as worry. Worry can be either short-term or long-term. Short-term worry is something like not waking up when your alarm goes off two hours early to catch a flight or text anxiety – did I study enough or even the correct material? Long-term worries might be, will I have enough money and be healthy enough to enjoy my retirement?
Overthinking signals a problem
When overthinking happens, it’s a signal that there’s a problem and you don’t yet know how to solve it. You might have thoughts –
I’m not happy with my career. Is it the job or me?
Is my partner my soulmate or is a soulmate even a real thing?
Is there a way for me to feel confident about my finances?
While these are great questions to ask yourself, overthinking clouds or preventing you from making decisions that lead to answers, van Randenborgh and colleagues (2010) found that rumination- replaying thoughts from the past- negatively affects decision-making. Participants in their study found making decisions more difficult and feeling less confident in the decisions they made.
Research has found that negative thinking is strongly associated with overthinking. Another study found that future-focused worry is associated with increased anxiety and thinking ability. Lastly, research suggests that changing overthinking that leads to worry can reduce anxiety since they are interrelated.
How to Stop Overthinking
1. Relaxation techniques
Not only can overthinking increase stress and anxiety, but it can work in reverse – anxiety can lead to increased worry – it’s a bi-directional vicious cycle. A powerful way to interrupt the cycle is to use relaxation techniques. There are many relaxation techniques you can use. One way to relax is by engaging in physical activity like working out, walking, or practicing yoga. Another type of relaxation engages your mind and body, like taking deep breaths, practicing meditation, or guided imagery.
Then, there is relaxation, which helps you shift from overthinking to being in the present moment. These techniques could be reading a good book, watching an enjoyable moving, spending time outside, talking with a neighbor, friend, or family member journaling and the list could go on and on. When you notice that you’ve thought about the same thing more than once and it’s leading you to overthink that’s the time to stop, plan some relaxation time and shift your thinking.
2. Get some distance
Sometimes it’s good to put a little space between you and what’s on your mind. Mindfulness lets you step back from your thoughts and consider where you want to go. The ability to take an objective viewpoint of your thoughts is vital to stop overthinking them. When you overthink, you can become consumed by the issue you’re focusing on and lose perspective. When you realize that’s what’s happening, it’s helpful to future pace which is asking yourself, “Will this be important to me in a year, five years?”
3. Challenge yourself
When you challenge yourself, holding yourself accountable is more straightforward, so you can make changes as needed. Ask yourself, “Are these thoughts helpful to me?” When you have more awareness of overthinking, you can put it into perspective and choose how you’ll respond. A lot of the time overthinking is a way to pause taking action. We all have coping mechanisms, no matter how unhelpful they might be. Sometimes overthinking is a way to press the pause button and give yourself some space. Challenging yourself is one way to break through the overthinking noise and take action.
4. Fact or fiction?
Have you heard the phrase, “Thoughts are not facts?” But we all know that, at times, it can feel like they are stone-cold facts. Sometimes it’s helpful to remember exceptions. It’s human nature to make mistakes or deviate from a habit. Looking for exceptions is helpful when you realize that your thoughts aren’t helpful or reflect your reality. Sometimes reminding yourself that very few things are “always” one way or another can free you from overthinking.
5. Spend time with a pet
Most pets don’t seem to experience stress as humans do. They don’t think overthink about or are embarrassed by their behavior. They can show us how to live and enjoy the present moment!
Conclusion
Overthinking is not only unhelpful, but it can also actively harm your well-being by increasing stress, anxiety and negative emotional states. When you understand how overthinking functions in your life and how to stop it with the stress management skills above you have what you need to break free from the patterns that hold you back from living a fulfilling life!
Struggling with stress eating may go something like this…
If I could…
…find the right way to eat, I won’t have cravings.
…gain some more willpower, I would be stronger and I could resist my urges.
…detox from addictive/sugary foods, I would be free.
…stick with something long enough for it to take.
… get to the bottom of why I struggle with stress eating; I wouldn’t have a food problem.
What’s so wrong with this way of thinking?
These all seem reasonable if you buy into a diet mentality that focuses on food being the problem.
But when we’re working on healing stress eating from the viewpoint of Conscious Eating, it’s a whole other world out there!
