Mental health is directly affected by thoughts. Often, when we feel a negative emotion, the immediate cause is that we were thinking about something that incited it. When you feel sad, anxious, or another unpleasant emotion, ask yourself if it could be related to what you are thinking about. If the thoughts are related and you don’t need to think about that subject at the moment, circuit-breaking your negative thought train could put the brakes on your negative emotion.

A cognitive or sensory method of interrupting your negative thoughts and emotions is called distancing (also dissociation, defusion or distraction) technique because it helps you distance from destructive thoughts that you would rather not have. The techniques work by halting the chain of thoughts and/or by taking away the power of your thoughts to cause you emotional pain.

Counting backwards, for instance, is purely an interrupting mechanism. In contrast, the bus passenger analogy is more about draining intrusive thoughts of their emotional power than stopping the thoughts in their tracks. Fortunately, the more you emotionally distance from your negative thoughts, the less often they are likely to arise.

The human mind has evolved to identify and focus on threats to maximize our chances of survival. While this has evolutionary advantage, it results in us being inclined to dwell on things that make us angry, frustrated, or sad.

For instance, you may spend a significant part of the day being angry about something you saw on the news. That has no advantage to you since you can’t do anything about the negative things you watch on the news. It could be advantageous to use a distancing technique so your mind can focus on the present or on subjects that are uplifting or tractable.

Practicing distancing when warranted in no way makes you less you. Your thoughts arise from your neural connections. They are not you. On the contrary, the real you is the one taking control of his mind! If you learn to distance yourself from intrusive thought trains, you will have more ability to control how you think and feel. You will feel more you.

Whichever techniques you use, always approach your emotional challenges with the attitude that it is okay to not be okay. Contending with out-of-control emotions or thoughts does not mean that you are inadequate or something is wrong with you. It happens to everyone. Some people just hide it better than others.

If you react to intrusive thoughts as a personal failure or indication of weakness, you may instigate a negative feedback loop–now you feel even worse for having failed and your original emotion is magnified. Don’t wage war on your thoughts. You will lose. By maintaining an accepting, non-judgemental attitude, you will be able to distance from your thoughts without aggravating them.

Below are mental tricks and sensory hacks that you can use to quickly interrupt an episode of unnecessary, negative thinking. Mental Guide’s Relaxation Methods also can be used to distance yourself from negative thoughts and feelings.

There is a strong natural tendency to continue thinking and feeling the same way even if you know it is destructive. Therefore, your mind will fight you hard to not use any distancing technique.

By definition, the techniques are designed to pull you in the opposite direction in which your mind has been racing. The stronger your emotion, the more you will need to distance and the harder your mind will fight back. However, with practice your mind will fight your distancing attempts less and less. Eventually, using distancing techniques will become habit and require little willpower.

Intrusive thoughts and emotions can be interrupted or dampened using your thoughts and attitude. The following cognitive techniques can be used in order to break a stream of negative thoughts.

Recognize that the thoughts that are making you feel bad, possibly involving sharp self-criticism, do not come from you. Often, the thoughts are obviously not true. You don’t need to listen to them. They come from the bully in your brain — that part of your brain that has evolved to focus on threats to the detriment of your well-being. Give your inner bully a name so as to communicate with him better.

Recognizing intrusive thoughts as not being the real you is the foundation of dissociating from them. Without getting angry, politely say to the critical voice “Thank you for bringing that to my attention, [name].” Visualization can also help. For instance, you can imagine you are face-to-face with the bully, put your hand up and say “Okay. That’s enough.” then turn around so you are no longer looking at him.

The bully in your brain has no power to hurt you other than that which you give him.

Mentally stating that you are having a thought about something is surprisingly powerful. It makes it more salient that the thought is nothing but a thought. The less you buy into your thoughts, the less they will affect you.

For example, if you are disturbed by thoughts that you are unattractive, you can tell yourself “I am having the thought that I am ugly.” If you are worried about how you will perform on a test, tell yourself “I am having the thought that I might do poorly on my test.” Merely acknowledging your thoughts can help you distance them from your emotions. After all, thoughts are merely mental objects. They are not necessarily from you nor deserving of your attention.

