How to Stop Being a Victim of Your Mental Chatter

Frank is quite miserable for last few weeks. He lost his job that is bad enough, but he landed up into another peculiar problem. He is simply unable to shut up his mental chatter that has been spinning only around one theme – he was fired in a totally unfair and hurtful manner.

He is unable to shake off what happened a while ago. Though he badly wants to, but the talking machine in his head does not allow him to. He knows fairly well that visiting a psychiatrist would surely earn him a fancy disorder label – English alphabets do that very well! But being a self righteous man he want to solve his own problem, though he does not know how.

He might be an extreme example of an issue we all face — an out of control mental car that follows no traffic rule making us unable to focus attention on things that we know we should be occupied with.

The uninvited mental bully can often possess you like a ghost forcing headaches, insomnia, constant restlessness, stress and anxieties. You become a helpless victim and it follows you wherever you go, like a shadow.

Thoughts and feelings have amazing power. They suck your attention right in and you have no power to stop it. When you have no control then you’re merely a physical puppet of the mental energy — a proverbial “leaf in the wind”.

In order to gain control over thoughts, you need to find the gap between thoughts. The space between your thoughts is where you have power and freedom. Once the thought train gallops the space diminishes and you become powerless.   

When it comes to mind and thoughts the only true solution or therapy is mindfulness meditation – the therapy of therapies. Only the training in mindfulness can slow down the super fast thought-express and create space between thoughts for you to live comfortably. It is only here that you can find stillness and peace otherwise the galloping train of thoughts can tear you to pieces.  

Therefore, your peace of mind directly depends upon the room between two thoughts – more room, more freedom. As long as you are established in this room you are safe from your thoughts, else you are at their mercy. So learn to find this ground and grow roots there.

You are a dignified human being who deserves a private and quiet space away from the senseless noise of the mental broadcast. You must claim your right.

But before that consider this question…

Frank is hurting badly because he strongly believes he was treated badly – rather humiliatingly. This belief gives strength to what he thinks and the thoughts, in turn, reinforce what he believes. A vicious cycle, indeed.

Just imagine what would happen if Frank learns to believe that bad things do happen in life – life is full of ups and downs. It is not always fair. That’s what life is.

Would he now still feel that much hurt? No.

Why? Because hurtful thoughts would not find so strong support from what he believes now. He might still roll in negative thoughts but the intensity would not be so strong.

So the first requirement is to fix the belief system and attitude towards life.

Do you have a correct and balanced perspective of life? How pragmatically you know yourself and your abilities? How do you view yourself? Do you deal with people honestly or through a polished sham persona?

Such questions will constantly challenge your belief system and keep it healthy. When the health of your belief system is good, thoughts can never overwhelm you. If they do occasionally, it will be momentary because the belief system is strong enough to withstand the onslaught of irrational thoughts. They will never be supported by strong enough emotions to throw you into mental turmoil.

Meditation with the base of mindfulness can correct every type of imbalance that exists inside you. If you practice regularly, it will change everything – how you relate to your thoughts, feelings and emotions, your attitude towards life, people, and every thing around you.

Mindfulness means clear comprehension of the reality unfolding moment by moment. Come to think of it, no form of meditation is possible without mindfulness – alertness or conscious presence of mind. It means paying purposeful and nonjudgmental attention in the present moment. This kind of attention nurtures greater awareness, clarity, and acceptance of present-moment reality. It wakes us to the reality that our lives unfold only in moments.

Although mindfulness is basically not designed for stress relief, but freedom from stress comes automatically because it bring about changes in your attitudes and the way you look at everything, including your self. So it attacks the root cause of stress, unlike most other techniques that merely teach you how to relax.

The central theme of mindfulness meditation practice is development and maintenance of clear comprehension moment by moment.

It means if you are drinking water, you are really drinking it with complete presence of mental alertness. If you are washing dishes you are only doing dishes, with total awareness of every act of the cleaning process. It might appear silly at the first glance – why put so much stress on a simple thing? But that’s precisely the point.

You are firmly established in the present moment, conscious of your presence, and conscious of your thoughts and actions. There’s no way you can be tossed around aimlessly like a log here and there on the waves.

The act of choice-less observation turns you from a doer to a watcher – one who does not get involved. The act of watching reduces the number of thoughts that cross your mind. Now the space between thoughts becomes visible showing you the spot to stand on firmly. With practice this spot become bigger giving you more freedom, control and power. Now you will not react but respond to events.

There are really two ways to go about it.

1. The traditional and perhaps the best way to develop it through mindfulness meditation (also called Vipassana meditation). For systematic training and ideal atmosphere, you can join a 10-day Vipassana meditation camp. These camps are free and held all over the world.

Warning: Mindfulness meditation is not an ordinary activity – it has the potential to totally transform you from inside provided you PRACTICE it sincerely!!!

Don’t be surprised to hear that this beautiful technique is also being used in a lot of prisons all over the world to put sanity into the most insane brains. Read my recent hub – Meditation in Prisons – and watch the films mentioned there. Do expect some positive shocks!

2. If you are hard pressed for time, the alternate way is to meditate using brainwave entrainment audios designed for meditation. The audios have special frequencies embedded in them that directly work on your brainwaves and can take you into deep meditative states almost without efforts. By design they also relieve stress. For background information read Brainwave Technology and Its Applications.

Mindfulness will surely change the way you relate to yourself and your surroundings that makes freedom from stress a rather straight forward matter.