Fortunately, it’s a world of helpful information, growth-oriented and focused on healing your relationship with yourself, food and your body.
Struggling with stress, eating isn’t about food.
The struggle with eating stress begins with a shift from focusing on food. Instead, developing a richer awareness of your emotions, what to do with them, and how to calm your mind and body is the pathway to long-term change, so you no longer need stress eating.
You probably have a pretty good idea about what “healthy” eating is. Since you’re reading this online, you can access great nutritional information from various sources here and here.
The old way of thinking is that you’ll have more control if you get the nutrition right, but it doesn’t work like that. It’s an illusion that information instills motivation. The illusion leads to a belief that you’ll stop struggling with stress eating by changing what you eat.
Relationships are complicated
If it were this easy, you would have accomplished this already. Relationships are complicated and your relationship with food and stress are both multi-layered. And when you combine the two, the layering is doubled!
The problem is that making sense of emotional experiences and translating them into language or feelings is sometimes complicated. But, when it’s challenging to make sense of the feeling quickly, this is when struggling with stress eating happens. Stress eating is calming and when you can think of it as one way to calm yourself, it can help to relieve some of the shame, guilt, or regret about it so that you can explore other ways to calm and feel better without mindlessly stress eating.
A lot of the time, getting specific about how you feel helps. On the surface – ‘I’m mad or angry’ states your thoughts. But, to prevent stress eating, you’ll need to put a finer point on it like, ‘I’m feeling frustrated and disappointed that my thoughts and feelings aren’t being acknowledged and taken into account when a decision is made.
That level of emotional awareness requires a different type of response than one that is ‘anger.’ It requires you to take some time for you to focus on your needs. When you assess what you need, consider the best choice so your stress level decreases and you probably won’t be thinking about food too much.
If your attention does shift to food, it could be for comfort, distraction, habit, etc. That’s okay since now you know what you need and can choose to eat.
You can assess your hunger or fullness.
You can consciously assess if you want to eat, consider how you might feel, and if it will help you. You can choose whether it’s what you want or if something else feels better.
The good news is that these are all decisions you consciously make, one feeling at a time.
This increased knowledge or awareness is at the heart of struggling with stress eating.
When you develop the skills to calm your stress reactions, you also interrupt the cycle of stress eating. As you learn more about your internal reactions and how to calm them, you’ll be well on your way, no longer struggling with stress eating.
Emotional awareness is the antidote to struggling with emotional eating.
Emotions can feel overwhelming, but let’s break it down into more manageable parts.
How do you create the emotional space between yourself and food so you can figure out what you need?
The key to emotional mastery is learning the skills for greater emotional awareness to reduce your stress and prevent any struggle with stress eating before it starts.
Three ways to change your relationship with stress and stop struggling with stress eating.
1. Reconnect with your sense of calm.
There’s a part of you, no matter how small or how long it’s been since you’ve experienced it, that can feel a sense of calm. At least once a day, create some space to be quiet and notice how you feel when there isn’t anything pressing happening. The idea is to create a restful, calm sense of self.
Creating a restful place inside yourself is a process. No one is perfect and sometimes tapping into your calm place is more manageable than at other times.
Calming yourself is a skill that you can learn at any time in life and it gets easier with practice.
The goal is to give your mind and heart a little space so you can increase your emotional awareness.
2. Identify the feeling that most frequently leads to stress eating.
The next step is to identify the feeling or feelings you experience before struggling with stress eating.
When you identify your feelings, you’ll most likely think of general feelings like, mad, sad and angry, which is a good starting point.
Now that you’ve identified the general feeling, you can spend a little time breaking it down into smaller parts and maybe thinking about the feeling from different aspects of the feeling as you fine-tune how you feel.
One tool many of my coaching clients use is looking up alternative words in a thesaurus.
Use the thesaurus to increase your emotional vocabulary and try on, so to speak, some of the feelings. Look up the dictionary definition and see if it fits how you feel. You might even find different words as you do a little investigation into your feelings.
The more specific the feeling, the closer you get to taking care of your emotions and struggling with stress eating less.
This part of the process can also be a relief and fun. Knowing how to describe your feelings is very accessible since it helps you understand what to do to feel better. It gives you direction for improving your relationship with yourself.