Excellent technique to quickly halt your thought train. Slowly count backwards from 10 or 20. This will make it difficult to think about anything else because your mind needs to concentrate to count down. Counting forward is too easy so it won’t grab your attention as much as counting down.

Once you reach zero, restart the countdown as many times as you need or bridge to another method like reciting a mantra. Counting down is powerful because it immediately requires you to concentrate yet takes very little effort and willpower.

One way of letting go of negative thoughts is to imagine each thought as an object and watch it pass by you. Imagine each thought as a leaf peacefully floating down a stream. Make your thoughts cars and imagine yourself standing by the road watching the cars race by.

Visualize your thoughts as clouds and watch them move through the sky. Envisage yourself under water feeling deeply serene. Look up towards the water’s surface imagining each thought of yours as a wave passing by above you while you are safe and happy under the water. You don’t have to visualize in detail. Thinking of the concept of your negative thoughts and feelings passing by is often effective. 

Negative thoughts and feelings are like a Chinese finger trap. The more you struggle with them, the worse they become. The bully in your brain wants to engage you in a fight because he knows you can’t win.

Don’t play his game! Depict the part of your brain that grapples with negative thoughts as a power switch that is in the off position. You thus cannot even try to fight against them. Ironically, by taking a passive approach, your intrusive thoughts are more likely to subside.

Sometimes you just need to directly counter whatever your inside voice is saying. If you are having thoughts that you are generally not good enough, affirm “I am perfect just the way I am.” If you are stressed over rising inflation, counter it with “My income will keep pace with inflation.”

Affirmations can also be general. You may have one or two affirmations that you use throughout the day to keep up your spirits. Any mental statement that takes up your attention and makes you feel good can be used to disrupt negative thinking.

Personifying, even ridiculing, unwanted feelings and thoughts can be a great way to take away their power. It helps your mind accept the fact that they are not you, just things you are experiencing. This technique overlaps with recognizing your critical voice as the bully in your brain but is more about befriending and ridiculing than ignoring. Naming the voice can also help. Some examples:

“Hello anxiety. How are you? Won’t you hang out with me?”

“Jennifer… haven’t seen you in a while. I take it you’ve been busy?”

“Whatsup? You know, now’s not the best time. How about we talk later?”

By ‘talking’ to the source of your unwanted thoughts, you distance yourself from them. Getting angry at the voice often makes the thoughts worse, but light-hearted banter or ridicule can help immensely.

Emotions and thoughts are transitory. However, when you are deep in sadness, even for a few minutes, it seems like it will last forever. Try telling yourself “This too shall pass” with confidence, like an old sage speaking to his disciple. If you are religious, you may want to try it in the voice of a saint or deity from your faith.

Repeat “This too shall pass” every so often when feeling down. Do it with a caring attitude, like a parent comforting her child, or an enlightened guru advising his favorite follower. This affirmation is intended to let go of emotional pain more than disrupt unwanted thoughts.

Encapsulate your self-critical thought into a single word. For instance, “failure.” Mentally repeat that word in a silly, cartoonish voice as fast as you can for about half a minute. The silliness of this exercise shows the emotional parts of your brain that it doesn’t need to react to self-judging thoughts since they are stupid and ridiculous anyhow.

An episode of unwanted thinking is usually related to a recurring theme. Give that theme or story a name so you can identify it when it pops up in your mind. If the episode is about financial stress, for example, you could name it your Why Am I So Poor? story.

Ask yourself why you need to listen to Why Am I So Poor? play in your head now when you have already heard the story a thousand times. Is anything new? Is there a change in the plot or conclusion? Aren’t there any new stories to listen to?

When you catch yourself ruminating about money again, respond in the same way. Identify the story and ask yourself why you need to hear the same story day after day. Naming the recurrent stories on which your mind ruminates can help your subconscious recognize that they do not provide any new information or utility. Your mind may consequently recognize those topics as no longer posing a threat and therefore not necessary to continue thinking about.

Imagine that you are driving a bus full of people shouting at you where to go. E.g., one person tells you to drive slower; another says to take the next left turn; another passenger demands that you pull over immediately. Each passenger represents a thought or inclination of yours. As the bus driver, you can’t help but hear them when they talk to you and you can’t kick them off the bus. Nevertheless, you have to keep doing your job and follow the route you want to take.

