How do I get rid of racing thoughts

[gordie1]

HI there
How do I get of racing thoughts they are driving me crazy my mind is ticking over and I feel sick Im due to travel a 3 hour train trip on monday and this has been building up all week. I was fine last night I went out to friends house and I hardly thought about it. I am so determined to do this as I know how I will feel when I miss out if I back out. But the racing thoughts are really bothering me about what if ?

[uru]

I'd also like to know how to do this...

[MrAndy]

mindfulness and meditation helped me with this a lot ,also taking olanzapine which is specifically targeted at this area of MH

[MyNameIsTerry]

There are various things you can try, some quicker than others.

Mindfulness meditation is a very good one for anything to do with thoughts as it will walk you through a process to enter meditation by using breathing inductions. You focus on your breathing in several ways. For instance, you may focus on your chest rising & falling, or you may focus on a colour as your breath and visualise it entering & leaving your lungs & mouth, or you may focus on the little muscles between the ribs.

Typically you do more than one and aside from trying to relax your mind through not thinking about any complex or worrying, it helps you to focus on something more specific and simple. The result can be that your mind is distracted from worry.

At this point you then enter the other phases of it and if your mind strays into areas you don't want it to, you pull it away. This takes practice though and Mindfulness is a life skill so it's something to keep up to reap further benefits from over time.

If you can't shift your minds focus, you use the breathing inductions again. This does work, but the more you do it, the more it helps and at first it can feel like it is doing nothing.

Other ways can be based on distraction. Do things that absorb your focus completely whether a longer activity, preferably something creative to utilise that side of your brain, or even something very very mundane that you focus on without realising e.g. cleaning...because you will be utilising other Mindfulness skills taught outside of meditation, but you probably won't realise it. With the mundane ones, try to just stay with the task at hand and watch the movements back & forth.

A quicker useful distraction I found is intent staring. Focus intently on an object for several minutes and I mean really look at it hard. This is more for escalating anxiety & panic though I reckon but it has got me through a different dental extraction in the past when I was at my worst and it helped when I was at work to bring my anxiety levels down a bit when they felt like they were peaking.

[gordie1]

Can that help on a train? It looks really good thanks Terry