3. Develop your emotional mastery plan
Changing how you take care of yourself, struggling with stress and identifying and managing your emotions is life-changing. When you have options about how you respond to your emotions, true freedom dissolves stress.
You are in control, not vague and confusing feelings that lead to stress eating. The result is that you’re back in control and struggling with stress eating isn’t an issue.
A plan for identifying your feelings can look like this:
Acknowledge the discomfort you feel.
Take a deep breath and give yourself some space. If it’s not an emergency, you don’t need to treat it like one; you have time.
Identify whether you are hungry, tired, or thirsty. If it’s not physical, then…
Identify what you feel uncomfortable about – work, home, or your relationship with yourself.
What is the “big” overall feeling? This feeling could be the overall summary of how you’re feeling.
You can then break it down into more minor, nuanced feelings and see if something more specific fits.
Think about what you need and what type of self-care will help you move forward and take action for your well-being.
Ask yourself if you need to open up to more possibilities.
Is a conversation with someone needed?
Do you need to use a different set of skills when the feeling comes around again?
As you read this in the protocol, it’s a linear, step-by-step list. But as we know emotions aren’t that structured at all! They are messy and confusing and may feel very strong one instant and then morph into something else a few minutes later.
Conclusion
Identifying your feelings is often one of mulling things over time. You can come back to it when you realize another aspect later.
As you work on your emotional mastery, your ability to name and calm your emotions will get easier, faster and much less stressful.
Read on to discover science-backed strategies to help you calm your mind for more peace.
When you calm your mind, do you have peace of mind? Most of my coaching clients want to be in a state of calmness or tranquility and they also want to have the confidence that they can reduce stress as needed. Life is busy. When you know how to manage daily stress, it helps to have freedom from worry and anxiety. It can be intense and stressful when your mind is overwhelmed with too many thoughts and feelings. A calm, relaxed, and content mind is in order!
A lot of research gives many ideas or options on how to decrease stress and calm your mind. When your sympathetic nervous system is activated, it releases cortisol and other stress hormones, catecholamines, norepinephrine, and epinephrine. If you know what helps you stay calm and relaxed, the stress hormones remain moderate, allowing your brain and body to experience fewer consequences of stress.
There are several ways to reduce stress. Fortunately, there are also several science-supported ways to calm your mind.
Here are five powerful ways to calm your mind and feel less stressed:
1. Practice Visualization
When your mind is full of stress, commitments and must-dos, exchanging your thoughts with a more soothing state of mind is helpful. One way to do this is with visualization. For example, you can imagine yourself on a sandy beach, enjoying the sunshine on your face and a slight breeze carrying the scent of tropical flowers. This imagery can give you a little break and remind you that you control your thoughts.
What’s excellent about visualization is that when you imagine situations, your brain reacts similarly as if those things are happening in real-time. So, when you visualize a calming situation or image, some parts of your brain think it’s real. You begin to feel the emotions the visualization evokes for you. If you want a calm mind, imagine a scenario that cultivates peace of mind and assesses your feelings.
2. Practice Mindfulness
Mindfulness is one of the most popular ways to slow down, put the brakes on a racing mind, lower anxiety, and help you be in the present moment. Many people do mindful meditations to calm stress and anxiety regularly. Although mindful meditation isn’t a good fit for everyone, it is a valuable tool to try and see if it has a calming and clarity-inducing effect on you. Guided meditations, in particular, can help you stay focused with the meditation enough to experience beneficial results.
3. Listen to Binaural Beats
Research has shown that listening to calming music reduces cortisol for many people. As a reminder, cortisol is one of the essential stress hormones. In addition, compelling research suggests the benefits of listening to music with binaural beats. Binaural beats are when two tones with slightly different frequencies are played, one beat in one ear and the other in another. The research shows that listening to binaural beats before working on a task helps to improve performance. They might also help to calm the mind.
4. Go Outside
One of the best ways to calm the mind is to go outside and breathe the fresh air. Getting outside benefits your well-being, whether in the forest, a park, or even your backyard. Whether it’s because of the fresh air, sunlight, or breathing in the scent of trees (all of which are good for our health), it doesn’t matter. The research shows that being outside helps calm and soothe your mind and body.
