How to stop thinking about someone, in 5 steps

It is very common that throughout our lives we directly or indirectly meet people capable of capturing our full attention.

There are human beings who simply attract our thoughts to them, either because of their own personality and characteristics or because of the situations we have experienced with them. However, there are times when this is a problem. At that point, how to stop thinking about a person?

Related article: "Why can't I stop thinking about my ex-partner?"

Possible causes

The reasons why we may want to stop thinking about someone they are very varied.

For example, we can try to leave behind constant intrusive thoughts about an old relationship that pop into our consciousness all the time and without it. we can avoid it, or it may also be that we try to avoid thinking about someone with whom we will never have the relationship we would like, or it may be the case that let's try leave sadness behind produced by the death of a person.

The human mind is so complex precisely because there are an infinite number of experiences that can leave an imprint on it, and this also applies to personal relationships.

Make those thoughts go away

No, dreaming many times with the same person does not mean that we have an internal conflict related to her. However, if when we are awake those thoughts linked to someone who has been important in our lives do not disappear and constantly intrude on our consciousness despite the fact that it produces us discomfort, yes we have a problem. One that can affect our ability to concentrate, and that if it lasts for a long time it can increase the levels of anxiety.

But... how to solve this problem? What to do to stop thinking about someone all the time, if just this seems to be something independently of our will? Although it may not seem like it, there are strategies that, once implemented, can help us "disengage" from this unconscious and annoying habit.

The idea is to prevent our mind from being trapped in the same type of memories, stop thinking about the same thing constantly. Here you have a series of strategies and guidelines to follow to adopt healthier psychological habits.

1. "Not thinking about it" is an ineffective method

Regardless of how varied our motives may be, the truth is that there is a method that simply does not work. And, furthermore, it is the simplest and most intuitive method, the one that we would all try to implement in the case of not knowing anything about how intrusive thoughts work. It is about the option of trying to suppress these thoughts voluntarily, that is, making an effort to make them disappear.

Thought suppression is known to be a totally unproductive option. In fact, it will make us think more about that person. In this regard, the investigations of Daniel Wegner in which he asked a series of volunteers to think of a white bear. Then, naturally, they were asked to prevent this thought from happening again. The result was that all the participants began to think about something as unusual as white bears much more than before.

So trying to voluntarily suppress these thoughts and memories not only doesn't work, but that makes us keep thinking about what we want to keep away from our mind, which makes us let's feel more stressed. It is a full-fledged rebound effect: the very fact of avoiding thinking about that person causes us to continue reproducing the way in which we think about them.

2. accepting intrusive thoughts

One of the strategies to follow may be to practice accepting these thoughts, that is, not fighting to make them disappear from consciousness. There is evidence that people who follow these acceptance strategies experience fewer problems than those who try to suppress these thoughts.

However, the benefits of this method have more to do with how these thoughts make us feel than how often they occur. That is the acceptance of memories and fantasies related to certain people does not make us stop thinking about them in the short term, but it does make us not feel so much stress about it.

3. managing care

So, we have a method that doesn't work and another that works partially. But... What is the best way to stop thinking about a person permanently?

From what has been researched, the most effective way to get rid of intrusive thoughts is focus one's attention on a series of actions and thoughts in which we can get lost and, of course, have no relationship with that person we want to stop thinking about. Getting someone out of your head, then, has more to do with proposing alternatives to those obsessive thoughts than with trying to eliminate them.

4. fantasizing with who should not

One of the examples of the effectiveness of this strategy is found in an experiment whose results were published in 2008 in Evolution and Human Behavior. In this experiment they wanted to explore the best alternatives when making people who were in a stable relationship to stop fantasizing about a person they considered attractive and who was out of the ordinary couple.

To do this, the team of researchers presented a series of images of attractive people to each of the participants in the experiment and asked them to choose the one they considered most attractive. Then, they were induced to imagine what it would be like to live a series of situations with these people, since they were asked to explain in writing why they thought this person was attractive and describe what they think the perfect date would be like with her.

Then some volunteers were asked to stop thinking about that person. Of course they didn't make it.: They couldn't get the other person out of their minds and actually thought about the other person more than the participants who weren't asked to stop having those thoughts.

5. The solution to these fantasies

What did work was to focus attention on the couple: think about them, why are you with them, and especially why you love them. These types of thoughts, which have the ability to attract attention, were the cause of the participants being able to stop thinking about the other person. Besides, the most effective thoughts to "catch" the attention of the volunteers were not those related to the sexual attractiveness of the partner, but those that had to do with the love that he felt for her.

After practicing this strategy, the volunteers began to forget details about people that they had not been able to stop thinking about before.

You may be interested in reading: "Types of love: what kinds of love are there?"

get someone out of your head

So that, the trick to stop thinking about someone is to find something that is capable of making our attention go towards it naturally, without effort, so that little by little the thoughts that we want to avoid become more blurred until they can end up invading our consciousness constantly.