This analogy is useful for fostering acceptance. Often, we can’t quiet all our irrational, destructive thoughts. That doesn’t mean that those thoughts get to stop us from enjoying our current activity or living how we want.

How about turning your intrusive thoughts into lyrics and mentally singing it? You could take it a step further and sing or speak the lyrics in a silly voice or the voice of a famous person. It is hard to take thoughts seriously when you are singing them in a bad Celine Dion impersonation in your head!

Tell yourself that you will be glad to deal with the issue at a designated time. You can choose half an hour a day (e.g., 7:00 to 7:30 pm) in which you will think about whatever issues you have. Whatever subject it is that is bothering you, respond that now is not the right time to deal with that issue–it will have to wait until 7 pm or whatever time you have designated.

This throws your brain a bone. You are not ignoring it. You are responding to the concerns it is bringing to the front of your mind. Hopefully, that will be enough for your subconscious to drop the urgent threat mode as it understands that the issue is not pressing and thinking about it at another time should suffice.

A strong jolt out of your mind-trap may be just what you need. Imagine that you are slacking at work, just sitting and staring when you should be working. Your boss notices you from afar and yells “[YOUR NAME]! GET BACK TO WORK!” Naturally, you feel embarrassed as you didn’t even realize that you were slacking. Now that your boss has called you out, your motivation to resume working returns. Whatever you are doing at the time, including a passive activity like watching television, you should be putting your attention onto that, not ‘slacking off’ with intrusive thinking.

Another mental jolt you can give yourself is to imagine an alarm going off. You can come up with the context of the alarm. Maybe it is your alarm clock going off to let you know it’s time to go to work or a fire alarm was just set off. Imagining an alarm going off or your supervisor yelling at you can be powerful ways to shock yourself out of a negative thought stream.

Imagine that you are the only person in the world. You don’t have to worry about your comfort and survival since everything is still operating normally in this unrealistic scenario. You have no work to go to. You don’t have to worry about money. There is no one to judge or reject you. You are just living as happy as can be without a care in the world.

What could possibly bother you when you have the whole world all to yourself? Don’t overthink this scenario. Of course, if you were the only person alive, you would be very lonely and nothing would operate anymore (i.e., grocery stores wouldn’t be restocked, your home would have no utilities). But if you suspend your judgemental mind for a few moments and imagine yourself as the only one alive, you may find that you have no more stress or anxiety — everything is okay.

You may also allay your traumas by imagining that you are the only person to have ever lived — just a lone wolf happy to enjoy and explore a big, modern world all to herself.

If a painful memory is bothering you, try turning that memory into a TV show so your mind will stop taking it so seriously. For instance, if you keep remembering a time when a group of people laughed at you, you could pretend that you and the others around you are actors filming a scene in a television studio.

After a few seconds of laughter and mockery, you hear the director yell “Cut! That was great! I think we’ll go with that!” You and your fellow ‘actors’ then congratulate each other on nailing the scene. This can help allay the negative feelings you have for the guilty people in the memory. Your subconscious may start to see them as friends and colleagues rather than foes.

You could also imagine that the memory is a film or TV show that you watched in the past and add elements that make it seem like one. For example, if you have a bad memory of getting rejected, you could imagine that event to be a scene in a TV show you have seen. Imagine that immediately after getting rejected, the theme song began to play and then faded to a commercial. This can encourage your mind to see that sad event less as something important in your life that you should remember and more like fiction that isn’t worth your attention.

Come up with your own ways of fictionalizing an unpleasant memory. You could imagine the bully in the memory as a famous actor or adjust your mike during the shoot, for instance. Turning a memory into a TV show is probably easier than other forms of rescripting. You don’t need to come up with and remember a new version of events. Just add some fictional elements on top of the existing memory.

Mentally visiting yourself as a child or youth can be a powerful exercise in self-love. Imagine yourself now meeting your child-self. How lovable and precious you were back then, right? You can imagine yourself hugging and talking to your child-self or watching secretly like a ghost. Imagine the child expressing the same thoughts and emotions that you are currently experiencing.

It is much easier to have compassion for another than for oneself and for a child rather than an adult. Thus, imagining yourself as a child and a separate person should make it easier to love and forgive yourself. For example, if you are currently in a sad spot, especially one related to poor self-esteem, it can be hard to muster up the willpower to even try any method of feeling better. Imagining yourself as a child could help give you a positive boost as your loving feelings towards your child-self displace your current negative feelings.