5. Do Things You Love
If you’re prone to feeling the effects of stress, it’s easy to get stuck and feel anxious when your life provides you with little inspiration, excitement, or fulfillment. Luckily, you have a lot of power to change this point of view of your life. What you’ll need is to do more of the things you love. Maybe you love painting, cooking, playing softball, playing with your pet, or watching old movies. Whatever it is, when you do things that make you feel good, you dissolve some of the negative thoughts and emotions that clutter your mind.
Conclusion
When you calm your mind, it often leads to peace of mind. Building a foundation that supports you regularly to keep stress low is essential. Equally important are skills you can easily use when life happens and your stress level increases. I know that the ability to calm your mind keeps giving dividends yearly!
Inner peace doesn’t just happen. It takes skills to self-soothe, one of the most essential life skills.
Keep reading to learn science-backed strategies to increase your ability to self-soothe and feel the calm of inner peace!
Self-soothing is the effort or capacity to calm yourself in emotional distress.
Three factors determine how long the emotional stress lasts depending on
how emotionally reactive a person is
the level or amount of difficulty they have with regulating their emotions
how quickly they recover from emotional distress.
Self-soothing usually focuses on child development. Childhood is when we learn many self-soothing patterns, which start when we’re just babies. Child development researchers find that when caregivers soothe people, they internalize the soothing experience and learn how to recreate the emotional experience for themselves.
What happens when your caregiver doesn’t know how to self-soothe or if there are other barriers to learning to self-soothe?
The good news is that you can learn to self-soothe no matter your age and how uncomfortable it is to learn something new. Improving your self-soothing skills as an adult requires insight into what you need, learning about self-soothing skills, and the ability to focus effectively on self-soothing to return to an emotional baseline. It might sound like a vague skillset, but as you practice, it becomes clear, and you know how to help yourself. Here are some quick and easy self-soothing techniques that have a lot of impact and that many of my clients find helpful:
1. Listen to Relaxing Music
Listening to relaxing music often reduces cortisol. Cortisol is an important stress hormone that decreases when we shift out of a stressful state and into a relaxed state (Khalfa et al., 2003). If you’re feeling anxious or have excess energy and can’t settle down, calming music can help. Music supports your brain by changing your mood, helping you to breathe more deeply, focus on positive emotions and decrease negative emotions.
2. Take a Few Deep Breaths
A crucial part of self-soothing is decreasing activation of the sympathetic nervous system. Using your car as an example, the accelerator speeds up the car and makes the engine work harder. We slow and calm our stress response by activating the parasympathetic nervous system or in the car example it’s the braking system. The parasympathetic nervous system slows down the acceleration and stops the fight, flight, or freeze response so that you can return to a baseline calm state.
Take a few long, deep breaths to activate the parasympathetic nervous system or the breaks. One easy breathing strategy to remember is box breathing. Box breathing involves breathing in for a count of four, holding for a count of four, breathing out for a count of four, and then holding for a count of four. Repeat this box breathing method for a few rounds until you feel calmer.
3. Do Pleasant Activities
Engaging in pleasant and enjoyable activities is another easy way to self-soothe. Participating in an activity you enjoy often helps you feel more contented. When you’re stressed doing something you like supports your well-being when you experience a positive state of being. Some low-key pleasant activities are gardening, spending time with friends, and doing arts and crafts. It doesn’t need to be fancy – a word search, doodling or reading are great options.
4. Identify Your Stress Triggers
Many clients have told me that unpredictability is one of the most frustrating parts of experiencing intense negative emotions. It’s as if they are blinded by emotion from nowhere or even bubbling up after an uncomfortable event. Sometimes this happens hours or even days later. You can self-soothe and prevent stress by gaining more awareness about what leads to stress. This leads to better control of your emotions overall.
One easy way to practice this is to decide when it’s worth the challenge and when it’s not. For example, you can avoid the gossipy neighbor who leaves you feeling like you’ve been slimed. You can stop yourself from saying something you’ll regret and prevent the same argument with your mother- again.
5. Explore When and What Upsets You
What are the common themes when you get upset, especially the time of day and the topic? Ask yourself: do I feel out of control or overwhelmed when I’m tired or hungry? It’s important because the solution is simple and feeling better sooner is almost inevitable. Changing your schedule so you’re aligned with when you need to eat and can sleep longer hours is helpful.
Another critical point is to ask yourself –
Are there specific thoughts or energy that leave you feeling stressed?
Are you overthinking it—playing out the situation over in your mind again and again?
Or are you catastrophizing—imagining the worst possible outcomes?
It could even be your hostile inner critic—that little voice that tells you you’re not _____ (fill in the blank) enough.
When thoughts stick, it’s good to know what they are so you can take action and prevent them from spinning out of control.
In Sum – Benefits of Self-soothing
It is challenging to self-soothe when you feel upset and your nervous system is in fight, flight or freeze mode. When you have options that help you feel better you have choices. By using self-soothing techniques, you have more control over how you think and feel than you realize. Being calm, clear and connected is possible when you know how to reduce stress and manage your emotional well-being.
We all want to eat healthy, live well, and be our best selves. Unfortunately, stress eating can rob you of your best intentions. Fortunately, when you become a Conscious Eater, you learn how to experience and maintain freedom from stress eating.
The cycle of stress eating usually goes something like this –
something happens that triggers an uncomfortable emotion
you reach for the chocolate (or whatever you like) one more time to calm down
enjoying the deliciousness of it is soothing
you promise yourself it’s the last time and you’ll “be good.”
feeling guilty about eating for emotional comfort
Sometimes, it’s all of these emotions simultaneously, and that’s incredibly frustrating. The kicker is that it usually leads to even more stress in the long run.
When you need quick relief from the stress, it’s not like it can wait – you need it as soon as possible!
At the same time, stress eating isn’t a solution that lasts and if you’re reading this article, I bet you know it’s a cycle that repeats despite your best intentions.
I also bet that you know when you stop stress eating, you’ll feel in control and that’s a good thing. The goal is to be at peace with yourself, your body, and your life and ultimately make peace with food for good.
Another diet isn’t the answer because how you use food is the real problem.
You’re probably at the point where you want more than feeling good about your body – you want to own your life!
It’s motivating to keep going when you feel in control of your life. Losing weight, joining a new gym, or reading a great self-help book can be the spark, but when the sole focus is losing weight – that’s the definition of putting all your eggs in one basket. The problem is that you either “fall off the wagon,” or the excitement disappears when you reach your goal. That’s when people revert to the same Eating and physical activity behaviors. What you’re left with—well, you—and that feeling of ‘what do I do now?’ How do I maintain my balance without fearing the next stressful eating episode is just around the corner?
You want, no, you need absolute freedom from stress eating.
A whole-person perspective that integrates mind, body and heart would be great. After all, it would be best if you lived with yourself, and you want to be happy too.
Conscious Eating is a way of living in a relationship with yourself that lasts a lifetime.
You can live a long and happy life where you feel good in mind, body and heart while you experience freedom from stress eating.
Creating a relationship with yourself leads to lasting change based on trust and respect so you can take care of your emotional well-being.
You can stop stress eating and become a Conscious Eater.
Conscious Eating is listening to your heart in the present moment, free from judgment, with the knowledge that you can provide yourself with the nourishment you need for a fulfilling life.
Respect, kindness, and compassion are the hallmarks of Conscious Eating.
Each time you eat, you can pause, center yourself and come to the table for nourishment and well-being.
Conscious Eating frees you from the fear of missing out, which is often fueled by the anxiety that you must have what you want now for one of these reasons:
it may be gone soon
this is the last time
the diet starts tomorrow
Mindless Eating can be like that.
Sometimes it’s:
distraction
avoidance
controlling feelings that seem unmanageable
Stress eating focuses only on the food, without regard for your nutritional needs, preferences, or whether you want to eat.
It is impossible to Consciously Eat what you don’t want or like without experiencing a conflict because you’re out of alignment with yourself.
Conscious Eating is liberating.
Conscious Eating frees you from overfocusing on food and underfocusing on your emotional well-being.
You can create the space to stop momentarily, give yourself time and identify your feelings.
What are you hungry for, and what might be satisfying?
Conscious Eating is a fundamental shift in your mindset about how you listen to yourself and take care of yourself.