The five bodily senses provide ample opportunities to disrupt troubling thoughts. Sensory distancing methods can be used by themselves and can often be combined with cognitive techniques. For many people, sensory techniques work better than cognitive ones. They pull your attention away from your thoughts and towards your physical senses.

Sensory methods have some disadvantages. They can’t be used in as wide an array of circumstances as cognitive distancing methods. For instance, it is probably not a good idea to look around and identify objects while driving, but repeating a mantra shouldn’t be an issue. Most sensory methods are observable to others. You may not want others to see you doing the gorilla stroke, oscillating your eyes, or doing something else ‘unusual’ that might get you bullied.

Sensory techniques of distraction are generally quicker but less sustainable than cognitive methods. Many mental techniques, such as affirmations or an attitude of acceptance, can be practiced continually throughout the day, carrying both interventional and preventative power. You can use sensory distancing techniques a few times per day, but they are more short bursts than continuous vigilance.

Sensory and cognitive methods are complementary and often synergistic. For instance, you can circuit-break your negative thinking by wiggling your butt against your chair for a few seconds, then hold the idea that this too shall pass for the next few minutes until the dark mental cloud has passed.

A quick and effective way to get out of your head is to choose one sense and put all your attention onto it. After doing one sense, you can move on to another if you wish.

Auditory: Pay no attention to what you see, but keep your eyes open. Place all of your attention on the noises around you. Identify one source of noise after another (e.g., traffic, people talking, your breath). It is harder for your thoughts to continue when you are trying hard to “listen carefully.”

Visual: Look around intently. Identify three to five physical objects that you see (e.g., your shoes, a lamp, a water bottle). You can name them in your head or simply observe each one for 2 or 3 seconds with intention. You can even make it a game. For instance, you could identify everything around you that is green or pretend that you are a detective examining a crime scene.

Touch: Place as much attention as possible onto your skin. What do you feel on the surface of your body right now? Are you standing? Then try and notice your feet touching the floor. Sitting? Notice how your butt and back feel against your seat. You may also feel the clothes you are wearing, your arms resting on your desk, etc. Notice and identify everything you currently feel against your skin, focusing on one item at a time.

Keeping your head straight, set your gaze above your normal line of sight. Don’t lift your eyebrows or look up so high that it causes strain. Keep looking up for roughly half a minute to a minute, keeping blinking to a minimum.

Somehow this simple technique actually works well to clear the mind. It is one of the most common ways to begin hypnosis. You can often interrupt a stream of negative thinking by looking up for less than 10 seconds. To make it more effective, you could try using your peripheral vision to take in your entire field of vision while keeping your eyes focused on one spot. That is a trick common in some yogic traditions to clear the mind. It is also easy to combine with cognitive hacks like mantras or countdowns.

Slowly run the back of your hands upwards on the respective sides of your face a few times. It looks very silly, like you are doing an impersonation of a gorilla. However, it can be a potent sensory trick to get you out of your head, possibly because it feels so unnatural.

If you can entice your mind to associate a hand gesture with a state of mind (called anchoring), you may be able to distance yourself from how you feel at the time. To begin using anchors, select the positive emotion that you want to be able to self-induce at will (e.g., peaceful, happy, or confident).

Next, imprint the anchor into your mind by thinking of a time in which you felt the positive emotion while making a discreet, unusual hand gesture. Any gesture can work. For example, you could press the tip of your thumb against the tip of your pinky finger on one hand.

Once you really get into the positive feeling of the memory (or imagined experience), make the hand posture. Once the feeling starts to fade, let go of the posture. Repeat at least five times.

Now that you have set the anchor (associated the hand gesture with the positive emotion in your subconscious), you can make the hand gesture (called an anchor) for about 3 to 10 seconds whenever you want to feel that positive emotion. If anxiety is encroaching on you, an at peace anchor could work. For sadness, perhaps a happy anchor, and so on.

Anchoring doesn’t work for everyone but if it works for you, it is a great tool to have.