Conscious Eating requires compassionate patience.
As a Conscious Eater, you’ll learn to nourish yourself in the word’s meaning.
Nourishment: to provide food and other things needed for health, growth, etc.
The goal is to truly enjoy your relationship with food and your body without guilt, negative self-talk, excuses, or shame.
Each meal is one moment in time.
Food has its proper place in your life and is one aspect of life – sometimes it’s a big part, and sometimes it’s a small part. Nonetheless, there are other equally meaningful parts of life.
Sometimes, you will eat purely for fuel. You are hungry, busy, and need nutrition to function well. Knowing when you need to be quick and efficient versus when you can savor your meal is part of Conscious Eating.
There is no such thing as a perfect eater!
Real life happens.
You may have days where there is one meeting after another and your energy needs are met through one energy bar after another or one cup of coffee too many.
You may have days when what’s available isn’t appealing and you need to take care of your body and eat what’s available.
Sometimes we eat just for energy and that’s okay.
During times like these, Conscious Eaters are kind and compassionate, knowing they make the best decisions.
You can nourish yourself and have confidence that you will have many opportunities to enjoy the foods you love.
You can get back to listening to your natural rhythms.
Becoming a Conscious Eater is often like getting back to nature. Eating more naturally, most of the time. It is like when you were little and ate because you were hungry and stopped when you were full. Even when you had something delicious, like your favorite ice cream, you listened to your body and stopped when your body let you know it was enough.
And if this was not your experience growing up — maybe you never had the opportunity to listen to your body — you can learn how to listen now.
Conscious Eating is a skill that you can develop at any time in your life.
On the other hand, stress eating is a habit you can unlearn anytime!
At some point in life, we all realize it’s not about weight or how you look in the mirror.
It is more about how you want to live with yourself.
Conscious Eating supports a relationship with yourself that is kind and compassionate in how you talk to yourself about your body and life.
Breaking free from body criticism, stress eating, or the diet mentality is difficult.
Whether it’s your conversations with others, television commercials, the latest magazine article, pop-up ads, or books, the message is how easy it will be to follow this or that plan and lose weight. Your reward will be unending happiness because a perfect body is the key to the good life. It’s a seductive message, but it isn’t reality.
If a quick fix worked, we wouldn’t have so many new diets or “failures.”
The reward for becoming a Conscious Eater is experiencing the fullness of life.
Your life is yours to live right now- no longer being ruled by your feelings and led down the road of emotional eating one more time.
You honor your life whenever you dare to risk listening to yourself.
A wealth of knowledge about essential nutrition is easily accessible. Your challenge is to work within the parameters that fit for you. Respect any adjustments you need to make, given your specific health concerns.
This process increases awareness, adjusts, and helps you move forward with new knowledge.
There is no one size fits all; there is only what best fits you.
Most of all, Conscious Eating is natural, kind, and filled with peaceful self-compassion.
Conscious Eating breaks diet habits and leads to a calmer, more reasonable, thoughtful relationship with food.
Often, when women talk about “my relationship with food,” it comes from a position of power – the food being more assertive.
The diet mentality (there are good foods/bad foods, healthy/unhealthy food, the need to count calories, fat, carbohydrates, gluten, or whatever is the “baddy” of the moment) leaves your knowledge and wisdom about yourself out of the equation.
There is a seesaw back and forth between knowing that you need to follow your path versus the overwhelming message that this plan or that diet will be “the one.” You never really reach a middle ground.
Consciously make decisions that are guided by your self-knowledge.
Struggle happens when you can’t integrate the latest diet fad into your life. “I start my diet on Monday,” it is just too much of a jolt to the system.
Making changes gradually over time and allowing yourself to adjust to change step by step is usually more successful.
Many women have been brought up with the cultural idea that feeling good about yourself and your body is not possible. You may have grown up believing that you are supposed to look a certain way or that there is one acceptable body type.
If your body does not match up well, how could you ever feel good, never mind accept yourself?
What is your energy level for your planned activities?
What fuel do you need now—food, motivation, inspiration, peace, or something else?
What are your emotional needs?
Where is your heart leading you?
It can be challenging to answer these questions thoughtfully in the beginning.
Sometimes, you are swept up by emotions, thoughts, and memories and it is unclear what will calm your anxieties and fears.
Longing for food can seem uncontrollable at times.
The way out is to allow yourself some space and figure out what you need and how to nurture yourself as you experience it.
Give yourself time and space to let the questions simmer. Give yourself the gift of thoughtfulness.
3 Basic Elements of Conscious Eating – Mind, Body and Heart
1. Mind – how your feelings shape your thoughts
Most of us have the basic feelings: mad, sad, happy. One of the great things about Conscious Eating is that you learn to be more specific in identifying your feelings.
With increased emotional awareness, your emotional vocabulary grows, leading to more options for best working with them.
Rather than using food to calm or elevate your mood, you have many choices. For example, there are many ways to describe happiness. Joy, elation, glee, delight, well-being, merry. Each of these feelings has a different quality and experience of pleasure.
Increasing your repertoire or vocabulary of emotions allows you to match the feeling with positive action.
You can work with the emotion and move your life in the desired direction.
Fulfillment, happiness, and peace in your relationship with food are possible because now you are taking care of your emotional health in ways that directly address what is missing.
2. Body – How do you physically feel?
Conscious Eating naturally leads you to regularly check in with your body with kindness and compassion.
Conscious Eating allows you to check in with your subtle hunger cues and your need for movement, flexibility, and sleep.
Most importantly, you respect your body’s information and meet your needs.
A healthy relationship is built on a foundation of trust and mutual respect.
Your relationship with your body’s hunger and satiety signals needs trust and respect, too!
Conscious Eaters, stop, listen, and take good care.
Allow yourself the time to check in and wait for an answer. Remember, snap judgments lead you away from consciousness.
3. Heart – Quiet reflection
The gift of listening to your heart is one of the guiding elements of Conscious Eating.
This is where you will find the gentle strength of discernment.
With experience and practice, you will know when a craving leads to “I just want it” instead of a thoughtful, centered perspective. You can ask yourself, “Am I using food, exercising, focusing on my weight, counting calories or macros to calm an uncomfortable feeling, or do I just have a craving?” This makes choosing what you want very easy.
In sum
The heart of Conscious Eating is a movement toward a better relationship with yourself. You know from your core what is best for you, and freedom from stress eating is a big part of your needs.
The tug of war no longer exists. Instead, you’ll live your life with increasing peace and clarity.
Your needs are considered first and foremost, whether caring for your emotions, eating, having quiet time, engaging in a nurturing physical activity, or something even more fulfilling.
Deepening your relationship with yourself in a new way that brings you happiness happens constantly!
I hope learning more about Conscious Eating and how it can bring more calm, happiness and peace into your life is helpful to you.
What’s the difference between good positivity and bad positivity, and when does it become toxic positivity?
Positivity includes feelings like gratitude, optimism, and a positive perspective. It might seem like common sense that positivity is good for well-being, backed by research, but there are exceptions, too. One of the exceptions is when positivity is forced; it can be annoying at best and infuriating at worst, which does not enhance well-being at all!
Positivity is good for well-being. The caveat is if positivity helps you avoid or suppress negative emotions, it can become toxic.
The definition of toxic positivity is when an individual rejects or denies stress, negativity, or other negative experiences that exist.
Sometimes, knowing the difference between positivity and toxic positivity is difficult.
For example, if someone encourages you to “look at the bright side” when you’re not ready to, you might feel that they are dismissing your experience and the negative feelings that may result from it. Since negative emotions are as important as positive ones for meeting your needs, storing them without acknowledgment isn’t helpful. Even so, when it seems that positive advice from friends feels like toxic positivity when you’re on the receiving end, it might not be.
There’s a thin line between positivity and toxic positivity and it quickly becomes very complicated, but here’s some help.
Here are some more examples:
“I’m having a bad day.” Toxic response: “But you have much to be grateful for in your life.”
“I don’t know if I can have a relationship with my sister. She doesn’t treat me with respect or kindness.” Toxic response: “She’s family. You should love her no matter what.”
“This job sucks.” Toxic response: “You’re lucky you even have a job.”
The responses are good examples of using toxic positivity to bypass the speakers’ negative experiences rather than compassionately listening to what the other is saying.