Bilateral stimulation is a popular form of trauma psychotherapy but it is also a good distraction method. It can be performed a number of ways including looking side-to-side with your eyes, tapping your shoulders with the opposing hands, or alternately clenching your fists or tapping your same-side thighs.

Experiment to see what is easiest (some methods tire the shoulders), takes up your attention the most, and is most intuitive/natural to you. If there could be others around, discretion is another factor. For instance, your coworkers may not notice if you clench your fists under your desk a few times.

You may find that adding an affirmation, mantra, or visualization contributes to the experience.

Ever felt like you could use a dousing of cold water to jolt you out of your headspace? Maybe you really could! Cold water can absolutely be used for that purpose. Splash it on your face. Dunk your hands in it. Grab an ice cube for a few seconds. Cold water can provide a sharp sensory stimulus to shock you out of your negative mindset.

Cold application to the head, face, or neck has particular usefulness for mental health. It can induce the diving response: a series of physiological changes all mammals experience when submerged in water. The diving response, first described in detail in 1870, involves the trigeminal nerve sending sensory information to the brainstem. In response, the brainstem sends efferent signals to the vagus nerve.¹

The vagus nerve, in turn, activates the parasympathetic nervous system. Our physiology instantly adapts to being underwater by reducing the heart rate, reducing the need to breath, and increasing peripheral vascular resistance. One clinical trial discovered that applying a cold compress to the face for 20-60 seconds induces the parasympathetic relaxation response: heart rate and cortisol diminish and heart rate variability (HRV) (the hallmark of the relaxation response) improves.² Another clinical trial applied a cold thermode to the lateral neck four times for 16 seconds each. This trial also documented reduced heart rate and improved HRV.³

There are currently no formal or established methods of using cold treatment to distance from negative emotions. To activate the diving response, you need to apply cold on the face, head, or neck. This could be accomplished by submerging your face in cold water or applying a cold compress or cold-water-soaked towel to your neck or face for around half a minute.

Splashing water on your face or dipping your hands in cold water can provide a jolt out of your mindset to interrupt your disruptive thoughts but they probably won’t activate the parasympathetic diving response.

Stretch your arms over your head. Lean forward. Stand up and pace for a couple of minutes. Do a few deep knee bends. Randomly contract your muscles — putting your attention into bodily movement can be an effective way to distance yourself from negative feelings. You don’t need to spend 20 minutes exercising. Ten seconds of movement is often all you need to short-circuit your intrusive thoughts.

It can be helpful to have one or two bodily movements habitualized so that you can use them when you need to quickly get out of your head. For instance, you could have a sitting go-to of stretching out both your legs in front of you at the same time while contracting your quadriceps. Whenever you notice your mind drifting into a dark place, do the leg extension for a few seconds putting your attention onto your legs.

Another go-to could be to stretch your neck ear-to-shoulder a few times per side. An even simpler yet surprisingly effective practice is to scrunch and move your face in any which way for 3 or 4 seconds. The face scrunch can be a great move for when you feel yourself just starting to slip into negativity.

Physical actions can also be effective prevention. Moving and stretching regularly can prevent you from entering a negative mental state. The slacker in your office who walks to the water cooler seemingly every 15 minutes may not impress her boss, but she probably has better mental health than your coworkers who hardly budge in their chairs all day.

Play around and come up with a few movements of your own. You can select go-tos for different situations. For example, when you need a light jolt, you could make a habit of clenching a fist a few times. If you are deeply in your head, a larger movement like a full-body standing stretch followed by a forward bend could make an ideal habit.

This article has described over 20 methods that can be used to interrupt an episode of bad thoughts or feelings. Many methods can be combined for synergistic effect. The suitability of the techniques depends on the person and the situation. You probably have inclinations towards some suggestions more than others. Not all techniques are suitable to all circumstances.

Experiment with different methods with an open mind. Some of the most ‘weird’ or gimmicky techniques are in fact the most empirically vetted (i.e., bilateral stimulation) or trusted by experienced experts (i.e., looking up is a mainstay of hypnotherapy).

Habit-formation is critical. The methods generally work better when performed regularly and formed into a habit. Until you develop a habit of using a given technique, it will take a lot of willpower to perform it and your mind will fight back firmly. The more of a habit, the less your mind will resist and the stronger the neural pathways back to a peaceful state.