On the other hand, when you feel heard, it validates your experience, regardless of the situation.
This response accepts the negative emotions we all experience occasionally and communicates compassion and kindness. This approach is not toxic because it doesn’t deny negative emotions or force a feeling that doesn’t align with the experience.
When Does Positivity Become Toxic?
Some research suggests that it is inappropriate to use positivity to reframe a problematic positive when an individual’s identity is being threatened. For example, when people experience racial oppression, looking for the positive side of things can lead to worse well-being.
If people encourage you to use a specific emotional skill you’re not skillful with, it can make you feel worse. For some people, positivity is a difficult skill to develop and implement. If your skillset for being optimistic, positive, or reflecting on the bright side of your situation doesn’t come quickly, it could be problematic for you.
Most of us think positive emotions are good, and more is better. Well, it turns out that the saying, “too much of a good thing is bad,” might be right. Too much positive emotion is a known risk factor for mania. Too much positive emotion can result in negative emotion.
Obsession with happiness or over-focusing on happiness decreases well-being. This creates a gap between how you feel now and how you want to feel. Having ultra-high expectations for happiness tends to take you out of your experience and preoccupy you with the future, which is a setup for unfulfilled expectations.
In Sum
Toxic positivity is tricky at times.
The benefit of positivity, backed by science, is that positivity improves well-being.
At the same time, it can be easy to focus only on positivity, which leads to toxic positivity.
Hopefully, this post helps you understand the difference between positivity and toxic positivity and how to prevent it.
Ready for science-based ways to boost your mood with positive emotions while you decrease negative emotions so you can enjoy life more?
Life isn’t always easy or fun or what you thought it would be like. Sometimes negative things happen that result in feeling negative and a bad mood is what you experience. Other times, you make a decision that doesn’t turn out how you would like. And at other times, you might feel down for no apparent reason. When this happens, we know we want to feel better quickly. The confusing thing is that it’s often difficult to think of even simple things to do to boost your mood. Luckily, psychological research has shown which practices can reliably boost your mood.
Here are a few to check out:
1. Practice gratitude
One of the best ways to start feeling better fast is to practice gratitude. Gratitude is said to be the parent of all virtues and often leads to an optimistic perspective. You can write in a gratitude journal or make a gratitude list to remind you of what’s important. These simple practices are quick and boost your mood – fast!
2. Cultivate self-compassion
Self-compassion can help you feel better about yourself. You treat yourself better when you’re not as judgmental of your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. You can boost self-compassion by writing down things you’re proud of and reminding yourself that you’re always learning and evolving. Even when things don’t work out as you hoped, a small nugget of wisdom can help boost your mood. Considering all of the good things about yourself encourages you to treat yourself with kindness.
3. Boost self-confidence
When you are confident, you’re more likely to take the necessary actions you need to take to improve your life. As a result of this boost in motivation, it is easier to be in a better mood. One way to boost self-confidence is by reminding yourself of your strengths and positive qualities. Think about your strengths. It doesn’t have to be a huge accomplishment — maybe you’re a great baker, the video game champ in your friend group, or you’re good at your job. Acknowledging what you are good at can help boost your mood.
4. Change your point of view
Research shows that future pacing or looking at your current life from a point of view in the future can decrease your negative emotional experience and help you feel better now. So, if you’ve experienced a difficult situation that leads to feeling down, imagining your life after there’s some distance between now and then can be helpful. This perspective helps you feel hopeful about the future and boost your mood. Tell yourself about all the great stuff your future self is doing. Acknowledge that you’ll move through this challenging situation; on the other side, you’ll gain more experience and self-knowledge.
5. Notice the positive things
Many studies show that focusing your attention on the positive improves well-being. This doesn’t mean “focus on the positive and forget the negative” – that’s just not practical. Instead, acknowledging the current situation and what’s difficult and, at the same time, also recognizing the good things in life is the focus. A realistic, well-rounded perspective helps boost your mood and gives you something to look forward to.
In sum
When life happens, like it does for all of us, and you’re feeling down, it’s often difficult to think about what would help. This short article gives some simple and easy steps to boost your mood. Remember that self-compassion will help you feel better with more authenticity than negative thinking could ever do!
